Then, Mr Miliband was telling us that, "The answer [to immigration] is not to sweep it under the carpet. Or fail to talk about it. Or say that people are prejudiced. Nor is it to make promises that can't be kept. It is to deal with all of the issues that concern people".

Yet, yesterday, he was doing precisely that. It would be hard to deliver a speech lacking more substance, for his core offer amounted only to: "We will control immigration with fair rules", taking a meagre seven minutes to deliver the entire speech.

For his oeuvre, all he could manage to do was pledge "longer controls when new countries enter the European Union", "people integrating into communities and learning English" and, "when people come here they won't be able to claim benefits for at least two years".

Then, when people can be exploited for low wages or endangered at work, Miliband told us, "it drags the whole system down, undercutting the pay and conditions of local workers", so: "We must end the epidemic of exploitation".

To deal with this "epidemic", a Labour government would "increase the fines for firms who avoid the National Minimum Wage", it would "stop agency contracts being used to undercut permanent staff", "ban recruitment agencies from hiring only from abroad" and would "make it a criminal offence to undercut pay or conditions by exploiting migrant workers". And that's it. That's all you get.

Just for once, it would be nice to hear a grown-up speech, where a politician actually delivers a coherent policy statement, one which has some meaning. Any such statement might start with a review of the current situation, telling us how many immigrants there were in the country, where they were coming from and the rate at which they were arriving.

A grown-up politician might then move on to tell us how he might expect the situation to develop over the next few years – over perhaps a decade or more – if current policies were left to run their course. He would then tell us how he would like the situation to develop, with some degree of quantification.

Mr Cameron did try this earlier, promising that net immigration would be cut to the "tens of thousands", something Mr Miliband noted hadn't worked out, so his response was that, "We won't make false promises and we won’t offer you false solutions either".

This might score high points for candour, except that the end result was for him to make no bankable promises at all. An offer to "control immigration with fair rules" isn't a promise - it's empty rhetoric.

To be valid, a policy statement must have an objective, but it need not be expressed in exact numerical terms. It could, for instance, be expressed in terms of, "we will match the rate of migrant inflow with the capabilities of communities to accommodate them, and their specific needs", then going on to sketch out the measures available, what new measures are needed, and how they would be applied".

What Mr Miliband has been doing today, therefore, is the antithesis of making a policy statement. He is in fact concealing his inability to formulate policy – a surreptitious acknowledgement that he has no means, or intention, of taking control.

Effectively, we are seeing Labour vacating the territory – they appear not to be willing to put up any fight, ceding the territory to Ukip (or even the Conservatives). Small wonder, their strategy document advises campaigners to avoid direct discussion of immigration, while the Telegraph reports that the Labour Party is in disarray.

Mr Miliband, thus exemplifies the rot at the very heart of British politics – the sheer inability of politicians to offer anything constructive that will address people's concerns. In so doing, he is exhibiting a rare genius – he is almost making Ukip look credible.

Sadly, this is only a matter of relativity. As couched, there is no way the Ukip position can be considered "coherent", even if Dan Hodges in the Telegraph believes otherwise, himself displaying a startling lack of coherence.

"If you want to control immigration, there is only one thing you can do. You have to stop free movement from the EU. … then you have to reintroduce immigration controls within the European Union", the man says.

"That's it", Hodges continues. "That is the immigration debate, right there. There is no 'third way'. There is no way to 'triangulate'. It's binary. You have open borders, or you don't". And it is by that measure, with Ukip wanting to withdraw from the EU, close the borders and kick a lot of existing migrants out, that there position is considered "coherent".

In other fields, perhaps, this level of ignorance would be recognised for what it was, but it seems that idle, chattering journalists can betray such arrant nonsense without the least penalty.

Here, one has to say that, of course there is a "third way". In fact, there is only the third way. Totally open borders are an anathema but the idea of closed borders is a fantasy, one which is totally beyond the realms of possibility. Block the routes to legal migrants and they are replaced by "illegals".

Consider briefly the position in the United States, where we are entirely familiar with the movement of so-called "wetbacks" across the Mexican border – this in the public minds being the main migration route.

However, as this blog points out, getting on for half of the illegal immigrants into the US are "visa overstayers", mostly people who enter with tourist or business visas.

Currently, as we know, some 34 million visitors enter the UK each year – the majority without visas, vastly outnumbering the number of immigrants. If we start imposing restrictions on immigration, all that happens is that the number of overstayers rises exponentially.

Nowhere in the world, apart perhaps totalitarian states such as North Korea, has been able to exclude such immigrants, and rigorous enforcement would change the very nature of our society – identity cards, random checks of papers, residence permits, dawn raids, etc., etc.

Effectively, the actual level of immigration becomes a compromise between what is acceptable compared with the intrusion and restriction required to limit them. There are no absolutes. There is no final solution.

Such controls as can be exercised, therefore, depend as much on addressing the "push" and "pull" factors. As long as these exist, there will be migration pressure. Reduce them and the flow abates.

The different factors are immense. In just one instance, on the comments thread, I pointed to the problem of recruiting cleaners in the UK. This is not just a matter of wage levels. Cleaning is regarded as a low-status occupation and many Brits simply will not do it, for that very reason. Immigrant labour is often the only way employers can get the work done.

I actually did some studies on this, mechanising kitchen cleaning tasks and improving productivity, giving the workers special uniforms and calling them "hygiene technicians" in an attempt to ease recruitment problems. In the end, we had chefs applying for cleaning posts, a previously unthinkable proposition.

One could not imagine people like Ed Miliband – much less David Cameron – coming up with such ideas, but it is things such as these and hundreds of other small initiatives which collectively will reduce the "pull" factors. Different measures will have an impact on "push" factors.

Even then, such measures are only part of the story. A coherent immigration policy relies on a complex range of measures, including – as we have pointed out earlier – the abolition of the Human Rights Act, cutting us off from judge-made law under the ECHR.

The dull, simplistic drone of Ukip, and idiots such as Hodges, therefore, has nothing to offer the debate. And neither do our politicians seem able to grasp the basics of immigration policy – Ed Miliband less than most. But these are not insoluble problems. The main barriers seem to be the ignorance of those who are supposed to be offering us solutions.