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 emigration – has 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, 2007
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”
Newsbot9
I did. The answer is that you’re making up nonsense.
Mick
Death spiral. You were talking about blood on faces yesterday, not to mention all the other ghost train horror stuff you conjure up.
What kind of television have you been watching?
Newsbot9
Nope, the magic is yours. You believe that an isolated, poor UK is ideal, and keep screaming at anyone not a fanatic like you. The horror is yours, as is the terror and the zealotry. You talked about the blood you’d shed, and I commented on it. Can’t be allowed!
Television? I don’t watch it.
Charlie_Mansell
Just to reassure it’s not me personally who wants your name, but your credibility as a person to speak authoritatively in front of the people presumably reading this exchange may be weakened as you are not prepared to be open as to who you are. I was trying to even up the debate for your benefit. The other danger is that anonymity may make you less inhibited http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/internet-anonymity-trolling-tim-adams Would you say what you are saying to any randomly selected group of people if they knew your name? Would the people who know you approve of what you are saying? I would argue that any person who seeks anonymity on the internet – unless they state a good reason when they post an anonymous comment – is actually no better than a July 2011 rioter due to deindivuation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deindividuation because like those who rioted you can feel lost in the ‘crowd’ on the internet and feel no accountability to wider society. On the points you raise, I think you would find purist ‘leftists’ would probably have the same objection to you to ‘mind control’ The people who use ‘mind control’ as you see it tend to be capitalist companies with their massive marketing campaigns. For example how manipulated do you feel when a trained counter assistant of a private company says to you ‘and do you want a drink as well as that baguette’;when you buy at a shop and you say ‘ok I will have a coffee!;) That is the level of very effective and sub-conscious ‘mind control’ I am talking about. The other group of ‘mind controllers’ tend to be people promoting public health http://www.dh.gov.uk/health/category/policy-areas/public-health/ to reduce people dying through self-inflicted poor health http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-19696228 Take a look how the speed of ‘committing suicide’ slows down as people get older https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B69RoBAq50xPdk90V0ZydndHeTg/edit?usp=sharing You might of course say this is all ‘nanny state’, but the debate has shifted much more to Nudges than Nannying. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book).Look how ATMs now remind people about paying tax. That has an impressive impact on payment. I can’t offer you a Daily Mail article on it, but here is the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9853384/Inside-the-Coalitions-controversial-Nudge-Unit.html A big concern in Barking and Dagenham was that people felt they were not being talked to like human beings. Thus if a BNP activist used their own ‘mind control’ based on word of mouth marketing technique (see how they own up to it in this article about them in Stoke) http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/may/28/labour.thefarright to focus the blame on a small number of issues they could persuade people for a while they had the solution. The problem is these techniques work very well if you can deliver. When the issue is about sorting out an older resident’s safety and security concern over a street light it can be locally solved but sustaining people’s anger around a globalising issue such as immigration means any organisation applying ‘mind control’ whether it the BNP applying it or a so-called ‘leftist’ is likely to disappoint in the long-run. Hopefully the fact that it failed for the BNP might reassure you that ‘mind-control’ is in the end not that powerful. For me the saddest thing was meeting elderly people on the doorstep who said, “I can’t tell you what I really think”. (of course unlike you they were not anonymous). They were always pleasantly surprised when I said. “Of course you can”. Then they would get a few things off their chest and we would then find an issue they wanted dealing with that could be sorted out locally. Your final point about Economically inactive is an interesting one. The Government (and I’m no fan of them) has just announced the highest ever employment levels for this country. I’m not planning to ever really retire myself, but I think we will inevitably see the retirement age move up to 70, but I would also be quite ‘leftist’ about it and suggest anyone who does a manual job should be allowed to retire earlier and would be very happy to subsidisee that as a taxpayer as it only seems fair that people in white collar jobs pay for people who have much tougher and often outdoor work in all weather to retire earlier!
Mick
And you had no data. And an anecdote can be worth something if it’s substantiable.