After Eastleigh: It’s time for progressives to argue the case for migration

Over the last two weeks in Eastleigh, UKIP forced home the message that uncontrolled immigration is an inevitable consequence of the UK’s membership of the EU. It's time for progressives to leave the bunker, stop sounding weak, introspective and contrite and get out there and argue the case for migration.

Over the last two weeks in Eastleigh, UKIP forced home the message that uncontrolled immigration is an inevitable consequence of the UK’s membership of the EU.

This populist tactic was a decisive factor in UKIP’s increased vote. The Conservatives, beaten to third place, have responded by heralding the latest immigration statistics, published yesterday.

These show net migration – the balance between immigration and emigrationhas fallen by a third since 2010.

It is now down to an annual 163,000, mostly as a consequence of a reduction in student migration.

Today’s Sun praised the government for finally gaining control of immigration. Over the next months we can also expect the Conservatives to stress that that they have fulfilled their manifesto commitment on net migration.

In contrast, Labour’s position looks weak. Over the last year Miliband and others have started to talk about immigration, most recently in a December speech in south London. But a constant throughout has been apologies from Labour about its past immigration policy.

Next week Yvette Cooper will make a keynote speech on immigration in which she promises to “set out Labour’s thinking on past mistakes.”

A narrative has emerged that the previous government disastrously under-estimated the numbers of Poles and other eastern Europeans who would arrive in the UK after the accession of the ten new member states in 2004. This mistake resulted in the UK deciding to open its labour market, with catastrophic consequences for the white working class.

This is a narrative that is being continually reinforced by Labour in its endless apologies for decisions made in 2004. The Conservatives also hammer home this message, relentlessly, and can now point to their success in cutting net migration.

Another act of contrition by Cooper will only reinforce this version of history and further serve to make Labour seem hopelessly weak.

Maybe it is time for Labour to review its strategy.

After May 2004, EU migrants moved here because, in boom years, there were many unfilled vacancies. As can be seen from the graph below, those sectors of the economy that employed the greatest proportion of migrants were those with the highest vacancy rates.

Without these workers, many businesses would have gone under, with disastrous local consequences. At this time it was not possible to recruit UK workers in sufficient numbers to fill empty jobs.

Should Labour be so defensive about a stark economic reality?

Vacancies as a % of sector’s workforce vis-à-vis % of foreign born workers arrived in the last 10 years, 2007Eastleigh immigration graph

Source: Author calculations from Labour Force Survey, 2007

Today vacancies have shrunk and migration from eastern Europe has slowed. Yesterday’s migration statistics show that net migration from eastern Europe fell to 62,000, the lowest level since the expansion of the EU in 2004.

Labour commentators have stressed that if a future Labour government commits to job training and to upholding the employment rights of UK workers, then UK employers will not face recruitment difficulties and the demand for migrant labour will be scaled back.

This was a view articulated by Miliband in his December speech.

Of course, work-related training and employment rights are important policy objectives in themselves, but evidence suggesting that their extension will reduce immigration is slim. Migrant workers now work right across the economy, with the latest Workplace Employment Relations Survey showing that 26 per cent of workplaces are employing non-UK workers.

Data from the same survey shows that non-UK workers are no more likely that those from the UK to work for ‘bad’ employers who rely on agency staff, do not undertake training or recognise trade unions.

The presence of migrants right across the UK’s workplaces is just one aspect of a globalisation, as is the emigration of UK nationals to take employment in other EU member states and beyond.

Over five million UK nationals live abroad, the vast majority of them of working age. The activities of the British diaspora extend the UK’s economic and political influence overseas, conditions which benefit everyone in the UK.

In today’s world, both immigration and emigration are normal, inevitable and key to the UK’s relative economic success. Britain’s wealth, in part, has been generated by the contribution of generations of immigrants and emigrants.

It’s time to celebrate this, and face up to the reality of globalisation.

It is time for progressives to leave the bunker, stop sounding weak, introspective and contrite and get out there and argue the case for migration.

109 Responses to “After Eastleigh: It’s time for progressives to argue the case for migration”

  1. Colin McCulloch

    The point about the unfilled vacancies would be easier to hammer home if we hadn’t had a claimant rate of JSA of around 1 million throughout the “boom years”. There is a feeling, right or wrong, amongst many people in this country that our unemployed should have been given those jobs ahead of unskilled and semi-skilled foreign nationals.

    A progressive argument is doomed to fail on this subject – the general populace believes there are too many foreign nationals in this country. Labour’s best argument now must be “yes they’re here, let’s get everybody into work” and not “sorry, sorry, sorry etc”.

  2. LB

    So why should we take in migrants who consume more government spending than they pay in tax?

  3. Mick

    Wait wait wait, LFF. The Tories apparently got to grips with immigration, so now it’s time to reverse all that again? Especially as bosses enjoy the cheaper foreign labour over our own. That’s whatthe chart says.

    It’s time for more majority Muslim places like Wembley, just as it was announced that Muslims have disproportionately high numbers of unemployed and people in jail. Or places where influxes are so high the infrastructure has trouble coping. Remember that letter which council leaders sent to the party bosses, complaining they can’t cope? That was in the Sun too.

    It’s madness when employment is so high to let more people in. Especially as we ‘need’ even MORE to pay the pensions of the ones here already ageing.

  4. Charlie_Mansell

    Excellent facts. But we know humans scared by word of mouth stories in their community don’t work totally on facts. Emotions count too, so engagement on this issue has to start with addressing emotions. Otherwise you are academically ‘lecturing’ scared people with low information sources that they they are ‘wrong’ and as a strategy, that does not win over people. If you address people at an emotional level it is so much easier to get people to accept your laudable facts after that: http://www.download.bham.ac.uk/inlogov/pdfs/communications_research.pdf and http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/MINDSPACE.pdf might be of use. Barking and Dagenham used this approach from 2006 to 2010 to turn around many of their immediate problems: http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=87279

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