May 15, 2023 - 6:30pm
Here’s an interesting question prompted by Suella Braverman’s speech at the National Conservatism conference today: is the Government trying to bring net migration down? And if so, to what extent?
Ministers certainly talk a lot about it, and successive governments set themselves arbitrary numerical targets. But, as they kept failing to hit them, eventually they gave that up. Last week it was reported that the Home Office fears net immigration will top one million this year — double the previous peak. How do we tell the difference between “they’re trying but it’s complicated” and “they’re all talk?”
Happily, the Government has given us a handy tool for determining what its actual policy is: the fabled points-based immigration system. This approach allows ministers to fine-tune the rules to suit their policy priorities.
On that front, a commitment to reducing net immigration isn’t obvious. Under the rubric that what the voters really wanted was control alone, restrictions such as minimum earnings thresholds and the requirement to advertise jobs in the UK first have been set aside, one by one.
This ability to tweak the system according to need has seen architects added to the list of so-called shortage occupations, meaning they can be hired from anywhere at 80% of the domestic “going rate” salary. Yet that is so low (about £26,000) that the Architects’ Journal recently asked whether it was still a “viable career choice” at all as the cost-of-living crisis bites.
And there is a case for all this. We need to replenish the working-age population to pay the ever-mounting tab for old-age entitlements, and British citizens aren’t having a sufficient number of children to do it.
Business also obviously demands easy access to labour, and we don’t have many of these skills on-tap in the British workforce.
And when politics prevents the Government from grasping the real levers of sustainable growth (i.e., building things) the Treasury instinct is to wring everything it can out of what you’ve got. That involves both high immigration and cracking down on the “economically inactive” — even when they’re comfortably retired and simply don’t want to work.
For too long, the Conservative Party has talked big on immigration but not shown any sign of accepting that its reduction means making fundamental changes to our economy. Disapproving pieces in the Financial Times about how this or that industry had been “forced to train an army of homegrown” workers would be common fare.
The Home Secretary may have picked some weird examples in her speech today — nobody really cares about seasonal workers such as fruit pickers – but her core point is correct:
There is no good reason why we can’t train enough HGV drivers, butchers or fruit pickers. Brexit enables us to build a high-skilled, high-wage economy that is less dependent on low-skilled foreign labour.
- Suella Braverman
If the Tories want to bring immigration down in the long term, they need to meet the needs it services another way.
Doing that would involve a showdown with the Treasury, not to mention every other department for which migrants are a short-term salve. It would also require not just a confrontation with the business lobby but a fundamental rethink about how a Conservative government would approach business.
At present immigration, like degree inflation, is basically an externalised cost: employers get the benefit of training but graduates, society, and the state pick up the tab.
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SubscribeProblem for Braverman is she keeps signing off the visas for the legal immigration increase and it’s the biggest increase in years. She seems to forget she is Home sec and been in the Govt for 5yrs. Jeez how did we get such leaders? And if you go back to her Bojo replacement Leadership campaign she said diddly-squat about investment in training Brits and how it’d be funded. In fact the opposite – wanted tax cuts, yet of course never said what would go to pay for them. So a pattern of rhetoric well out ahead of properly thought through public policy.
Strongly suspect therefore this is just the wave she is surfing to get to the top of Tory dung-heap, and that’s she just the latest to look to get there by playing to the gallery yet being fundamentally dishonest about the trade-offs then required. Sunak of course can’t sack her as he’s weakened so look out for the manufactured resignation at some point before she stays too long and has to be accountable…for anything.
More broadly I think just about everybody wants a better managed approach to immigration and generally a lower number giving more time for assimilation and adjustment. But 13 years of an economic model fundamentally dependent on low wage labour cannot be quickly turned round without a further hard jolt on the cost of living.
It’s not 13 year of an economic model based on low wage labour though is it ? Be honest – it’s been going on since at least 2000. This isn’t a Tory thing any more than a Labour thing – they are all taking the easy, short term option here, maximising “GDP”, but completely ignoring GDP per person and ignoring the long term costs piling up for the future. It’s just another cheap cop out to avoid people having to actually save and invest for their own future and retirement. But all Ponzi schemes collapse in the end.
It has been a massive Ponzi scheme and when it crashes, when the government is no longer able to borrow, when the £ falls through the floor, God help us all
It has been a massive Ponzi scheme and when it crashes, when the government is no longer able to borrow, when the £ falls through the floor, God help us all
Why do you keep saying ’13 years’. It’s disingenuous. You know as well as everyone else who initiated the open border policies, and why.
When you gain power in Govt you can change things. You may have missed that and seem to be under the misapprehension that you can just take the meal-ticket and carry on blaming your predecessors for years. It’s called taking back control isn’t it?
Immigration higher now than under the EU free movement articles in any given year. Had to go some to accomplish that.
I do appreciate though this is v uncomfortable for the right wing which is why it’s starting to eat itself.
When you gain power in Govt you can change things. You may have missed that and seem to be under the misapprehension that you can just take the meal-ticket and carry on blaming your predecessors for years. It’s called taking back control isn’t it?
Immigration higher now than under the EU free movement articles in any given year. Had to go some to accomplish that.
I do appreciate though this is v uncomfortable for the right wing which is why it’s starting to eat itself.
I’m beginning to think, Watson, that you are little more that a Labour party stooge – particularly in the light of your toadying praise for Alistair Campbell and his podcast the other day. All your posts boil down to the same message: time to kick the Tories out and put in a Labour government.
Who knows, if you repeat this spiel often enough you might actually come to believe that this country will be a better place under Sir Keir with his follow-the-mainstream-media initiatives.
By the way, didn’t you mention in one of your posts that you spent most of your life gainfully employed in that great socialist project “Our” NHS?
So if, as you imply, working for the NHS, caring for your fellow citizens, is an ignoble profession, I’d be interested in what you consider to be a worthwhile job. Private Equity? Newspaper columnist? Wagner Group mercenary? Pray enlighten us.
Yes after 12 years in the Royal. Certainly done a bit of Public service. Kids done a further 30+ in the Forces between them too. Appreciate you asking.
Back to your sharp and quick witted thoughts, I think a centre ground Govt probably what we need now. If that’s Lab or a coalition arrangement I’m not especially tribal about it. But we’ll see how things play out. Some time to go yet.
.
So if, as you imply, working for the NHS, caring for your fellow citizens, is an ignoble profession, I’d be interested in what you consider to be a worthwhile job. Private Equity? Newspaper columnist? Wagner Group mercenary? Pray enlighten us.
Yes after 12 years in the Royal. Certainly done a bit of Public service. Kids done a further 30+ in the Forces between them too. Appreciate you asking.
Back to your sharp and quick witted thoughts, I think a centre ground Govt probably what we need now. If that’s Lab or a coalition arrangement I’m not especially tribal about it. But we’ll see how things play out. Some time to go yet.
.
Playing the numbers game, as Braverman was doing again yesterday, is Fools Gold. Fundamentally, you need to decide what kind of society you want; what economy you need to support that society; what workforce you need to support that economy; what skills do they need; how do you then get the workforce with the right skills in the places you need them. Then you put in place a coherent strategy to achieve it, with inbuilt flexibility to deal with changing circumstances.
Yet there isn’t remotely anything like that happening in government. As an example, a large amount of visas go to the health and care sector, where we don’t train enough people and pay and conditions aren’t attractive enough to recruit or retain the numbers we need in the UK. This sector, though, is largely under government control, so increasing training places and improving pay and conditions is in their gift. There is of course a cost, so the question is where does it sit in your list of priorities. If cutting immigration is at number one then the money can be found. But it isn’t, hence the strikes, refusal to engage in workforce planning and general malaise.
Braverman is driven only by her vaulting ambition so is pretending that there are no trade offs involved. The Truss approach, appealing to the electorate, the Tory membership and the Tory media, who can make her leader. The idea that you can have a high-wage, high skill economy, but with low taxes; good public services and a small state.
I foresee the Conservative Party splitting after the next election primarily because of a refusal to accept that ideology is no substitute for delivery and cakeism is not ever a realistic strategy. Braverman, or someone very like her, will end up as leader and will prove too divisive to keep the current party together.
All that does is highlight the idiocy of importing millions of people knowing there was no way that infrastructure and services could cope with such an influx. This has worsened with the financial crash, where services have been cut year on year and immigration numbers have gone up. A plague on both their houses.
I agree. There has been no strategy. So any government needs to go back to basics. What kind of society do they want etc.
The paradox is alot of those immigrants have been helping prop up public services and as economic analysis indicates generally costing less as already trained etc. Anecdotally my experience in aggregation is they work blinkin hard too often doing jobs Brits don’t want to do.
Nonetheless I think we all agree it’s just not being managed competently. For example Braverman et al fixate on the Boats and it does need to be sorted, but they’ve no visibility of how many they give short term visas to legally who then don’t leave. She doesn’t mention that because she’s in charge of it.
We could have trained enough people to cover these roles but once the immigration rate went up from under 50k pa to over 250k pa in just over a decade, that’s when the paradox occured.
This is where we part company. Any blanket assertion that we could have trained enough people is not even remotely evidence based.
If that is so, the same goes for having more than a five fold increase in immigration in a 12-15 year period. There was no evidence it was needed, unless of course it was a purely ideological position, which it was
It’s cetainly created more problems than it has solved.
I don’t know who I have the most contempt for, the unrestrained free marketeers or looney left utilitarians
I don’t know either but I’m sure you’ll get over it.
Doesn’t look like it, does it…
Oh, go on, put on the robe and the pointy hood and go and burn a cross on someone’s lawn. You’ll feel better in no time.
You lost the argument so you resort to insults and throw in a fallacy. Classy.
Your looney utopianism has messed up the lives of millions of people
Slow hand clap.
You lost the argument so you resort to insults and throw in a fallacy. Classy.
Your looney utopianism has messed up the lives of millions of people
Slow hand clap.
Oh, go on, put on the robe and the pointy hood and go and burn a cross on someone’s lawn. You’ll feel better in no time.
Doesn’t look like it, does it…
I don’t know either but I’m sure you’ll get over it.
If that is so, the same goes for having more than a five fold increase in immigration in a 12-15 year period. There was no evidence it was needed, unless of course it was a purely ideological position, which it was
It’s cetainly created more problems than it has solved.
I don’t know who I have the most contempt for, the unrestrained free marketeers or looney left utilitarians
Maybe but just in one area I know – we cut nurse training places in early stage of Tory Govt and also bit later the training bursary. Remarkably the latter after Brexit when we’d chopped off all the excellent european nurses avenue! Thus making it even more difficult to attract our own.
The decision on places is now being gradually reversed but you can’t catch back up instantly and furthermore you’ll have seen the wage dispute and that won’t be making things more attractive. The problem seems to be this massive disconnect in Right wing policy making which has been occurring for some years leaving us in a real pickle now.
This is where we part company. Any blanket assertion that we could have trained enough people is not even remotely evidence based.
Maybe but just in one area I know – we cut nurse training places in early stage of Tory Govt and also bit later the training bursary. Remarkably the latter after Brexit when we’d chopped off all the excellent european nurses avenue! Thus making it even more difficult to attract our own.
The decision on places is now being gradually reversed but you can’t catch back up instantly and furthermore you’ll have seen the wage dispute and that won’t be making things more attractive. The problem seems to be this massive disconnect in Right wing policy making which has been occurring for some years leaving us in a real pickle now.
We could have trained enough people to cover these roles but once the immigration rate went up from under 50k pa to over 250k pa in just over a decade, that’s when the paradox occured.
I agree. There has been no strategy. So any government needs to go back to basics. What kind of society do they want etc.
The paradox is alot of those immigrants have been helping prop up public services and as economic analysis indicates generally costing less as already trained etc. Anecdotally my experience in aggregation is they work blinkin hard too often doing jobs Brits don’t want to do.
Nonetheless I think we all agree it’s just not being managed competently. For example Braverman et al fixate on the Boats and it does need to be sorted, but they’ve no visibility of how many they give short term visas to legally who then don’t leave. She doesn’t mention that because she’s in charge of it.
All that does is highlight the idiocy of importing millions of people knowing there was no way that infrastructure and services could cope with such an influx. This has worsened with the financial crash, where services have been cut year on year and immigration numbers have gone up. A plague on both their houses.
It’s not 13 year of an economic model based on low wage labour though is it ? Be honest – it’s been going on since at least 2000. This isn’t a Tory thing any more than a Labour thing – they are all taking the easy, short term option here, maximising “GDP”, but completely ignoring GDP per person and ignoring the long term costs piling up for the future. It’s just another cheap cop out to avoid people having to actually save and invest for their own future and retirement. But all Ponzi schemes collapse in the end.
Why do you keep saying ’13 years’. It’s disingenuous. You know as well as everyone else who initiated the open border policies, and why.
I’m beginning to think, Watson, that you are little more that a Labour party stooge – particularly in the light of your toadying praise for Alistair Campbell and his podcast the other day. All your posts boil down to the same message: time to kick the Tories out and put in a Labour government.
Who knows, if you repeat this spiel often enough you might actually come to believe that this country will be a better place under Sir Keir with his follow-the-mainstream-media initiatives.
By the way, didn’t you mention in one of your posts that you spent most of your life gainfully employed in that great socialist project “Our” NHS?
Playing the numbers game, as Braverman was doing again yesterday, is Fools Gold. Fundamentally, you need to decide what kind of society you want; what economy you need to support that society; what workforce you need to support that economy; what skills do they need; how do you then get the workforce with the right skills in the places you need them. Then you put in place a coherent strategy to achieve it, with inbuilt flexibility to deal with changing circumstances.
Yet there isn’t remotely anything like that happening in government. As an example, a large amount of visas go to the health and care sector, where we don’t train enough people and pay and conditions aren’t attractive enough to recruit or retain the numbers we need in the UK. This sector, though, is largely under government control, so increasing training places and improving pay and conditions is in their gift. There is of course a cost, so the question is where does it sit in your list of priorities. If cutting immigration is at number one then the money can be found. But it isn’t, hence the strikes, refusal to engage in workforce planning and general malaise.
Braverman is driven only by her vaulting ambition so is pretending that there are no trade offs involved. The Truss approach, appealing to the electorate, the Tory membership and the Tory media, who can make her leader. The idea that you can have a high-wage, high skill economy, but with low taxes; good public services and a small state.
I foresee the Conservative Party splitting after the next election primarily because of a refusal to accept that ideology is no substitute for delivery and cakeism is not ever a realistic strategy. Braverman, or someone very like her, will end up as leader and will prove too divisive to keep the current party together.
Problem for Braverman is she keeps signing off the visas for the legal immigration increase and it’s the biggest increase in years. She seems to forget she is Home sec and been in the Govt for 5yrs. Jeez how did we get such leaders? And if you go back to her Bojo replacement Leadership campaign she said diddly-squat about investment in training Brits and how it’d be funded. In fact the opposite – wanted tax cuts, yet of course never said what would go to pay for them. So a pattern of rhetoric well out ahead of properly thought through public policy.
Strongly suspect therefore this is just the wave she is surfing to get to the top of Tory dung-heap, and that’s she just the latest to look to get there by playing to the gallery yet being fundamentally dishonest about the trade-offs then required. Sunak of course can’t sack her as he’s weakened so look out for the manufactured resignation at some point before she stays too long and has to be accountable…for anything.
More broadly I think just about everybody wants a better managed approach to immigration and generally a lower number giving more time for assimilation and adjustment. But 13 years of an economic model fundamentally dependent on low wage labour cannot be quickly turned round without a further hard jolt on the cost of living.
I’d rather the country be poor in a British way than slightly richer in a Third World way.
If we invested in training our own citizens and stopped wasting so much money on welfare we would be better off. The same excuse is always offered – that somehow British people “aren’t good enough”/”don’t want to do those jobs” or some other excuse du jour. I don’t believe that at all.
Yes, if more of our own citizens had black skins the excuse would be regarded as racist. That said welfare does tend to trap its recipients in a place where making the effort to retrain can be ill rewarded.
The ere existence of welfare traps its recipients
The ere existence of welfare traps its recipients
Yes, if more of our own citizens had black skins the excuse would be regarded as racist. That said welfare does tend to trap its recipients in a place where making the effort to retrain can be ill rewarded.
If we invested in training our own citizens and stopped wasting so much money on welfare we would be better off. The same excuse is always offered – that somehow British people “aren’t good enough”/”don’t want to do those jobs” or some other excuse du jour. I don’t believe that at all.
I’d rather the country be poor in a British way than slightly richer in a Third World way.
“The Home Secretary may have picked some weird examples in her speech today — nobody really cares about seasonal workers such as fruit pickers”.
What an ignorant and patronising comment.
The author may not care about fruit pickers and HGV drivers and whether we train existing UK citizens to do these jobs, but some of us do. Nor do we all look down our noses at these jobs.
The FT attitude is even worse – industry has “been forced to train an army of homegrown workers” ! This was quite normal when I started work in the early 1980s. Yet now we have companies and organisations patting themselves on the back and bragging about their “Investors in People” logos when they do a fraction of what they used to.
The need for fruit pickers is not met by providing training, whatever that might be. The problem with fruit picking is that it’s damned hard work work, but most of our population are just not up to it anymore. The solution seems obvious-reduce benefits.
The need for fruit pickers is not met by providing training, whatever that might be. The problem with fruit picking is that it’s damned hard work work, but most of our population are just not up to it anymore. The solution seems obvious-reduce benefits.
“The Home Secretary may have picked some weird examples in her speech today — nobody really cares about seasonal workers such as fruit pickers”.
What an ignorant and patronising comment.
The author may not care about fruit pickers and HGV drivers and whether we train existing UK citizens to do these jobs, but some of us do. Nor do we all look down our noses at these jobs.
The FT attitude is even worse – industry has “been forced to train an army of homegrown workers” ! This was quite normal when I started work in the early 1980s. Yet now we have companies and organisations patting themselves on the back and bragging about their “Investors in People” logos when they do a fraction of what they used to.
A mess that’s been thirty years in the making.
A mess that’s been thirty years in the making.
Journalists are as much to blame for the situation as the politicians.
I would say unhappiness about mass immigration since the eastward expansion of the EU in the early 2000s has been one of the biggest drivers of political events in this country.
It led among other things to:
1 the defeat of Gordon Brown (caught on mic dismissing Mrs Gillian Duffy as a “bigoted women”)
2 the rise of UKIP and the threat to the Tories from the right
3 the commitment to restricting numbers to the tens-of-thousands which went some way to securing a surprise Tory victory in 2015
4 the EU referendum and Leave victory
5 the push in parliament for an EU settlement that didn’t involve Freedom of Movement (Hard Brexit).
Immigration has always been in the top issues among voters in surveys, yet this has never been reflected in the media. This is because the narrow consensus of “opinion formers” doesn’t recognise it as a problem in the way the general public does.
This seems to have changed in the last couple of weeks, probably due to the government panicking about the opinion polls and briefing stories to the press or now talking at conferences.
Will it last long enough to put pressure on the government to change policy?
I don’t think much has really changed in the last couple of weeks. The media will be the last to change or accept that anything needs doing. They’ll go on believing their job is to tell us what and how to think. And bringing out the worst in politicians too gutless to stand up to them.
Yes you are almost certainly right Peter.
Yes you are almost certainly right Peter.
Which journalists? The Tory and Brexit supporting media have pushed a narrative for years, and particularly during the referendum, that the poor quality of public services wasn’t down to austerity but due to immigration, lack of housing wasn’t the result of government policy but due to immigration, systemic low wages were a result of immigration not economic choices. This was definitely a factor in the leave vote and anti immigrant sentiment.
I don’t believe the ‘general public’ sees this in the same way as you do. Polls indicate, particularly among the young, that there are far bigger issues, cost of living/housing/good jobs/public transport, that concern them.
Too many politicians on the right, and their media supporters, pretend that there are no trade offs involved in immigration policy and some magic bullet can achieve a random number – 100k a year say- and we all live happily ever after.
What I believe is that the wave of mass immigration – which begun with EU A10 expansion – has led to:
-unaffordable house prices
-overstretched hospitals and GP surgeries
-larger school class sizes
-poor quality public services unable to meet demand
-packed trains
-endemic traffic jams and odd attempts to fix them like “smart motorways”
-increased overspills in sewage works
-an electricity production and distribution grid close to its limit
-a significant drop in wages for manual workers
On the plus side of the ledger it also led to:
-cheaper labour for businesses and households wanting contractors
-cheaper food as the supermarkets had more customers
This hasn’t been covered in anything like the detail required by the media and is all but ignored by politicians. However it is understood by the general public and they rightly choose to leave the EU to deal with it.
Polls show this is consistently in the top three issues for most people. The question of how many and what type of people you allow to live in your country is obviously of paramount importance which is why outsourcing the decision to the EU was so catastrophic.
That young people disagree and prefer open borders is neither here nor there – they will see reality clearly as they age, like we all do.
Hopefully we will start to see both parties move towards a sane and popular view on immigration controls. I suspect if Sunak announces a cap on numbers, Starmer will follow suit.
The reasons why 37% of voters in 2016 chose to vote Leave were not down to immigration alone. Austerity had already degraded public services by then, and many people felt that the status quo no longer worked for them or the communities they lived in. They also bought into the promises that there were no downsides to leaving the EU, it would turbo charge the economy and the £350m a week for the NHS was a very effective slogan.
As I posted above, trying to play the numbers game is a scam. You need to have a vision of what sort of society you want; what kind of economy you need to support that; what workforce you need to support that economic model; what skills they will need; how you ensure the workforce with those skills are in the places you need them to be. You then devise a strategy to deliver that vision. If the strategy ensures you can achieve this with minimal immigration, all well and good, but you need the strategy first.
The idea that your concerns are everyone’s concerns or that somehow immigration hasn’t been debated extensively for years is a bit of a stretch, because that’s not my experience.
The reasons why 37% of voters in 2016 chose to vote Leave were not down to immigration alone. Austerity had already degraded public services by then, and many people felt that the status quo no longer worked for them or the communities they lived in. They also bought into the promises that there were no downsides to leaving the EU, it would turbo charge the economy and the £350m a week for the NHS was a very effective slogan.
As I posted above, trying to play the numbers game is a scam. You need to have a vision of what sort of society you want; what kind of economy you need to support that; what workforce you need to support that economic model; what skills they will need; how you ensure the workforce with those skills are in the places you need them to be. You then devise a strategy to deliver that vision. If the strategy ensures you can achieve this with minimal immigration, all well and good, but you need the strategy first.
The idea that your concerns are everyone’s concerns or that somehow immigration hasn’t been debated extensively for years is a bit of a stretch, because that’s not my experience.
Also:
+ more uninsured drivers on the roads and untaxed/unsafe vehicles
+ more people living in unsanitary and/or unsafe conditions (garden sheds, etc) – and almost total lack of inspections or enforcement
+ increased welfare bill – lots of low paid people added needing tax credits and other state benefits – piling up huge future pension liabilities we wouldn’t have incurred if we’d got more British citizens off welfare and bakc to work
+ quite bizarrely a lot of EU citizens being paid below minimum wage – again something else which is illegal, but not enforced
+ asset stripping Eastern Europe of many of their best and brightest people who could usefully contribute to rebuilding these countries (and helping break the culture of corruption in some of them)
It may be that many of the Eastern Europeans do in time return with useful skills to help their countries grow and thrive. I’d like to think that’s part of the “plan” – but I suspect like many here that there simply is no “plan” beyond short term expediency.
This hasn’t been covered in anything like the detail required by the media and is all but ignored by politicians. However it is understood by the general public and they rightly choose to leave the EU to deal with it.
Polls show this is consistently in the top three issues for most people. The question of how many and what type of people you allow to live in your country is obviously of paramount importance which is why outsourcing the decision to the EU was so catastrophic.
That young people disagree and prefer open borders is neither here nor there – they will see reality clearly as they age, like we all do.
Hopefully we will start to see both parties move towards a sane and popular view on immigration controls. I suspect if Sunak announces a cap on numbers, Starmer will follow suit.
Also:
+ more uninsured drivers on the roads and untaxed/unsafe vehicles
+ more people living in unsanitary and/or unsafe conditions (garden sheds, etc) – and almost total lack of inspections or enforcement
+ increased welfare bill – lots of low paid people added needing tax credits and other state benefits – piling up huge future pension liabilities we wouldn’t have incurred if we’d got more British citizens off welfare and bakc to work
+ quite bizarrely a lot of EU citizens being paid below minimum wage – again something else which is illegal, but not enforced
+ asset stripping Eastern Europe of many of their best and brightest people who could usefully contribute to rebuilding these countries (and helping break the culture of corruption in some of them)
It may be that many of the Eastern Europeans do in time return with useful skills to help their countries grow and thrive. I’d like to think that’s part of the “plan” – but I suspect like many here that there simply is no “plan” beyond short term expediency.
What I believe is that the wave of mass immigration – which begun with EU A10 expansion – has led to:
-unaffordable house prices
-overstretched hospitals and GP surgeries
-larger school class sizes
-poor quality public services unable to meet demand
-packed trains
-endemic traffic jams and odd attempts to fix them like “smart motorways”
-increased overspills in sewage works
-an electricity production and distribution grid close to its limit
-a significant drop in wages for manual workers
On the plus side of the ledger it also led to:
-cheaper labour for businesses and households wanting contractors
-cheaper food as the supermarkets had more customers
I don’t think much has really changed in the last couple of weeks. The media will be the last to change or accept that anything needs doing. They’ll go on believing their job is to tell us what and how to think. And bringing out the worst in politicians too gutless to stand up to them.
Which journalists? The Tory and Brexit supporting media have pushed a narrative for years, and particularly during the referendum, that the poor quality of public services wasn’t down to austerity but due to immigration, lack of housing wasn’t the result of government policy but due to immigration, systemic low wages were a result of immigration not economic choices. This was definitely a factor in the leave vote and anti immigrant sentiment.
I don’t believe the ‘general public’ sees this in the same way as you do. Polls indicate, particularly among the young, that there are far bigger issues, cost of living/housing/good jobs/public transport, that concern them.
Too many politicians on the right, and their media supporters, pretend that there are no trade offs involved in immigration policy and some magic bullet can achieve a random number – 100k a year say- and we all live happily ever after.
Journalists are as much to blame for the situation as the politicians.
I would say unhappiness about mass immigration since the eastward expansion of the EU in the early 2000s has been one of the biggest drivers of political events in this country.
It led among other things to:
1 the defeat of Gordon Brown (caught on mic dismissing Mrs Gillian Duffy as a “bigoted women”)
2 the rise of UKIP and the threat to the Tories from the right
3 the commitment to restricting numbers to the tens-of-thousands which went some way to securing a surprise Tory victory in 2015
4 the EU referendum and Leave victory
5 the push in parliament for an EU settlement that didn’t involve Freedom of Movement (Hard Brexit).
Immigration has always been in the top issues among voters in surveys, yet this has never been reflected in the media. This is because the narrow consensus of “opinion formers” doesn’t recognise it as a problem in the way the general public does.
This seems to have changed in the last couple of weeks, probably due to the government panicking about the opinion polls and briefing stories to the press or now talking at conferences.
Will it last long enough to put pressure on the government to change policy?
Remember when David Cameron said immigration would be reduced to the tens of thousands?
Remember in 2004 when Blair declined to put limits on immigration from the new accession states? His estimate of 5-13k immigrants was out by a factor of 20.
I do – but as he already had a track record of being someone of an extraordinarily misplaced sense of self-regard, no one of even moderate intelligence would have taken that seriously.
Remember in 2004 when Blair declined to put limits on immigration from the new accession states? His estimate of 5-13k immigrants was out by a factor of 20.
I do – but as he already had a track record of being someone of an extraordinarily misplaced sense of self-regard, no one of even moderate intelligence would have taken that seriously.
Remember when David Cameron said immigration would be reduced to the tens of thousands?
Some tories (the voters) want zero or very reduced immigration. Some tories (the politicians) want immigration.
so voters get lip service, as usual.
Voters want reduced immigration, business wants increased immigration. How surprising, when the Tory government listens to business more than its voters!
Voters want reduced immigration, business wants increased immigration. How surprising, when the Tory government listens to business more than its voters!
Some tories (the voters) want zero or very reduced immigration. Some tories (the politicians) want immigration.
so voters get lip service, as usual.
But isn’t it also the case that politicians don’t really govern modern Britain….civil servants, the legal establishment and quangos do. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/carry-on-governing
But isn’t it also the case that politicians don’t really govern modern Britain….civil servants, the legal establishment and quangos do. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/carry-on-governing
All masturbaTory ” rhetoric lacks a scintilla of action unless it is about lgbt, racism, global warming or restricting freedom.
All masturbaTory ” rhetoric lacks a scintilla of action unless it is about lgbt, racism, global warming or restricting freedom.
ONE MILLION net immigration this year???? Net, not gross!
We as a nation, as a society, as individuals have totally lost direction. We are engulfed by madness!
ONE MILLION net immigration this year???? Net, not gross!
We as a nation, as a society, as individuals have totally lost direction. We are engulfed by madness!
Many years ago Jacqui Smith, one of Blair’s Home Secretaries, said that we have to break the link between coming here to work, and getting to stay. Well we’re still waiting.
But surely her words point the way to squaring the circle – our economy needs a lot of immigration, but our society needs far less. So, rather than issuing all those who come here to work with five year visas which can then be enlarged into permanent leave to remain, we should issue TEMPORARY work permits for 2,3 or 4 years.
Result – large scale gross immigration, zero net immigration. Or am I missing something?