Theresa May's immigration policy ridiculed by former Chancellor George Osborn

The direct attacks made by George Osborne against Theresa May since former Chancellor became a newspaper editor takes a new twist as he ridicules her plans to bring net migration to the tens of thousands.

Theresa May during her election campaign stressed that her party’s manifesto will make every possible effort to reduce migration to less than 100,000 annually.

Nonetheless in a mocking editorial, the Standard declared: "It remains a mystery why the Prime Minister has recommitted her party to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands a year.

"She didn't need to make this politically rash and economically illiterate move. She was not the author of the pledge; David Cameron made it in Opposition."

It was also put forward by the editorial that the Government could not totally control migration due to the fact the number of people arriving and leaving is subject to the "vagaries of the world economy".

And the paper, which Mr Osborne began editing after he was sacked by Mrs May in her first act as PM, also claimed that no senior member of Mrs May's Cabinet backed the pledge in public.

The editorial said: "So you would assume that Mrs May would jump at the chance to bury the pledge.

"That's what her Cabinet assumed; none of its senior members supports the pledge in private and all would be glad to see the back of something that has caused the Conservative Party such public grief.

"But no. Mrs May has kept digging."

It said: "She (Mrs May) knows that a sensible immigration policy is driven by clear principles not arbitrary numbers.

"If one of those principles is no longer to be the freedom to move to work between Britain and Europe, we need to hear what its replacement will be.

"Recommitting to a failed immigration pledge, without knowing how to achieve it, is merely wishful thinking. She still wants to be a new broom.

Accordingly, UKIP reacted angrily to the suggestion that the Conservative Cabinet does not back the net migration pledge.

John Bickley, the party's immigration spokesman, said: "Under Cameron and Osborne's government, which pledged to bring net immigration down to the 'tens of thousands', with the explicit support of Mrs May, then Home Secretary, gross immigration ran at just under 600,000 a year.

"Why did Osborne's Tories make this promise and then so disastrously fail to deliver it? Were they incompetent or misleading the British people, most likely both."