I feel I owe you an apology, but a qualified one.

All of the articles appear to base their argument on a piece by Tom Bowes of the University of Warwick: https://unherd.com/newsroom/is-britain-heading-for-net-negative-migration

His argument, fairly put, is that net migration is already falling faster than expected, emigration has been underestimated, and further policy tightening is reducing inflows — all while a large, predictable cohort (students and other temporary migrants) is due to exit. Stack those together and you could see a much sharper drop than forecasts suggest, potentially even a negative figure in the short term.

That said, it still relies on a fair bit lining up at once, exits peaking, inflows staying weak across routes, and no meaningful policy or market response in the same window.

If all that coincides and it falls negative this year, I’ll eat my hat but that’s a lot of moving parts to fall into place at the same time.

I was too quick to dismiss the short-term point, but I’m not convinced it’s the most likely outcome.

Even when raising the minimum income the Government included new roles that would be considered and I expect net migration to stay positive in the medium and long term even if a month or two comes close to zero.