Whatever your opinion of the former prime minister, he certainly knows how to take the argument to Nigel Farage.
Whatever your opinion of the former prime minister, he certainly knows how to take the argument to Nigel Farage
Almost everyone has an opinion as to what the left needs to do in response to the electoral rise of UKIP. Everyone up to and including the former prime minister Tony Blair (who everyone also has an opinion of).
But whatever your opinion of Labour’s last elected PM – and we that know many progressives will never forgive him for his role in the Iraq war – he certainly knows how to take the argument to Nigel Farage on the issue of Europe.
This video, from way back in 2005 (interestingly, a year after UKIP had done well in the 2004 European elections) offers an invaluable lesson to today’s progressive, pro-European politicians in how it’s done – regardless of your opinion of Blair.
Watch and learn, and never apologise for being in favour of a united Europe.
21 Responses to “Video: Tony Blair smacks down a ranting Nigel Farage”
Sparky
Because all markets (and labour is a market) are an agreement of consensus value between buyers and sellers at any one time.
Let’s say you run a greengrocers. You sell oranges for 50p. But you really want to charge more. So you put the price up to 60p. You still sell a lot of oranges but slightly less than at 50p. So you bid the price up to 75p. Relatively few buyers are willing to pay this price since they can go to greengrocers down the street and pay 50p. But suddenly, there’s a typhoon which wipes out the orange crop that year. Oranges are now scarce. All greengrocers can now put up their prices.
The typhoon represents an exogenous shock to the market that permanently alters prices. That is the equivalent of large numbers of Polish immigrants offering the price of their labour at greatly reduced cost. All market participants must now adapt to the price being bid down.
grahamew
As ever, there were no questions from Farage. Just rabid ranting xenophobia. No solutions, nothing constructive. It would be rude to young people to call his attitude adolescent. Its worse than that. It’s populist, isolation, dangerous politics of the past.
Kryten2k35
Making comparisons to Hitler does not lose you the argument. Making false comparisons to Hitler does.
Frankie D.
So, you’re saying that people don’t move around within a country, which has the same effect on lowing wages. Also, that population numbers or the number of people in different industries don’t change either.
Cana
Tony should hang by the neck till dead like Saddam did for his crimes against London