BORIS JOHNSON: Here's how to cut immigration: raise the income needed for a visa to £40,000 - and ignore the howls of protest from those who've got rich on cheap foreign labour

As soon as those ­immigration figures were published on Thursday, the anti-Brexit brigade succumbed to a ­collective orgasm of excitement.

‘You see!’ they gasped into any passing microphone. ‘You see the broken ­promises of the Brexiteers!

‘They told the British people they could take back control. They told us that they could cut immigration — and look!’

In 2022, post-Brexit Britain seems to have swallowed the population equivalent of a city the size of Leeds. We have net migration running at an all-time high, something like 740,000; and so the Left-liberal, pro-Brussels elite is using the moment to hammer the very idea of ­leaving the EU.

It’s failed, they crow. Brexit’s a dud, they say, and not for the first time they are talking out of the backs of their necks. What they say is the flat opposite of the truth, and in their cynical hearts they know.

Yes, of course we have a problem with immigration on this scale, and these ­numbers are way, way too big. People will not accept demographic change at this kind of pace — even in the most achingly liberal of countries and capital cities. Look at what is happening in Dublin, where that lovely and happy city seems to have been engulfed by race riots.

Look at Holland, where a patently ­Islamophobic candidate, Geert Wilders, has just won 35 seats in the parliament and may yet become prime minister.

The people of Ireland and Holland, in my experience, are among the nicest, kindest, most generous in the world; and yet there are plainly large numbers in both countries who are starting to worry that something has gone wrong, and that the EU system of free movement — a border-free Europe for the entire 450million-strong territory — has too many downsides.

Well, the whole point of Brexit is that we are no longer in the same legal subservience as Ireland and Holland. We have the powers to sort it out, and to change our immigration rules — which is exactly why the British people voted to take back those powers in 2016. We can do it now.

Look carefully at those immigration figures, and you can see much that reflects well on the UK. The numbers show, most obviously, that the anti-Brexit brigade were totally wrong about the attractions of post-Brexit Britain.

They said we would become a kind of global leper, reeking of xenophobia, and that the world’s talent would stay away. Well that was always rubbish — and these figures prove it.

The numbers show that ­motivated people across the world yearn to come to this country, and I can tell you, as a child of the 1970s - an era of decline and net emigration - that has not always been the case.

What these figures also show is the great humanitarian and ­compassionate instincts of the British people, in opening up to those fleeing chaos and murder in Ukraine, or oppression in Hong Kong.

The immigration figures testify to this country’s amazing higher education sector, and the sheer number of brilliant young people whose families will pay very handsome fees to allow them to come here and attend the best universities in the world. All these are positive features of the ­immigration data; and yet we must be frank.

What the numbers also show is that after Brexit we under­estimated the magnetic pull of the UK; and the numbers show that the British labour market is ­continuing to inspire large ­numbers of low-skilled people to want to come to work here — and for low incomes. That is a mistake. The beauty of Brexit is that we can change those incentives, and address the problem in a way that is open to no other European country.

It is time to increase the ­minimum income you must earn in order to get a UK work visa.

You will remember that after Brexit everyone was wailing about the thought of EU workers fleeing Britain, and business was worried about shortages. So the Migration Advisory Committee put the ­minimum at only £26,000 — not much more than the living wage.

The effects of this were perhaps masked by the Covid pandemic, when migration was largely ­suppressed. But it is clear from these numbers that the Migration Advisory Committee pitched it way too low.

It turns out that they had ­massively underestimated the number of EU nationals still living in Britain — by at least a million; and they underestimated the ­continuing attractions of the UK to all migrants, EU and non-EU.

The minimum income for most types of migrant worker coming to the UK should now go right up to £40,000 or more — because it is the right thing for migrant workers, and for the entire British workforce.

When we do it, I will tell you what will happen. A lot of very rich ­people in this country will go crackers.

They will protest that they ­cannot afford to run their ­businesses if they have to pay their foreign workers that kind of money; and they will complain in the same breath that British ­people are too idle and feckless to do those types of jobs.

I say, tough. It is time to call them out. For decades we have seen a failure by corporate Britain to invest: in new plants, in new research and technology, and, above all, a criminal failure to invest in the skills and potential of the domestic workforce.

No wonder so many millions of Brits are skiving on benefits or sick pay, and won’t take these jobs on which we all depend — in ­crucial sectors such as social care. It is not just the distortions of the ­welfare system (though they are acute); it is that the jobs ­themselves are underpaid and undervalued.

No wonder British productivity has so stubbornly failed to increase, when British capitalism has been able for so many years to mainline low-skilled workers from abroad, and all the while the wealth gap — the difference in income between the top ­executives and the workforce — has so ­massively increased.

In 2016, people voted to change all that. They voted to send a ­message to the Government and to big business that the old model was broken. It is time to heed that message, and invest in British skills, talent, infrastructure and technology.

Of course we must remain open to the world, and the talented people who have so much to offer this country.

We need the world’s best ­scientists — and that is why we set up the fast-track visa for ­scientists. We want young minds to come to help fertilise the tech businesses that are sprouting not just in London but across the whole of the UK.

But we cannot continue with an economic system that depends entirely on fresh infusions, every year, of low-skilled and low-paid workers from around the world. Britain is the most densely-populated large country in Europe.

Immigration has become like a Ponzi scheme, encouraging us to suck in more and more people, rather than sorting out all the ­reasons for UK under-productivity: skills, welfare, infrastructure.

It is obvious from these numbers that we were misled by the post-Covid lull, and that we set the minimum income for a general work visa way too low. It should go up to £40,000 immediately.

Remember this: without Brexit, we wouldn’t even have the power to do it, and when we do it, it will be a boost for workers across ­Britain. And it will be what we voted for.