It used to be the case that anti-immigration obsessives accused the establishment, defined by its predilection for political correctness, of suppressing debate surrounding the taboo subject of immigration. Well, the cat is out of the bag and the issue is set to define the election. Cui bono?

The meteoric rise of UKIP has shattered the politics to which we had become accustomed. A recent poll conducted by the Guardian/ICM revealed that support for the three largest parties has reached a record low, rendering the prospect of another coalition all but certain. Much of this support has been appropriated by UKIP – although now polling lower than 11 per cent. Politicians can no longer run away from immigration, a matter now only second to the NHS in terms of importance in the eyes of the public. A survey conducted by British Future has found that 32 per cent of those polled think politicians are not paying sufficient attention to the issue.

The Tories, most worried by the UKIP challenge, have adopted a hard line for the sake of appearing tough, leading to ill-informed and non-sensical proposals with potentially devastating economic and social implications. Theresa May is the most culpable. Not only fighting the election of 2015, but also positioning herself to assume power in the post-Cameron era as leader of her party, she has done a great disservice to the conduct of political debate in this country. Her proposals to boot graduates out of the country at the end of their degrees marked a short-sighted attempt to satiate the anti-immigration thirst of the electorate as well as of the right wing of her party, with little regard for the social and economic consequences.

Crushing one of our most successful export industries, with Britain possessing a 15 per cent share of a growing global market of students paying exorbitant sums to study abroad, would be foolish enough. Worse still, in a country which has failed to address the skills deficit of its own workforce, it would be unduly charitable and economically illogical to aid other countries in this endeavour by forcibly returning graduates whom we have trained. In 2012-13, 43 per cent of postgraduates who enrolled in UK engineering and technology were non-EU students. The very graduates whom we so desperately need and whom May would deport after their graduation day.

Thankfully it is her proposals, rather than the swelling cohort of successful foreign graduates, that have recently been shown the door.

May has been rebutted, but there is a greater risk still – that the intellectual laziness which currently characterises the debate on immigration will imperil our recent escape from the asphyxiating atmosphere of political correctness which has defined recent years. If Nigel Farage is driving the debate on immigration and other politicians are merely following (remember Clegg and those debates), of course we are going to wish to return to our relative bliss of feigned ignorance.

This is not an option. Failing to discuss the issue will only fuel further resentment. But how should the debate be framed? What can the Tories and Labour do to shelf UKIP’s rhetoric and flirt with its policy suggestions? Two things must happen: firstly, as a country, we must be honest with ourselves. Without the inward flow of migrants, we would neither have had the boom of the noughties nor our current resurgence in economic growth. We must counter the innate assumption of many opposed to immigration that Britain stands best when on its own two native feet, a view which is entirely incongruent with the reality of the increasingly globalised world in which we live.

However, the problems attendant upon unrestricted immigration should not be ignored. More than half of the increase of the UK population between 1991 and 2012 was due to net immigration. According to estimates, the cumulative net inflow of post-2012 migrants will account for 43 per cent of total population growth until 2037, by which time the UK’s population could reach 75 million people. The potentially devastating implications of this on the quality of our public services and housing provision should not require elucidation. We need to question whether the principle of the freedom of movement of people, a key tenet of the European Union project, is compatible with maintaining our current standard of living and welfare provision in this country.

The economic crisis of the Eurozone and unbalanced migratory flows within the EU are indicative of the same flaw which defines the European project – any attempt to impose uniform policies and principles across the EU is at odds with the heterogeneity of its members, resulting in gross imbalances. As a net recipient of EU migrants, we must settle the question of whether we can afford the current open door policy of immigration to Europe before the prospective Tory referendum on the EU in 2017. We may decide that we can – but coming to this conclusion after a healthy debate can only be a good thing. Politicians must step up to the mark, eschew party interests and discuss immigration in a reasonable and well-informed manner.

Should they fail to do so, I fear we will all crawl back into our caverns of political correctness lest we be mistaken for subscribing to the mantra of UKIP, and the salient issue of immigration will again be kicked into the long grass.