Thread by @rcolvile

This is one of those days when there's only one story in town. But I still think, as I would, that my column on borders/immigration is flagging up something important. Quick thread follows. thetimes.co.uk/article/brexit…

Brexit reduced the saliency of immigration. But it's still a major public concern. See this @YouGov issues tracker - it's the pink line.

And the public - probably driven by Covid border rows - don't think the govt are handling it very well. (This also via @yougov)

Maybe that's because they haven't noticed eg the introduction of the points-based system because of the pandemic. Or maybe because the same tensions we've seen over lockdown are in evidence over the borders.

MPs, businesses, travel sector, airlines, affluent folk with holiday homes are desperate for govt to unlock - hence row over green list last week. But as on lockdown, the public still in turtle mode.

This polling from @IpsosMORI for example shows that if it meant controlling a new variant, they would support banning literally every flight into the country by a margin of 5:1.

This will probably fade as an issue as vaccine rollout proceeds and we open up more. But broader border tensions will remain. There's obviously the small boats issue and illegal migration in general...

...but I was struck re Chesham by how many people were saying 'all these new houses are because of migration'. As Alex Morton of @CPSThinkTank has shown, migration is 1/3 of housing demand in the govt targets - but that's only because the figures are years out of date.

In fact, as I point out in my column, if you redid the numbers with the latest figures pre-Covid, you'd need to build roughly 50,000 extra houses - the same sort of increase, as Alex pointed out on @ConHome, that triggered the latest massive planning row conservativehome.com/platform/2021/…

There's also the fact that many businesses have acute labour shortages post-Covid. They're used to bringing in immigrants to fill the gap - but the govt is pointing to rising unemployment and furlough ending and saying why can't you hire British? (And, shock, raise wages...)

In other words, as I say in the column, we're set for continued tensions between open and closed. Please give it a read thetimes.co.uk/article/brexit…

(Also worth flagging that I still think, as I wrote in March, that immigration is politically an asset for the Tories against Labour - but only if voters believe we really did take back control... thetimes.co.uk/article/toughe…)