From sundaypost.com:
George Osborne appears to have admitted defeat on the Tory pledge to bring annual net immigration below 100,000 by the general election.
The Chancellor said progress had been made on reducing numbers, but suggested Britain's relationship with the EU would need to be renegotiated after May 2015 to deliver David Cameron's promise. He also warned that border controls will be loosened again if Labour returns to government next year...
Official figures showed net migration - the number coming to the UK for at least a year, minus the numbers leaving - rose 58,000 to 212,000 in the year to September 2013...
Righty ho, just for starters, Osborne has sort-of admitted that his party won the last election partly on the strength of them lying about getting net immigration below 100,000, having known full well that it was impossible and a meaningless target anyway: even if a government can control immigration (and they could if they wanted to) it cannot control emigration so it cannot control net immigration unless it runs a daily tab and expels recent immigration immigrants if not enough people emigrate.
And on the facts, annual net immigration has stayed pretty much constant since his lot got into government, the direct comparison with the previous year is misleading.
[Whether or not that is a desirable aim is up to the voting public to decide, and I guess that given the choice, we would vote for it: that is a separate topic.]
Anyway, building up to classic bit of Indian Bicycle Marketing:
Mr Osborne said. "So we have got our policy, we are delivering on the policy, and the key dimension to it which we need to now deliver on is the European aspect.
"That requires renegotiation of our membership of the EU, an in-out referendum so the British people have their say...
A bit like Dave's famous cast-iron guarantee of 2009, eh..?
"If there's a Labour government not only will the economy go to ruin but the borders will be uncontrolled and you won't get that renegotiation in Europe because they're not even pretending that they want to do it."
So he wants us to vote for his lot because they are at least pretending?