23. Weekly Newsletter
Sunak announces new migration policy
Rishi Sunak announced that he would bring in an annual cap on migration if he wins in the upcoming election. The cap would be based on work visas or those joining family in the UK, this would be through an annual vote in parliament which would seek to reduce the cap each year. Data shows that net migration last year stayed higher than historical averages, despite falling by 10% to 685,000. This policy announcement comes as the election hits crunch time and migration is frequently seen as an important topic for voters.
A new YouGov MRP poll for Sky News was released this week showing that the Conservative party may win only 140 seats compared to Starmer’s party taking 422 which would be the largest landslide victory in over 100 years.
Newspapers
Some of the British headlines from the past week are:
- Financial Times- ‘Fresh calls for action on IHT breaks after 68 estates shelter £1.8bn in assets’
- Financial Times- ‘Labour’s pledge to cut work visas worries business’
- Financial Times- ‘Demand for private healthcare hits record high in UK’
- Financial Times- ‘UK house prices return to growth in May despite rise in mortgage rates’
- Financial Times- ‘UK living standards have lagged most peer nations since 2010, report finds’
UK graduates opting for professional services over manufacturing
In 2023, 6,700 UK graduates were recruited into consulting,accounting and professional services. Whereas, under 3000 graduates joined engineering and industrial companies. Peter Voser, former Shell CEO, stated that this was a sign that UK universities have been let down by the education system and multiple governments that have failed to pump enough investment into the manufacturing sector. He also spoke about other countries in Europe like Germany, Switzerland and the Nordic countries and stated that it is “medium sizes enterprises that are extremely innovative” that drive GDP and that Britain simply don’t have enough of those.
Manufacturing in the UK has slowly dwindled since the turn of the century as in 1975 it made up 25% of the country’s GDP but this has dropped to 10%. Voser also gave some positive insight into the future of manufacturing for Europe as he stated that robotics and automation would contribute to regeneration of manufacturing in Europe and that the only thing to prevent this would be “social safety net thinking” whereby governing bodies prevent the development of automation due to fear of job losses for the general population.
