Does anyone else remember the following quote from Gordon Brown in the first televised debate back in April?
Net inward migration will continue to fall under our policies.
From the figures released yesterday by the government's Office for National Statistics:
Estimated net long-term migration to the UK in the year to December 2009 was 196,000. This compares with the final estimate of 163,000 in the year to December 2008
I know Brown was not afraid to get, shall we say, 'creative' with his statistics, but I don't think even he could claim that 196,000 is lower than 163,000.
In the next sentence, from the same debate:
Can you guess what's coming? From the ONS yesterday:40,000 less students, I suspect, this year, because of our tightening of visa controls.
There were 362,015 visas issued for the purposes of study including Tier 4 (students), up 35 per cent on the year to June 2009.
Rarely in British history can we have had a Prime Minster quite so incompetent.
