A central issue is that we have an ageing population and slowing growth. Old people have a tight grip on who runs the country, and tend to get what they want (e

A central issue is that we have an ageing population and slowing growth. Old people have a tight grip on who runs the country, and tend to get what they want (e.g. high house prices, triple pension lock, fewer immigrants, etc). Unless we can attract highly-skilled workers by offering higher salaries than other countries we're doomed to be servicing pensioners with fewer and fewer workers. And this will happen while our taxes are slowly increased to deal with their health needs while other public services are slowly reduced. Any government that is in power should be working out how to build a political coalition that doesn't involve letting the old eat the young. Young people shouldn't be spending all of their money on rent and need to be able to build wealth and support families. Edit: To be clear, encouraging immigration wouldn't lower house prices -- but without immigration we will have difficulty supporting the no-longer-working ageing population. Increasing immigration is one option; the other option is to trying to make it easier for the young to have children by making houses cheaper and providing completely free childcare for everybody, but these are much more difficult to achieve, as they have a much slower pay-off and would require taking money away from pensioners (which will get you voted out).