Since the Eastleigh by-election immigration has consistently been in the news, with all three parties making significant policy interventions.
Each party seems to be trying to outdo each other with rhetoric on how they’re going to crack down on migrants abusing public services, how immigration is out of control and how they don’t believe the official estimates and forecasts.
Britain has an immigration problem – but not of the sort generally supposed.
The facts show that immigrants are a net fiscal benefit rather than a cost, and that immigration is, except for a small negative effect at the bottom end, a net positive for wages (pdf) and for economic growth (pdf).
The problem is the public do not believe the evidence.
Over the last five days the leaders of three political parties have made speeches about immigration. Cameron’s latest speech suggests that there is now a race to the bottom on immigration.
Before rushing to blame foreign visitors for putting a strain on the health service with some rather dubious statistics, perhaps the prime minister and his health secretary would do well to examine the policies of other departments of government that are both costing the NHS money and preventing NHS staff from doing what they are qualified to do.
Now that we’ve pulled apart the idea that newly-arrived immigrants are being fast-tracked to social housing ahead of indigenous Britains, it’s worth a quick look at the myth that immigrants are somehow a drain on the economy; that there is a pressing need to “get tough” with them, send them home, afflict various hardships on them, whatever takes your right-wing fancy.
Terrified of hemorrhaging voters to Ukip, the Conservatives have started to rattle the stick around the swill bucket again on immigration.
Just under three quarters of voters do not believe the prime minister and chancellor appreciate the rising cost of living, according to a poll conducted by Survation for Progressive Polling.
As Westminster debates how best to secure an effective new system of press regulation, Alex Salmond has sought to distance himself from a report his own government commissioned into how to implement the recommendations of Lord Justice Leveson north of the border.
The least worst option for Labour could be to stand up for the victims and resist David Cameron’s suffocating embrace – even if that means going back to the drawing board and starting over together with the Lib Dems.
The old Marxist cliche has it that history repeats itself “first as tragedy then as farce”. It is hugely important that the Left continues to hammer home the point that the Bedroom Tax is grossly unfair – as the polls show, it isn’t falling on deaf ears.
It’s increasingly clear that the Bedroom Tax is Cameron’s Poll tax. The Left must ensure history repeats itself as farce, rather than as a tragedy for the country’s disabled people.
