The latest official figures on UK immigration which show 336,000 more people came to the UK than left in the year to June is bad news for Britain. In fact, these statistics have serious and far reaching consequences for our country which belie Labour John McDonnell's pathetic House of Commons antics with Mao's Little Red Book in answer to George Osborne's Spending Review.
According to the UK Treasury's very important official Budget2015 Red Book which supports the assumptions and details the underlying numbers of the government's economic blueprint, 'capping welfare and controlling migration' are critical for Britain's long term prosperity.
Osborne's u-turn on Tax Credits has blown away the cap on welfare spending and these migration numbers have holed the integrity of the government's Budget below the waterline. How can public administrators control public spending and provide services if they don't know how many people to plan for?
Already, people who I speak to have stories of the difficulties they have in getting doctors or hospital appointments. Schools with children who speak dozens of different languages and children having to travel miles from home are well known. As for housing, rents are accelerating upwards and the chance of buying a house is almost impossible for many (especially in London) unless we destroy our green belt and build a million homes in just a few years. Beyond this, we have to face the reality of life in the third most densely populated country in Europe (and, if you live in England, you live in the most densely populated nation in the EU).
So we, as Britons, also need to accept that our attitude and policy towards migration is flawed and selfish. We should consider what impact our migration policy is having on the rest of Europe and the developing world. We have signed up to EU free movement of people obligations that mean that hundreds of millions of EU citizens have the right to come live and work here. But as we continue to open the door to citizens from under developed countries to satisfy our own, self-centred needs, many of these developing economies are losing their best and brightest people. This is slowing down the development of many nations, while causing job displacement in the UK. Britain needs an education system to create, and educate a work force fit for the 21st century.
The Prime Minister's response is twofold. First, clamp down on immigration from non-EU countries. This is fair enough, except many UK citizens previously from non-EU countries have automatic rights to bring their families here. Second, David Cameron is trying to reduce the number of European Union migrants by cutting their welfare benefits as part of his 'renegotiation' on our membership of the EU.
Problem is, quite a number of the other 27 countries in this political bloc are saying 'No Way - we like that fact that our citizens can send money home from the UK.' So the Prime Minister's attempts will fail, further damaging the credibility of his economic and EU policies.
The bottom line here is this: the only way we can control immigration into the UK is to take back control of our borders. This means we have to stop our open-ended EU free movement of people obligations to potentially hundreds of millions of EU migrants. The only way we can do this is to leave the EU.