A fringe group of red wall Tory MPs calling themselves the New Conservatives have launched a 12-point plan to tackle immigration as Rishi Sunak’s pledge to stop the boats makes slow progress.
The group of rebel Tory MPs, including deputy party chairman Lee Anderson and Devizes MP Danny Kruger, are suggesting the stricter measures to avoid “eroding public trust” over ever-greater immigration. The alternative manifesto is committed to bringing down the numbers from an all-time high of 606,000 to 226,000.
Their plans include raising the minimum salary requirements for immigrants arriving on the skilled worker visa from £26,200 to £38,000. They also suggest cracking down on foreign students bringing their families over as dependents and scrapping the graduate visa option which allows recently graduated students to stay in the country for two years without finding a job. Also in the alternative migration manifesto is a plan to ban the poorest-performing universities from accepting foreign students.
Political infighting is nothing new in the Conservative party and Sunak will have to quell it quickly before it spills over into other matters. But some on Sunak’s team are sympathetic to the New Conservatives’ point of view. It is expected that Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, will give their support to the alternative manifesto. Braverman’s stricter immigration policies have been blocked before by Jeremy Hunt and this may be a way for her to exert some pressure on the PM and the chancellor.
It’s been said that Lee Anderson is unwell and won’t attend the launch of this manifesto – must have been the cat food. But Danny Kruger, son of the Great British Bake-Off’s Prue Leith, will be leading the charge. When asked why the New Conservatives were so focused on this subject, one of the authors of the plan, Ipswich MP Tom Hunt, told BBC Radio 4: “When I knock on doors, when I talk to constituents, immigration is a key issue that comes up time and time again.”
The launch of this manifesto comes as Liz Truss launches her own international task force aimed at fixing Britain’s economic stagnation. The Growth Commission doesn’t spell direct danger for Sunak like the New Conservatives, but it’s hardly a good look. No PM wants to have an international task force over his shoulder reminding him that all he is doing is managing decline – not least one led by his predecessor.
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