David Cameron looks increasingly desperate as he turns to an old Tory favourite - immigration - to try to win ground back in the polls. Only, according to Iain Dale in the Telegraph, it's not a lurch to the right a la the 2001 and 2005 campaigns; it's simply a moderate, sensible position ("David Cameron wobbled, but didn't fall"). But the Tories can't have it both ways, and once again the policy implications of Cameron's statement are unclear. To simply say that immigration needs to be "controlled" is a non-policy, as we do not currently operate an open border policy. On the other hand, if the Tories are going to propose stricter controls than we have at present, they have to be prepared to defend the (right-wing) political logic behind that policy.

Unfortunately, the case for it is poor. Cameron's repeated comment that there are "too many" immigrants for us to deal with belies the fact that the numbers have not increased significantly over recent years. But even if they had, immigration brings far more economic benefits than problems, as argued eloquently by Philippe Legrain in a chapter of a forthcoming CentreForum publication on globalisation. And even there were economic problems - even if our resources were a pie being cut up between everyone in the country - the underlying logic of the Tory argument is that British citizens deserve rights and opportunities more than those from overseas. This is why many people do see a current of xenophobia or even racism in even the moderate Tory rhetoric, and why implicitly to make such an argument is to 'lurch to the right'.

Which leaves Cameron with only one potential argument. The Times reports that the newest prong of the attack, launched by Damian Green, is the claim that immigration harms social cohesion ("Tories step up campaign for immigration controls"). Admittedly, this touches on a genuine political issue, unlike the economic argument. But given that we unavoidably do have a multicultural society, and this isn't going to change any time soon, any solution to community tensions has to involve engaging and reconciling the existing groups within our society, not preventing new immigrants from arriving. The argument that " the perception is as important as the reality", or that we need to reduce immigration to prevent the really racist parties from making the issue their own, is a cover for appeasing and making concessions to racist sentiment. And that certainly isn't going to improve community relations.

Also in the news:

• Tory election hopes look bleak, with a YouGov poll announcing that the Tories are 8 points behind Labour, and Cameron a whopping 24 points behind Gordon Brown (Telegraph, "Tory blow in polls fuels election speculation")
• An autumn election may be looking more likely, with it being considered as a strategy to prevent a divise row over Europe within the Labour party (Independent, "Brown urged to call autumn poll to quell referendum calls")