It has to be said that a problem will arise if immigration becomes a displacement activity that puts off tackling fundamental questions about Labour’s economic record.

The candidates have a duty to talk about immigration if it came up a lot on the doorstep and is believed to have cost Labour the support of key groups in key areas. So far they have addressed it responsibly. They have not blamed the recession on immigrants or even suggested a tightening of controls beyond the points system. I see no basis for suggestions they are scapegoating or for shrill entreaties not to become the Anti-Immigration Party.

Labour is in far less danger of becoming “BNP-lite” (Martin Bright, Spectator Coffee House) than becoming the French Parti Socialist 2002-2010 when working and lower middle class voters deserted it in droves, firstly and most shockingly, for the Front National and later for President Sarkozy. The PS was impeccably leftwing and redistributionist, but its tin ear for its own constituency caused it to dwindle into a party of white collar public sector workers and liberal intellectuals. While it gushed with abstract sympathy for an idealised working class, Sarkozy attracted real working and lower middle class voters by directly acknowledging their concerns on crime, antisocial behaviour and immigration.

That said, the focus on immigration should not be such that other, arguably even more awkward issues are ducked. Tom Harris, has been an all-too lonely voice in asking the following: “Was the global recession solely to blame for the catastrophic level the deficit has reached? … What happened to our hard-earned reputation for economic competence?” It’s time to admit that the reputation was lost. That’s why so many business leaders backed the Conservatives, as did the FT and The Economist. You may think they were wrong, but reputation is a matter of public perception and it was lost.

“Did we deserve to lose it?” Harris then asks. Perhaps not over the handling of the banking crisis itself, but there is a case to answer when it comes to the stewardship of the preceding boom. The policies pursued then, not least the lax City regulation, maximised exposure to asset bubbles in the US triggered by the Greenspan put. The government’s use of these bubbles as a platform for public spending bonanzas meant that the UK economy entered the recession with the second highest structural budget deficit in the G7 and a public sector net debt pile that had been drifting higher since 2002. This record left Labour open to accusations of recklessness, leading many to the conclusion that despite the slick façade, New Labour was just another socialist government that wound up getting high on its own supply.

Another accusation on the economic front is that the government allowed the illusion of prosperity generated by the housing boom to mask a reality of middle-class wage stagnation. When house prices started falling and mortgages became less accessible, those on middling incomes have had to rely on wages – now being chomped by inflation – to cover their debts and spending. If key groups who lent Labour their votes in 1997 found thirteen years later that all they had to show for it was reduced purchasing power and a diminished share of the national income, it’s not surprising they gave up on us.

Immigration, rather than a standalone cause of failure, is arguably another subheading – albeit an important one – in the chapter entitled Economic Complacency 2000-2007: A boom-time phenomenon that at the time seemed AOK, but now has people asking why more sand wasn’t thrown into the wheels.

So, talk about immigration, but don’t sever it from the overall economic record to which it was causally linked. The challenge now is to address concerns of alienated voters while reversing a reputation for economic unreliability. You can’t do either of these without acknowledging they exist.

Photo: Rogue Soul 2007