Brexit campaigners may feel vindicated by Wednesday’s employment figures on two fronts. They could argue that an unexpected drop in unemployment proves the doommongers wrong, with widespread fears of job losses in the wake of an out vote not yet materialising.
They could also suggest the rising rate of employment among non-UK nationals, with the number of eastern Europeans topping 1 million for the first time, shows the urgent need for Britain to reimpose controls on migration.
On the first point, it is early days. The UK is still years away from an actual exit from the EU, with the government yet to employ many of the staff who will be charged with steering the country through a complex set of negotiations. It is still too soon to dismiss the warnings over employment and recession when it comes to Brexit.
Besides, it was not the economics that won out in the June referendum anyway. As we know, millions of voters shunned the heavy handed warnings from Downing Street and its remain campaign about the risk to 3m EU-linked jobs, tax rises and savage spending cuts.
No, in this referendum battle, immigration was king.
Leave campaigners successfully tapped into a countrywide anxiety about the numbers of people coming freely to Britain to work, and persuaded them that there was only one way to bring the trend to a halt.
Those coming from countries in eastern Europe, such as Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, were top of the list when people raised their concerns.
David Cameron knew about the sentiment, of course. That is why he first promised to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands, at a time when his aides believed the numbers were on the right track.
But in doing so, he simply made people more angry, as they witnessed the official statistics heading in the opposite direction of the then prime minister’s words. Moreover, a promise to limit access to benefits for people coming to Britain was not enough, because the sentiment was simply about immigration, not whether or not those people came to work.
I heard the anger time and again when travelling across the country in the run-up to the vote. It was particularly vociferous in Peterborough (72.3% out), where the city’s high streets had morphed as a result of immigration, and its health centres and schools were feeling the pressure.
But it was also the same in other areas of lower immigration, such as Blackpool (65.4% out), Wigan (69.2% out) and Knowsley (63.5% out). In those places, people feared what the impact might be on their livelihoods if the numbers kept on growing, and blamed migration for damage to their own prosperity stemming from the loss of solid employment and uncertainty around wages.
Claims from politicians that immigration was an economic boost didn’t chime with people’s reality, and simply stirred up more angst.
Latterly, Cameron tried to take the issue head-on, arguing that the growth in migration was linked to Britain’s economic success and would settle down over time. He also explained that limiting immigration carried an economic cost, the balance that will now be at the heart of the work done by Cameron’s successors.
Statistics for July outline the position before any of the work has even begun.
