The net migration target is one of the strangest political fetishes in recent history

The net migration target is one of the strangest political fetishes of modern political history, writes Jonathan Wadsworth. He argues that it is far from obvious why any government would seek to target something over which it has very little control. Even if migration from the EU fell to zero, the net migration numbers would be way above the 100,000 target. He concludes that the evidence of immigration’s impacts in the UK is that it seems to matter much more politically than it does economically