Politicians refuse to tell the truth to voters, when they say that immigration is the cause of persistently high worklessness, writes Declan Gaffney.
‘British jobs for British workers’ was one of the most idiotic slogans ever voiced by a Labour leader, combining economic illiteracy with staggeringly inept political opportunism. With that simple phrase Gordon Brown mobilised a misleading association between two of the most poisonous issues in UK politics – migration and benefit receipt – which blew up in his face.
It also handed the Conservatives the basis for a narrative on employment under Labour which has gained widespread acceptance despite being demonstrably false: all the growth in jobs went to migrants leaving out-of-work benefit receipt unchanged.
Back in 2009 the then leader of the opposition David Cameron quite rightly said:
“The Prime Minister should never have used that slogan. On the one hand he lectures everyone about globalisation and on the other he borrows this slogan from the BNP. He has been taking people for fools and has been found out.”
But if the Conservatives have avoided the slogan, they have never ceased to deploy the flawed reasoning behind it to trash Labour’s record. With Iain Duncan Smith’s speech in Madrid yesterday, ‘British jobs for British workers’ is back on the agenda.
The precedent was not lost on the editorial writer for that morning’s Daily Mail:
“Of all the broken Labour promises, few have turned out to be more hollow than Gordon Brown’s commitment to provide ‘British jobs for British workers’. Migrants allowed unfettered access to the labour market grabbed the lion’s share of new jobs while our unemployed, many of them school-leavers, were consigned to a life of welfare dependency.”
The Express was similarly supportive:
“For so long as Britain’s labour market is open to all-comers from dozens of other countries, the chances of getting our own long-term unemployed into work will be greatly impaired.”
There is little point in arguing with statements like this, which are related to labour market economics in much the same way as astrology is related to astronomy.
The table below shows what happened to employment and benefit receipt under the last government.
Prior to the financial markets crisis, employment grew by three million and out-of-work benefit receipt fell by over a million. With the ensuing recession employment fell and out-of-work benefit receipt rose. These are not the same thing: it is perfectly possible for employment and benefit receipt to rise at the same time, and the fact that the movements in both are of similar scale in the table below is a coincidence.
To claim that migration prevented welfare receipt from falling is to offer an incoherent explanation for something that didn’t happen.
Table 1:
Migration can affect benefit receipt, but not in the direct manner assumed in the musings of armchair labour market experts. Under certain circumstances, migration can affect wages and this can have knock-on effects on employment: you can read the theory here.
But studies of the impact of migration in the UK have found no or very slight negative impacts on wages for ‘native-born’ workers. So if there are any impacts from migration through lower wages to lower employment and thus higher benefit receipt, they are insignificant compared to the other factors which drive worklessness.
But this sort of detail is beside the point. The welfare/migration myth doesn’t involve even rudimentary economic theory. To borrow David Cameron’s words, it takes people for fools. We will have to see whether his minister will be ‘found out’. It seems unlikely, as the opposition, whose job this would be, have saddled themselves with their own version of the same myth.
The enduring mystery about ‘British jobs for Britsh workers’ is how and why Labour came to believe that it could dip into this know-nothing political territory without causing lasting damage to its reputation on employment and welfare.
28 Responses to “When will politicians stop taking the public for fools on immigration?”
Leon Wolfson
Stephen; By your own argument, the areas with the high jobless rates outside the south are not seeing that much immigration. And the damage there was done by, er, Thatcher.
Not immigration.
Stephen W
1. I am actually planning to do that. When I’m done, I’ll be sure to send you a link.
2. You’re really not just “simply set out to correct a false factual claim about migration and benefit receipt”. You’re making a very broad and wide claim to that effect. Trying to dress it up as a simple statistical fact is to deliberately miss the substantive point that’s being made. Either that or there’s not much point to 90% of what you’ve actually written here and in your other article.
3. All that other stuff I briefly mentioned is relevant to the point you’re making because it is the rest of the explanation to the very narrow point you’re arguing against and some politicians have apparently argued for. Without that context both your point and their point are missing what’s interesting about the wider and serious problem.
Stephen W
@ Leon Wolfson
The damage was not done by, er, Thatcher. It was done by the wider economic reality that much of British mining and manufacturing just could not compete internationally. All Thatcher did was end the doomed attempts to go on pretending that just wasn’t the case. Meaning the result happened spectacularly at once rather than occurring over time so adjustments could be made.
It is a problem with many parts. I’m certainly not saying migration alone is to blame, because it’s not. But it is certainly one element of a much wider problem.
Leon Wolfson
Thatcher did a LOT more than that.
And oh sure, one small element – there are a few, localised issues, but that’s something that government contingency funding should be in place for. The kind of hysterical media reaction to the topic is just that – overblown and hysterical.
I’m Jewish, a third generation immigrant, and I am starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable here. I believe in Britain (not England), but it seems that its media doesn’t believe in me.
Leon Wolfson
I’d add that there has already been a high noticeable, negative impact on the UK’s media industry from the cap (the Games industry in particular, which was already struggling), the very sort of industry which should be encouraged – but it DOES need access to the global talent pool, which is why Canada is doing so well at attracting it.
That kind of Job Denial ain’t good, especially when you consider that those kind of jobs create *other* service jobs, and hence have a large knock-on impact.