Theresa May’s refusal to drop her undelivered target to cut net migration to below 100,000 is deeply corrosive of British politics, because she knows it is a target that is unlikely ever to be met.

Downing Street aides privately acknowledge that having failed to get net migration down to “the tens of thousands” for six consecutive years – net migration stands at 273,000 – they are just as unlikely to succeed in the next five years.

But they argue there is only one thing worse than missing the target and that is not having a target at all. They believe if they ditch it they will immediately be accused by Ukip and the Daily Mail of having given up on cutting immigration.

Perhaps more importantly, dropping the target would also mean having to admit that over the last 25 years Britain has become a country of net mass migration, where economic growth has been partly fuelled by the skills and labour of both European and non-European migrants who have largely paid their way once here.

That would also mean May having to drop the political pretence that it is possible to deliver deep cuts in immigration in an age where hundreds of thousands of people each year individually make a choice to move to countries where the jobs exist, and not necessarily with the intention to settle. This is what used to be called labour mobility rather than immigration.

So, what are the chances of May’s government hitting a migration target that she failed to hit during her six years as home secretary? The big difference is that leaving the EU means, so the argument goes, that European migration can be brought under control for the first time.

EU net migration is running at 165,000 a year while non-EU net migration, which has been subject to government control for the past six years, actually matches it at 164,000. So even if EU net migration was reduced to zero there would still be some way to go to get it down below 100,000.



Nearly every industry or public sector institution, including the NHS and farming, has lined up since the Brexit vote to stress how much their operations rely on European migrants to keep them going.



Even if the government ends free movement from the EU and closes the door on low-skilled labour there will still be immense pressure for exemptions. Skills gaps are already beginning to appear across Britain as the supply of European migrants has slowed in the face of the refusal to guarantee the rights of EU nationals after Brexit.



However, experience also shows that even if the door were closed to low-skilled European migrants they would still come to Britain, but illegally, as long as there were jobs in which they could earn more than they do at home. As Labour recognised in the 2000s if governments do not provide a legal door for immigrants then they will find an illegal way into the country.



May told the Commons home affairs select committee a year ago: “Pulling out of the European Union is not the silver bullet that suddenly solves all our immigration issues.”

What about taking students out of the net migration figures, which half of her cabinet colleagues have reportedly advised her to do at one point or another over the past three years? May has repeatedly ruled out taking students out despite evidence that most go home after their studies and the damage their inclusion is doing to the reputation of British higher education overseas.

The net flow of international students is about 90,000 a year and removing them would reduce the current figure from 273,000 to 183,000. But May has rejected this option, arguing that it would be seen as “fiddling the figures”. It would, of course, be a one-off change in the definition but there is increasing evidence that students do not stay on illegally after their studies – evidence the recently introduced exit checks are expected to confirm.

There is only one sure way May could deliver on this target and that would be to crash the economy. Britain’s high levels of net migration are a direct result of the UK’s relative position as the “jobs factory of Europe”. Unless May has some secret plan to cut migration that she has yet to share with the country, she must be hoping that she never meets her target because if she crashes the economy then we will all pay a price for a target that not even she believed in.