Posts Tagged ‘immigration’

I’m a Conservative and Britain needs a credible opposition. Are we likely to get one any time soon?

09/02/2016, 05:53:16 PM

by John Wall

I was as surprised as many when the exit poll result was announced on election night although I’d experienced negative feelings towards Labour on the doorsteps.

It’s disappointing that elections have become presidential but Cameron consistently polled better than Miliband who reminded me of the earnest students I encountered at University, those for whom “out with the trots” didn’t mean an upset stomach. They burned with zealotry to right some perceived wrong and always seemed to be campaigning, protesting or expressing “solidarity”.

Despite claiming to support the many rather than the few, sufficient of the many, as Lord Ashcroft found considered that Labour “no longer seem to stand up for people like me”. Against a confident incumbent “Blair’s heir” who had a growing economy and falling unemployment Miliband’s failure is understandable.

Despite some glowing character references, largely from lefties (!), in Corbychev I see a cold, humourless lefty and there is a good reason for that – he is a cold, humourless lefty! He has the wearisome attitude of someone who wonders why he needs to explain his self evident “truths” to lesser mortals.

It’s difficult to see a fundamental difference to Miliband, the polls indicate that the more the public see of him the less they like him, and again he’s appealing to the few rather than the many.

From my perspective, and, yes, I’m “Tory Scum” who, come the revolution, will be first against the wall, I believe that a credible opposition is essential.

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We are locked in a Dad’s Army politics of the left and right

02/02/2016, 02:44:44 PM

by Jonathan Todd

As Europe faces its biggest refugee crisis since World War II, our prime minister tours the continent talking tax credits. The puniness of David Cameron next to the magnitude of events, the narrow, inward focus of his preoccupations, means that if he were a film he’d be a Dad’s Army remake.

Why, Peter Bradshaw not unreasonably asks in his Guardian review, do we need this film?

The answer, Uncut suspects, is involved with an observation previously made by Bradshaw’s Guardian colleague, Jonathan Freedland: “We have turned 1939-45 into a kind of creation myth, the noble story of modern Britain’s birth”. Basking in this myth is preferable to the grim reality of Europe’s shared contemporary challenges.

During World War II, Freedland argues, “we were unambiguously on the side of good. That, of course, is a key difference between us and our fellow Europeans, for whom that period is anything but simple or unambiguous.” The war has inculcated a sense of Britain, separate and special. This is reinforced as consistently on the printed pages of the Daily Mail as the Kardashians feature in its digital edition, wildly popular in the US. Soft porn celebrity, soft porn history.

While it is to be hoped that no one invested in Dad’s Army anticipating box office on the continent, some jokes amid the myth do little harm. It is our myth, our humour, our film. Let’s not expect it to pack Berlin cinemas.

Entertainment is one thing; politics is another. Politics ought to be more than myth peddling. But that is what Cameron provides when he claims that tax credit collection by citizens of other EU countries in the UK is the big issue now facing us and the rest of the Europe.

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If Jeremy Corbyn wants to do some lasting good, he should take a leaf out of Donald Trump’s book

14/12/2015, 12:18:08 PM

by Samuel Dale

Labour Uncut editor Atul Hatwal recently wrote an excellent blog about how Trump has shifted the Overton window of US politics with his plan to ban Muslims from entering the US.

First came the condemnation.

But now politicians such as Ted Cruz and influential commentators such as Piers Morgan and Rupert Murdoch are already triangulating.

“Yes, Trump has probably gone too far but Obama needs to do more on Muslims. A lot more,” so their argument goes. They triangulate. The sweet spot of political discourse (unless you are Nick Clegg).

The debate is then reframed and policy is made in a different political context, which over time translates into a different nation. That’s what outriders like Trump do.

There are lessons for the UK.

There were outriders in the last parliament. The SNP did it with Scottish independence, Ukip did it with an EU exit and Ed Miliband did it with his focus on inequality.

The SNP have got devo-max, Ukip have a Eurosceptic government & EU renegotiation while Ed Miliband has George Osborne stealing many of his ideas.

Let’s be clear: they are all losers. But they moved debate and that is a form of success.

Jeremy Corbyn is a loser too. He will never be prime minister. He will never come close to be prime minister.

But he can go down in UK history – like the SNP, Ukip and Ed Miliband – as a loser who shifted the debate.

He should take a leaf out of the Trump playbook and pick a position way outside the mainstream that will shock the nation and jolt politicians into occupying the space he leaves behind.

He must be specific. And I have a suggestion for him: be the anti-Trump. Cobryn could and should issue the following statement:

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Labour needs to harden its line on immigration

24/05/2015, 07:56:25 PM

by Robert Williams

Labour’s defeat feels even more crushing a couple of weeks after the election. There have been any number of reason postulated to explain why we lost. Too new, too old Labour, too left wing, too right wing.

Certainly on the right, many believe the reason Labour lost is because its agenda was far too left wing. This argument is summed up by Tony Blair who claimed last year that when “a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, you get the traditional result”.

Before the election the consensus view was that UKIP would cost Labour votes, and the Tories seats. That was one of many predictions the political class got wrong. Labour’s vote share in seats across the Midlands, seats it should have won, and also in the ones it lost, generally went up slightly or didn’t move. Neither did the Conservative vote share. The LibDems collapsed completely and UKIP saw their vote soar. They are now second in over 100 seats.  Of course, in individual  seats there are different stories, but this is accurate as a trend. We are nowhere near recovering the trust of Middle England and we have lost a large segment of the White working and lower middle class vote.

Why did Labour lose? Ed Miliband was part of it, certainly. Savage attacks in the media over five long years didn’t help, but it is also true that he is part of an Oxbridge metropolitan establishment that has dominated the Labour Party for years, and is absolutely out of touch with voters. We lost because, outside London, we are seen as more out of touch than the privately educated millionaires in a Conservative cabinet. That is no mean feat.

We lost, too, because Labour is still blamed for the unprecedented increase in immigration over the last decade and a half, and for ignoring the concerns of voters.  Whether mocking tweets of “white van man” and his St George flags in Rochester, comments about bigots in Rochdale (yes, memories are long when it comes to insults), all the way up from Kent and along the M1 corridor from Hendon to Leeds, Labour was perceived as elitist, obsessed with identity politics, gay rights, minority rights, rights without responsibilities.

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Labour should bin the expensive overseas consultants and just talk to the British people

12/05/2015, 02:47:13 PM

by Rhiannon Hughes

Since Thursday’s crushing election defeat for Labour, we’ve seen no end of analysis from figures from Labour’s past and present, giving their take on where the party went so desperately wrong, and what needs to happen next.

And rightly so – it’s a time to re-focus, re-group and learn from our mistakes. Senior figures are talking about direction, approach and policy development, and these are all important elements in moving towards the future.

But we also need to have an honest – and perhaps difficult -conversation about our party’s purpose.

The Labour party needs to exist to serve the people. Our direction should be dictated by the values and philosophy which we all hold dear, but we also need to recognise that Labour should evolve – as it did in 1997 – to best serve the interests of the British people, including those who didn’t vote Labour on Thursday.

Of course, the members, affiliated union colleagues, supporters and party staff who work tirelessly, stuffing envelopes, knocking on doors and travelling the length and breadth of the country to campaign (not just at general election time but year-round) are important. I am a member of both the party and a trade union, and I definitely want a say in the party’s future.

But our numbers alone are not enough to win an election and our priorities aren’t always reflective of the general public’s. We need to accept this and change to win.

Already it looks like this could be something of a stumbling block for the members, activists and even some members of the PLP, who still seem unable to accept that Labour lost the election because too many people at the ballot box simply did not feel that a Labour government would be in their interest.

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Nigel Farage doesn’t understand his own policy. Net migration would be 200k not 50k under Ukip

04/03/2015, 10:34:41 AM

by Ranjit Sidhu

On the Today programme this morning, Nigel Farage demonstrated that he did not understand his own immigration policy. He talked about targeting annual net migration in the range 20-50,000 while describing measures that would mean net migration under Ukip would actually be over 200,000.

Here’s why Nigel Farage got it so badly wrong.

Last Thursday the latest immigration statistics from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) broke down the figures into the general categories of the reason for coming into: a. work b. formal study c. to join a relative.

When we look at these figures, we see the overwhelming reason for net migration of 298,000 is not those searching for work, but rather those coming to this country to study at our universities (57%). As Nigel Farage has said, Ukip would not stop genuine international students from coming to the UK to study.

Inflow outflow by migration type

Further, this is the group with the most significant difference between inflow and outflow, with 192,000 in the year ending September 2014 coming to the UK to study, with only 22,000 of our own leaving the UK to be educated abroad. This is a long term trend with those coming to the UK for formal study accounting for an average 66% of net migration.  In fact, in 2011 the balance of those coming to the UK for formal study was actually larger at 213,000 than the total net migration of 205,000.

Study vs net migration

How can that be?

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Ed’s aides failed him on anti-Ukip strategy

17/12/2014, 06:13:51 PM

by Callum Anderson

Whilst Nigel Farage was throwing back pints of lager and glasses of wine and champagne on Channel 4, Ed Miliband and his closest aides were reeling from yet another awkward episode on immigration.

On a day that was supposed to represent an opportunity for the leader of the opposition to portray himself as the prime minister in-waiting, what instead occurred was a series of deflections by Miliband about that document, culminating in him entirely distancing himself from it.

In short, Miliband’s closest aides failed him.

Yet it wasn’t through actually leaking the 33-page private strategy document that failed him. It was the contents of that document which did.

Whilst the document correctly identifies immigration as the issue people most often cite when explaining support for UKIP, it makes several mistakes insofar as stating that any messaging around immigration should always be done in conjunction with other policy areas, such as health and housing. Doing this, the theory goes, will enable activists and candidates to tilt conversation away from uncomfortable, but frankly needed, exchanges about immigration, in favour of ‘comfort-zone’ topics of conversation.

Or, in other words, activists and candidates should do their best to entirely avoid the concerns of voters, and talk about traditional, safe Labour issues.

This is a dangerous game to play.

It is clear that Labour will always be facing an uphill struggle on immigration. The ultimately flawed policy of allowing the so-called A8 (i.e. the Eastern European countries which joined the EU in 2004) to arrive without any initial border controls has tarnished Labour’s credibility on migration issues.

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Introducing the pander test – how to tell if a politician is pandering on immigration

16/12/2014, 02:20:42 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Most mainstream politicians are lying when they talk about immigration, if not by the sin of commission, then by omission.

They all know what would happen if immigration was to be cut precipitously: the depth of extra cuts that would be required without migrants’ net tax contribution, the collapse of the NHS that would ensue if we did not have the skills of migrant health staff, and the destruction of jobs as foreign businesses take their investment to more welcoming shores.

Yet, rarely is any of this mentioned.

When most politicians talk about immigration, they look at one side of the ledger – costs – with little regard for the benefits.

And even then, when focusing exclusively on the negative, often they will simply accept the stereotype underpinning concerns rather than articulate the reality based on the evidence.

This is what pandering looks like in today’s immigration debate: when politicians who know better and have seen the evidence, either wilfully disregard it or misrepresent it, to fit a negative narrative that they know to be false.

For example, Ed Miliband was busy pandering yesterday when launching Labour’s second election pledge.

The first part of the pledge promises a “new law to stop the exploitation which leads to wages and conditions being undercut.”

In principle, no-one could disagree, but the implication of what will be achieved is where the pandering starts.

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David Cameron still doesn’t get it on immigration

28/11/2014, 05:26:40 PM

by Atul Hatwal

There he goes again. David Cameron’s attempts to relaunch his policy on immigration are becoming ever more regular. Doubtless he’ll be back in January for another go because this speech will soon be forgotten and trouble from his backbenchers will drag him back to the podium.

Although the PM’s tone was better than recent efforts, and certainly better than the pre-briefings to the media, it repeated the strategic mistakes of every past peroration.

The fundamental question defining the current immigration debate is about numbers, specifically how can numbers be cut?

Yet again, Cameron accepted this as the problem to be tackled and yet again he failed to announce anything that would directly impact it.

Rather than demonstrate how he could control immigration from the EU, Cameron talked about benefits and the incentives to migrate to the UK.

According to research from the LSE, barely 1% of EU migrants fit the term “benefit tourists” and even if the latest fixation with removing in-work benefits from migrants were to be somehow legally implemented, it would only have a nugatory impact on numbers.

If migrants looked at the detail of benefits, and even average wages, they wouldn’t head to the UK, they would go to other EU countries.

For example, in Denmark the average wage is 20% higher than in the UK and the welfare system is considerably more generous. Yet net migration to Denmark is almost twenty times lower than to Britain.

Migrants come to this country for more than just the narrow economism of the pounds and pence in their pay packet; they come because of a wider sense of Britain as a place of opportunity. Where they will have a chance to work hard, get on and be accepted, where their hopes can be fulfilled.

Britain’s economic recovery has served to underpin and reinforce this view. Nothing David Cameron said in his speech will make any difference to this broader image of hope that Britain offers to migrants.

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How does Miliband respond to UKIP? By embracing Blue Labour

27/11/2014, 05:02:39 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Ed Miliband was probably right to junk his “One Nation” theme from his last Labour conference speech. We aren’t one nation in any meaningful sense. The disintegrative effects of devolution over the past 15 years – most recently the near miss in the Scottish referendum – have massive implications for British politics, which we’re only just beginning to process.

Most obviously, these include the declining share of the vote for the two big parties and the rise of UKIP, the Greens and the SNP. Indeed, as people begin to articulate differing – and sometimes contradictory – demands, the established parties struggle to provide a wrap-around offer that pleases everyone.

In this Brave New World, the elasticity of our two main parties is being sorely tested. It’s right there under our noses. Scottish Labour is looking left to reconnect with lost voters, with Jim Murphy promising to reinstate a 50p top tax rate. In stark contrast, the London party is moving right as MPs like Tessa Jowell – hoping to be Labour’s candidate for London Mayor – refuse to back the Mansion Tax, in case it sends the wrong message to aspirational voters.

Then there’s the problem with the base. How does Labour stop its heartlands falling to UKIP? As Michael Merrick argued the other day, “in all too many places it [Labour] has failed to hold its voice at the heart of the communities from which it originally sprung”. He concludes the party is in “no position” to fight UKIP in many of its seats, or even “to speak with authenticity to that social and cultural angst from which UKIP is siphoning support.”

His solution is for Ed Miliband to embrace the Blue Labour agenda, or at least to find space for it in the overall approach. After all, it speaks to a broad constituency of both working-class and middle -voters who cleave to a small ‘c’ conservatism that the liberal-left doesn’t really understand, less still, want to engage with. It’s a politics that values tradition, respect, family, reciprocity, community and has a powerful sense of place.

In his ‘relaunch speech’ the other week, Ed Miliband hit a bum note by scorning UKIP for appealing to precisely these people. Indeed, for many young, liberal-left professionals – rootless, urban modernists with no children – this is all a bit puzzling, backward even.

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