One of the many benefits of Brexit is that politicians will no longer be able to blame the EU for problems that are their responsibility to address. Immigration is a case in point: ministers have promised for more than six years to reduce net immigration to under 100,000 but failed to do so. Not all of that failure was down to EU free movement rules: ministers have always had the power to restrict non-EU migration much more than they chose to. Some were rather shy of discussing that choice, since the economic benefits of immigration can be hard to explain to voters who do not feel those benefits in their daily lives and public services.

Theresa May’s Government shows signs of moving away from talking about the numerical level of net migration and focusing instead on the mechanisms needed to control migration: the work-permit scheme floated at the Conservative Party conference is just the sort of control that Brexit should allow Britain to exert, though if that is the approach the Government takes, it must take care not to burden with red tape those businesses who legitimately need to hire foreigners.