An immigration policy that could have been developed by the Underpants Gnomes

In brief: our Home Secretary, Theresa May, has announced that skilled migration to the UK from outside the European Economic Area will be capped at 21,700 for next year, a cut of 6,300 from last year.

The Daily Mail will, no doubt, be relieved that the government is protecting our shores from the threat posed by foreign-born scientists, academics and skilled professionals. After all, in the strange and frightening parallel world that the Mail editorial team inhabits, this sceptred isle was in imminent danger of being flooded by a horde of eeeebil scary foreign marine biologists, oncologists and art historians until May and her fellow armchair border-warriors bravely stepped up to the mark.

However, in the world in which the rest of us live, it's hard to see how anyone could rationally defend this policy for more than five seconds. The Confederation of British Industry doesn't want it. Universities don't want it. Even the unions don't want it. Among the (small) proportion of the voting population who actually know what this policy entails, I have not yet encountered one person who thinks it's a good idea. There simply doesn't seem to be any logic behind it.

It won't make any difference to overcrowding, since the bulk of economic migration to Britain comes from within the EEA and is therefore unaffected by the policy.  And it will deprive Britain of skilled professionals who would have made a contribution to economic, intellectual and cultural life. Even if one supports immigration restrictions in general (which I do not), I can't follow the logic of the government's proposals. Neither, it seems, can anyone else with a stake in the matter.

Perhaps the government is hoping that Mail readers will see the words "immigration cap" and start cheering, their xenophobic bloodlust having been sated, without bothering to read any further. Sadly, I fear they might be right.