The net number of EU migrants coming to Britain has fallen to 90,000. That of non-EU migrants has risen to 205,000. These are the main takeaways from the latest set of immigration figures.

The number of EU citizens who left Britain was up to 130,000, the highest level since the 2008 crash. This has led many to talk of “Brexodus”, though it is unlikely to be just Brexit that is leading to the outflow of EU citizens. Stronger economic growth in the eurozone, for instance, may also be playing a part.

Equally significant is the figure for non-EU immigration to Britain. One of the arguments of many Brexit leaders has been that leaving the EU and getting control of Britain’s borders would allow for a drastic reduction in numbers and enable the government to meet its stated aim of capping immigration at “tens of thousands”. This, suggested Boris Johnson at the time, in the wake of the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, was the only way to “spike the guns of the extremists and the people who are genuinely anti-immigrant”.

But it wasn’t and it won’t be. Throughout this century, immigration to Britain from outside the EU has been higher than that from the EU. Being unable to limit EU migrants, the government has striven particularly hard to reduce non-EU numbers. So the failure to reduce these numbers is telling, revealing the limitation in its control of migration. Even so, the idiocy of the government’s arbitrary immigration cap is clear. Britain has hit the limit on visas for skilled non-European workers for three months in a row, deepening the staffing crisis in the NHS and elsewhere.

Promising to limit immigration and failing to do so will only aggravate, not alleviate, hostility to immigration. If we really want to “spike the guns of the extremists”, we need not to make false claims about what “taking back control” will achieve, but to challenge the myths about the impact of immigration.