Living standards have been squeezed ever since the financial crisis a decade ago. Immigration, meanwhile, has sharply increased over the past 20 years. It’s understandable that voters, especially lower-paid workers, see a link. Damian Green, the first secretary of state, voiced that position last week when he said that there was “quite a lot of evidence” of excess migrants depressing wages for low-skilled manual work.

Except there isn’t. The evidence that immigration depresses wage levels in the economy is weak, even at the lower end of the income distribution.

First, the painful facts. Total pay for the whole economy (measured as real average weekly earnings) fell by 0.5 per cent in the three months to June compared with the same period last year. It isn’t