Posts Tagged ‘freedom of movement’

Uncut predictions for 2017: Blair will abandon support for free movement

04/01/2017, 06:23:29 PM

How to solve a problem like Brexit?

Ostensibly, it’s the reason for Tony Blair’s return to fray. He wants a second referendum to reverse the public’s decision to quit the EU back in June, but polls show the voters simply don’t regret the decision.

To get them to change their minds, the facts must change.

Ever the pragmatist, Blair knows full well this means abandoning free movement of people as an article of faith for the pro-globalisationists of British politics, of which, he remains the undisputed leader.

Could he follow contemporary Labour luminaries like Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham, Rachel Reeves, Chuka Umunna and Hilary Benn who have each recently called for an end to free movement?

The impact of mass migration was the defining issue of the campaign and reforming it is an essential down payment in securing any fresh plebiscite. But, even then, there’s no guarantee one can be justified.

Of course, it also requires Europe to even discuss a special deal for Britain, which, variously, Angela Merkel, the Commission and east European Member States have all flatly rejected.

But we are through the looking glass in 2017.

And if John Major could secure his Maastricht Treaty opt-outs from joining the single currency and social chapter, Blair might calculate that a fresh deal on free movement is achievable.

After all, 2017 may be another tumultuous year for the EU, if Marine Le Pen wins the French presidency, or if Merkel is ousted in German federal elections later in the year.

Buying off the truculent Brits with a concession on free movement might seem the cheap option for a bit of stability.

Watch this space.

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Umunna, Reeves et al are wrong on free movement. Its bad politics and worse economics

22/09/2016, 10:18:57 PM

by Sam Fowles

For Rachel Reeves, immigration from the EU has caused a “slight drag” on wages. So Labour best represents the working poor by calling for an end to free movement. This is both simplistic and wrong. It represents only the loosest grasp of political strategy and no grasp of economics at all.

Labour will never win the fight to be “tough on immigration”. If voters want to kick out immigrants, they’ll vote for the parties that have been dog whistling about immigration for years. No one buys the cheap knock off when they can get the real thing for the same price.  Labour must address the real causes of the low wage crisis. This strategy has two advantages: It targets voters that might actually vote Labour, and it’s not economically illiterate.

The overall impact of immigration on wages is generally positive. By contributing more in taxes than they take out, EU immigrants ease financial pressures in the public sector. Immigration can create downward pressure on the wages of low-skilled workers. But this is negligible. Reeves relies on a study that found a 10% increase in immigration creates a 1.8% drag on low-skilled wages. To put that in perspective: the largest increase in immigration since 2006 has been around 7%. This works out as costing low skilled workers 1p per hour.

But immigration is equally likely to have a positive effect on low-skilled wages. Migration increases demand: The more people in an economy, the more goods and services they need: The more goods and services required, the greater the demand for labour to provide them: The greater the demand for labour, the more employers are prepared to pay for it.

But this hasn’t happened in the UK: Why?

Because successive governments have chosen policies that drive down wages.

Austerity (more…)

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If Labour MPs want to make ending free movement a Brexit red line, they’d better be ready to leave the single market

20/09/2016, 10:35:24 PM

by Atul Hatwal

One of the reasons the Labour party is in such a terrible state is that the many of moderate mainstream, those meant to offer an alternative to Corbyn, are so bad at the basics in politics.

Yesterday’s foray into the debate on freedom of movement by Rachel Reeves, Emma Reynolds and Stephen Kinnock, was a case study in ineptitude.

By arguing that ending free movement to reduce migration should be a red line in Brexit negotiations, they have constructed an argument that will not survive first contact with a journalist and set a broader public expectation which can never be met.

The obvious immediate question which journalists will ask these MPs is whether they are prepared to leave the single market?

If the central European states such Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, western European states such as France and EU President Juncker stick to their public position of vetoing any reform, are these MPs prepared for hard Brexit?

Will they back a version of leaving the EU that would see the flight of financial services from the City of London, the movement of major manufacturers like the Japanese car makers to the continent, the imposition of a hard border between northern and southern in Ireland and condemn tens of thousands of their constituents to the dole?

Seriously?

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The last 24 hours of Labour politics demonstrate why Jeremy Corbyn isn’t going anywhere

15/06/2016, 10:31:37 PM

by Atul Hatwal

If one thing in modern politics can be guaranteed, it is that Labour will find a way to form a circular firing squad, whatever the situation.

That’s the only way to describe the last minute intervention of Labour’s old right with Ed Balls, Tom Watson, Tristram Hunt, Rachel Reeves and Yvette Cooper, running a freelance campaignlet, within the overall Remain campaign, raising the prospect of ending EU free movement while remaining in the EU.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the policy, to intervene like this at such a late stage betrays an utterly incredible level of political incompetence.

Four points are salient.

First, it was never going to cut through.

In the words of Lynton Crosby you can’t fatten a pig on market day.

To introduce an entirely new policy, at odds with Remain’s focus on the economy is campaign idiocy that confuses the message at a critical juncture.

Second, the story was always going to be concussively knocked down.

It may not have dawned on this group, but in the modern world of communications there is a thing called the telephone.

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Ed Miliband’s position on immigration is incoherent and will hand Labour votes to Ukip

29/10/2014, 02:26:39 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Is Ed Miliband a Ukip sleeper agent?

At PMQs today, the Labour leader parroted Ukip’s lines on immigration at David Cameron: broken pledges to cut numbers, a system out of control, the need to be tougher; it was a miracle Miliband didn’t rehash talk of being swamped.

All the while, the Labour leader seemed blissfully unaware of the staggering, juddering, dissonant incoherence at the heart of the case he was bellowing, across the despatch box, at the prime minister.

Here are some basic facts: out of total net annual migration of 243,000 into the UK, 131,000 came from the European Union. That’s a significant chunk and represents a rise of almost 40% in the past year.

Europeans can come to the UK because freedom of movement across the EU’s member states is a central pillar of the union.

If Ed Miliband is going to make cutting immigration a centre-piece of Labour’s electoral offer, he will need to cut EU migration and that means either a change to freedom of movement or accept that Brexit is inevitable.

We can discount the former, because here’s what the new President of the European Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, had to say on the matter last week,

“We have a treaty. Freedom of movement since the Fifties is the basic principle of the European way of co-operating. These rules will not be changed.”

So presumably, Ed Miliband is about to announce that Labour is prepared to leave the EU?

Er, not so much. Here’s what the Labour leader had to say on British membership of the EU in March this year. (more…)

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Will the Pro-European Labourites please stand up?

29/10/2014, 09:28:14 AM

by Callum Anderson

Just when you thought that the subject of the EU would, at least, momentarily take a place on the back-burner, it came screaming back onto Twitter, our newspapers and television screens.

First, there’s been the case of the EU budget and the UK’s prospective £1.7 billion surcharge, an additional contribution to the EU budget – whilst the likes of France and Germany are set to gain rebates of £801 million and £614 million respectively. The prospect of the UK coughing up more money to the EU, when it is already one of the biggest contributors already, as well as effectively handing over money to equally rich Member States is undoubtedly a difficult one.

The prime minister has taken the opportunity to appear as morally outraged as possible, taking a progressively harder line, stating in the House of Commons that Britain would pay ’no way near’ what the European Commission wants them to.

But the emerging facts are yet again highlighting David Cameron’s school boy approach to EU diplomacy. It is beginning to become clear that the prime minster, the chancellor and HM Treasury knew of the likely additional payment that would be required of them. Furthermore, not only did it appear that the Dutch government, who are also required to contribute an extra £506 million to the EU budget, would pay their own surcharge, but that they had also made contingency plans in preparation for their likely additional contributions.

Second, the topic of immigration was brought into the limelight, with the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon stating that he UK could be “swamped” by EU migrants – ignoring the fact that Kent, where Mr Fallon’s constituency lies, was according to the 2011 census 89.1 per cent White British. Not exactly swamped.

Yet it has become clear that there is little appetite among other European Member States for the significant treaty change required to restrict the freedom of movement, with that ever important player Angela Merkel stating that she was wholly against restricting this freedom.

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At least Ukip’s EU and immigration policies are consistent. John Denham can’t even manage that.

03/06/2014, 01:47:18 PM

by Atul Hatwal

John Denham’s article about immigration on Labour List yesterday was a disgrace. Not because of his anti-immigration stance – it’s perfectly possible to disagree with a view without believing it to be disgraceful – but because of the incoherent politics at the heart of his argument.

Within the Labour party, two distinct groups have now emerged on the anti-immigration side of the debate.

One is consistent and has a coherent case, albeit with potentially major deleterious economic consequences. The other is muddled and guarantees a disastrous electoral denouement for Labour. John Denham’s post was a case study in the latter.

The starting point for the first group is scepticism about the EU. There is a legitimate case to be argued for applying the same entry rules to all migrants, whether from the EU or outside and that if the EU does not change on freedom of movement, Britain will withdraw.

Central to this argument is an acceptance that a British exit from the EU is likely.

When Angela Merkel visited Britain in February she made the German position on reform of freedom of movement abundantly clear, “freedom of movement is intended to allow people to work in different countries, not immigration into social systems.”

There might be some tightening of access to benefits and public services for EU migrants but no fundamental change in freedom of movement across the EU.

Given the government’s own figures indicate that only 4 in every 100 EU migrants claim Job Seekers Allowance, it’s a fair assumption that benefit restrictions will have virtually zero impact on the net flow of EU migrants into Britain.

It’s evident from what MPs like Frank Field, Kate Hoey and John Mann have said in the past that they are prepared for a British withdrawal from the EU and there is a small but growing group within the PLP who take this view.

This is broadly also the official Ukip position. Stripped of the inflammatory and racist language sometimes used by Ukip representatives, it has the merit, at least, of being internally consistent and demonstrates clearly how EU migration would be reduced.

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Britain needs to have a grown-up debate on immigration

19/11/2013, 06:50:50 PM

by Callum Anderson

Marks & Spencer. Selfridges. EasyJet. Tesco. Know what these iconic British brands have in common? That’s right, they were all established by immigrants. Immigration has always been one of those issues that has never quite completely left the consciousness of British politics. However, over the last ten years, the issue of immigration has become more nuanced: unfortunately the standard of debate has not.

One Nation Labour must begin to not only tackle the right of the Conservative party and the reactionary media (I think you know who I mean), but also the legitimate concerns of citizens, some of who have become concerned with the scale of immigration. There are two vitally important elements that we, as a country, must consider: the first is to decouple race from the immigration debate, and secondly, that economic and social considerations must both be taken into account when devising policy.

But first, let’s take a look at the facts. Britain has undoubtedly benefited from immigration. Almost all Brits, regardless of background, glowed with pride at the country’s diversity displayed during the opening ceremony at the London Olympics. Whether it be through literature, cuisine, music or sport, Britain continues to lead the way in welcoming, and assimilating (although sometimes slowly) new immigrants. And the evidence shows that immigrants more than pay their way.

Recent research by the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) has showed that between 2001 and 2011, European Economic Area (EEA) immigrants made a net fiscal contribution of £22.1 billion to the UK public finances, whilst non-EEA immigrants made a net contribution of £2.9 billion. In other words, immigrants contributed far more in taxes and economic output than they took back in benefits. This is to be compared to us natives, who cost £624.1 billion during the same period.

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