A modern cosmopolis like England must manage migration better

News this month that the population of the UK is expected to exceed 70 million by 2031 will have surprised no one. Britain – more properly, England – is already one of the most densely populated countries in the world, hosting more people per square mile than India and three times the number for China. Not even the chaos of Brexit has made us less attractive to immigrants. Indeed, as the deaths last week of 39 would-be immigrants in the back of a lorry in Essex so cruelly demonstrated, fears that the nation’s gates may be about to shut has, if anything, boosted our appeal.

Here are some statistics to put the debate in context:

France is two and a quarter times bigger than the UK, but has the same population (67m). If we hive off Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with their aggregate population of just over 10 million, the 56 million residents of England are crammed into a space less than a quarter the size of their gallic neighbour.

The United States is 75 times larger than England, with a population of 327 million. If its number of people per square mile matched that of its one-time colonial master, the number of Americans would reach 24.5 billion, roughly three times the total number of people presently alive in all of the world’s 195 countries.

Scotland, by contrast, suffers from a dearth of inhabitants. A mere 5.5 million folk live north of the border, most of them within 50 miles of Edinburgh and Glasgow. While England’s population is projected to grow by 5% over the next ten years, the equivalent figure for Scotland is a miserly 1.8 per cent. The  expected growth in Wales barely registers, at 0.6 per cent, against a robust 3.7 per cent for Northern Ireland, which by 2030 is expected to boast more Catholics and Nationalists than Protestants and Unionists.

In summary, England is bursting at the seams.

Immigration, plus the generally higher birthrate among communities of recent immigrant origin, is the principal driving force behind the English explosion. What statisticians like to call “white British” citizens are, in demographic terms, running to stand still, inching up in numbers in a manner more like that of their Scottish cousins. It is the arrival over the last 60 years of immigrants from the developing world, boosted more recently by citizens of the EU, that has thrown the rate of increase into overdrive.

In the 12 months to the end of March this year, net immigration into the UK hit a total of 226,000, equivalent to the population of Brighton. The stresses of Brexit led to an exodus of 141,000 EU citizens – not only from the old East Bloc, but from France, Germany and Spain. Even so, there were some 200,000 new arrivals, yielding a net EU migration total of 59,000. That figure was, however, dwarfed by the number of arrivals from outside the EU – a net figure of 219,000, mainly from Africa and Asia, but also from central and south America.

Those who voted Leave in the referendum primarily in the hope of cutting immigration are unlikely to have been persuaded that the UK has yet “taken back control” of its borders. Others, including employers, who recognise the need for a continued inflow of low-wage and/or high-skill workers will take comfort from the fact the the UK remains a focus for ambitious groups and individuals around the world.

On the ground, most obviously in the southeast of England, the impact of a rapidly rising population is everywhere apparent. The roads are clogged; the railways cannot cope with the increased number of passengers; the housing shortage, especially at the lower end, is acute. Ask any British retiree who has moved to rural France or Spain what prompted them to leave, and in three cases out of four the answer will be overcrowding and the pressures of everyday life, rather than the weather.

Greater London, as ever, likes to see itself as the key battleground. The number living in the capital is set to top ten million within the next 30 years, well ahead of New York and far outpacing rivals such as Paris, Berlin and Madrid. But the Midlands and the North are also feeling the strain. When planners talk of the need for a new Northern transport hub, it should be understood that without it Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds could slowly grind to a halt, which is why local politicians of all parties are getting together to do what Westminster, so far, has failed to achieve.  In the same way, Birmingham, which for years felt itself neglected, is pressing ahead with ambitious infrastructure changes vital to its economic survival.

High-speed rail, unloved by some Tories, will certainly help, but is only one part of a process of integration that could result one day in England presenting itself as a single economic unit, with supply chains feeding in to centres of production from centres as far apart as Plymouth and Sunderland, Norwich and Carlisle.

In human terms, increased congestion rarely has an upside. England’s countryside is famously beautiful, but it is also under mounting threat. Post-Brexit, farmers will face huge challenges, not only from the loss of European subsidies and overseas competitors but, at home, from councils and developers hungry for land. There is hardly a village within a hundred miles of London that has not witnessed the growth of urban sprawl. Quaint olde worlde streets quickly give way to housing estates straight out of Legoland. Massive car parks, cheek-by-jowl with big-box stores, have become an everyday feature of the rural landscape.

In a real-world version of The Archers, half the population of Ambridge would travel each day to Borchester to work in the town’s ever-expanding industrial park. The rest would have part-time jobs in Wetherspoons, McDonald’s or Domino’s PIzza.

Such is the reality of the twenty-first century. The truth is, Olde Englande was never built to last. It only looked that way. It is now up to the government, led next year by Boris Johnson or Jeremy Crobyn, to introduce a proper national plan that will take our teeming millions forward into the post-Brexit age. Long-term strategic thinking has for too long been absent from the way in which Britain is run. Instead, we have had ideologies that come and go with whichever party happens to be in power. Ministers put their names to plans which nine times out of ten are forgotten the minute they move to a new portfolio. But the pressure is building. Something must be done. The nation is crying out for change and seventy million people can’t be wrong.