Cutting immigration to the UK means billions less for the Treasury. Can the country really afford that? | Zoe Williams

Every 100,000 immigrants lost to the UK costs the treasury £7bn, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. That figure is unsurprising if you’ve been concentrating at all – the calculation was made in 2024 – but at the same time completely staggering. Nobody ever says, “The chancellor’s going to be in trouble because of all those lost immigrants”; few people remark on, let alone decry, the very large numbers of migrants who have been lost due to policy decisions.

And then, as budget day approaches, brute facts and mathematical realities assert themselves: migration numbers have been falling faster than anticipated. And if you take all the measures you can to discourage international students, skilled workers, all imaginable young, mobile people who work and don’t get ill, while at the same time preventing with all your might any legitimate employment opportunities for asylum seekers, you will suffer a hit to the national coffers.

That’s another word I haven’t seen in a while. We used to talk about coffers all the time, these metaphorical chests of cash that would be added to, in the good times, by a bustling economy in which people worked and made and sold things. If these things were good enough, other countries might even want to buy them.

It probably slipped out of usage around the time of Brexit, when we decided by that overwhelming majority that money wasn’t important any more – or, at least, not as important as taking back control of our borders. If we had to poleaxe our export industries in order to prevent the arrival of healthy people who might contribute to the economy, then so be it – coffers be damned.

If this were working in the other direction, it might almost be charming. If money were no object in the matter of human dignity, if no price were too high for functioning social care because that was the society we wanted to live in, then it would be beautiful, although there would definitely still be people saying: “Guys, money actually is an object. It’s both a trust metaphor and a real thing.”

But we’re only prepared to jettison practicality in the interests of a particular set of higher objectives: securing our borders; assuaging formless anger (but only of a certain kind, from certain people); sending a message to the rest of the world – you might think this looks like a good place to live, but think again.

I’ve never been especially attracted to rational economic arguments in politics: they usually seem to serve the interests of the establishment. But now that the establishment has become so emotional, I realise I miss the days when it could, at least, count.