It was all an illusion. Mr Byrne’s big number was cancelled out by another big number – 200,000 — the average annual net immigration during Labour’s third term. Yes, output went up but GDP per head did not because the cake had to be shared amongst many more people. Britain’s population was soaring. Size does not equal prosperity, yet they were deliberately conflated by Labour to give the impression of a universal upside from unprecedented immigration. This deceit was exposed by an all-party House of Lords committee in 2008, whose chairman demolished Labour’s arguments as “preposterous and irrelevant”.