Immigration row will hurt Tory legacy David Cameron has told colleagues he wants to remove the immigration "boulder" from the road before he sells his economic record to voters. With the UK economy coming off the boil, the prime minister's tactics raise an initial question of whether he is leaving the economic campaign too late. At first blush, Mr Cameron does appear to be missing a trick. Britain's economy surged 0.9 per cent in the second quarter, growth dropped back to 0.7 per cent in the third quarter and early indications point to a 0.5 per cent expansion in the fourth quarter. After rising at double digit rates, house prices also appear to have stabilised and mortgage approvals have been edging down since the spring. Chris Giles But a more detailed look at the economic data suggest that the prime minister will still have a strong sales pitch next April. Having been hit by the simultaneous disaster of the eurozone crisis and a food and fuel price spike in 2011, the coalition's luck has turned. With commodity prices hitting five year lows and a price war breaking out among the supermarkets, food prices fell 1.5 per cent in the year to September. Petrol prices are also down. Gas and electricity prices are unlikely to go up this year. Far from being a harbinger of doom, this element of deflation goes some way towards reversing the 2011-12 squeeze on household incomes. Lower prices are the equivalent of a costless tax cut just in time for Christmas. They also benefit poorer households most, who spend a greater share of their income on food and energy. By the end of this year, we can expect wage rises again to exceed inflation. Amid these improvements to household finances, the labour market continues to improve, spreading the gains wider still. Even with slower growth, employment rates have continued to rise and are likely to hit a 40-year high before the election. By next April, the headline rate of unemployment will probably be closer to 5 per cent than the current 6 per cent. Having joblessness back to pre-crisis levels is quite something to boast about. Mr Cameron will also have many dubious economic statistics at his fingertips to neutralise Labour's charge that his government's tax and benefit changes have left households worse off. Expansion of gross domestic product in this parliament has dwarfed that of the previous one, and GDP per head has gone up more since 2010 than it did in the last two terms of Labour government put together. Output per head has gone up more since 2010 than in the last seven years of Labour government These comparisons are largely meaningless because growth should be much easier after a deep recession, and the economic record has been much weaker than Mr Cameron initially hoped. Since all parties will play horrible games with statistics next year, sensible pedantry such as this will be overwhelmed by the rough and tumble of politics. What must not be lost from the debate, however, is the consequence of the coalition's economic record. The prime minister is justly proud of rapidly falling unemployment, but its fall also eliminates the opportunity for further quick wins in the labour market and easy growth in future. If the next government struggles to achieve even the mediocre growth rates of 2010 to 2015, it will struggle to improve the public finances and Mr Cameron's tax cutting promises will be for the birds. It is precisely the economic successes of the coalition government - a return to normality in companies" spare capacity and in unemployment - that have exposed Britain's diminished medium-term economic prospects. The country still needs to come to terms with the brutal fact that it is much poorer and its economy less resilient than hoped. Government and household finances remain stretched; interest rates are still on the floor and yet there is little spare capacity left. With this backdrop, the next government need to secure the future with improved productivity rather than mopping up spare labour resources. It means radical planning reforms to use Britain's abundant land more efficiently. It means welcoming immigrants from the EU into the country, who are higher skilled and contribute far more to the public finances than the average person born in Britain. And it means making peace with Europe rather than erecting hurdles to business investment by flirting with EU exit. The paradox of this prime minister is that his efforts to remove the barriers to a sensible economic conversation simply create much bigger boulders in the path of longer-term economic success. he might have a good election story to tell, but banging on about the EU and immigration will destroy his own economic inheritance.