It’s become almost de rigueur for members of the last Labour government to distance themselves from that government’s European immigration policies.
The most recent attempt to do so has fallen to former home secretary Jack Straw, who claimed last week that in hindsight opening Britain’s borders to eastern European migrants was a ‘spectacular mistake’.
Straw reasoned that while the policy was ‘well intentioned’, it was one his government ‘messed up’ because far more migrants came to Britain than had previously been forecast.
This isn’t electioneering on the part of the former home secretary – Straw is standing down at the 2015 election – but is presumably a reflection of the sort of thing he hears in his Blackburn constituency. Migration, after all, remains deeply unpopular with the electorate, as YouGov’s poll for this week’s Sunday Times found:
‘72 per cent say the rules on immigration from countries inside the EU are not tight enough and should be strengthened. Only 31 per cent of us accept the argument put forward by some economists and business leaders that immigration in recent years has been good for Britain’s prosperity; 57 per cent think our economy, and not just social harmony, has suffered.’
For those of us who believe in the principle of the free movement of labour as an eventuality (we are already stuck with the free movement of capital) polling like this is profoundly depressing. A majority of respondents are also plainly misinformed. Whatever you think of the cultural impact of immigration it has been positive in terms of wealth generation: migrants who arrived after 1999 were 45 per cent less likely to receive benefits or tax credits than UK natives in the period 2000-2011, according to a recent report by UCL’s Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration.
So why is there such a disconnect between the facts – that immigration is good for prosperity – and public opinion?
Well, first, when something is said to be ‘good for the economy’ it is worth asking: ‘good for whom?’; for, as with economic growth, the benefits are not always shared equally. Indeed, as fullfact has pointed out, ‘there is at least some agreement among the government and academics that migrants increased wages at the top of the wage distribution but reduced wages at the bottom’.
In other words, the free movement of labour is great if you are looking for a non-unionised workforce to do the grunt work on your building site, but less kosher if you are the one being forced to compete for jobs with others who aren’t unionised and who are willing to work longer hours than you for less money.
Many of the changes that come with immigration are also almost impossible to measure (how do you quantify the way people feel about their changing community, for example?) but seem as likely as dry cost-benefit analysis to affect the results of these sorts of surveys.
Rather than simply focusing on the mistakes of the past, however, the real question is how we approach immigration in 2013. This is made all the more urgent by the rise of the populist and xenophobic right.
While the cliché that you ‘can’t talk about immigration’ is plainly untrue – if you read the tabloids you soon learn that they talk about little else – it can often be true on the left, where so much time is spent (correctly) defending immigrants from xenophobia that being pro-immigrant is confused with being in favour of no restrictions on migration at all.
Listening to public opinion doesn’t mean pandering to the darker side of it of course, and making the case for immigration – it does enrich our culture and can be good for prosperity – should not mean being against all restrictions or glossing over potential downsides.
Just as we are right to cheer when the Question Time audience mocks Nigel Farage for his portrayal of migrants as scroungers, it would be wrong to lionise migrant workers at the expense of their British counterparts. It’s good that the latter believe there is more to life than filling their employer’s coffers, and bad if the left’s argument for immigration becomes indistinguishable from that of the pro-business right: that it’s simply another way of ensuring a constant supply of pliable workers for big business.
In other words, when it comes to immigration it’s complicated.
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James Bloodworth is editor of Left Foot Forward and writes a weekly column for Progress. He tweets @J_Bloodworth
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As most people know, humans aren’t poifek. And least of all, politicians, given the stress they are under most days of their lives, are as full of it ( human frailties) as the next wo/man.
To say, “Labour’s policy on immigration was a magnificent flop”, or words to this effect, is a nonsense. At least Labour had the guts to put their money where their mouth is.
And who says immigration policies were a ‘flop’ ? Who has the empirically-obtained-statistics proving immigration was/is a flop ? ONS? DWP? Wizard of OZ? Don’t make me laugh, it only hurts when I larf. “Spectacular failure”, what a load of bunkumtosh. What I see as the ‘last straw on the camel’s back’ is the inability of Labour to focus and align their ‘MESSAGE’ between the various warring-parties, within the Labour Partyitself. This is a commonly held view of all the great and the good withing the Westminster bubble — looking through the looking glass. One thing you can say for the Con-flab-Coalition, they get their messages across in some semblance of logic, and they do stick together ; as any political organisation who serves the people should, if they want to remain as a political party and not some scatterd entities all with their own tuppence worth to add, individually and not in concert. If they [Labour without any monkeys on its back as a coalition] want to win outright in May 2015 they should find UNITY, which is strength.
The issue here is the regularity that immigration comes up as an issue on the doorstep – particularly in marginal constituencies, and particularly with swing blue collar C1C2D voters. It appears that some people read this as if Labour were to reverse their perceived (and I stress perceived) “pro-immigration” stance, and offer a modicum of contrition, Daily Star/Sun man will vote for Labour again. Jack Straw is obviously one of those amongst the believers of this thesis. There is a gut reaction – and always has been – against immigration, even when it has demonstrably been shown that this is good not just for the economy, but for the country too. There is/was for instance an existing chronic shortage of care workers that has been plugged in this case by A10 nationals – yes, we could have waited and trained up British workers, but it appears there is little desire amongst potential trainees to undertake this work. It’s the same story from the 1970s. As the article points out It also shows the cleavage between good and bad practice across the employment sector. Like British builders working illegally in Germany in the 1980s (as culturally referenced in “Auf Wiedersehen, Pet”), and thereby undercutting German workers and potentially abstracting work from them, there were/are businesses who deliberately employ people from abroad to exploit them. It seems frankly unbelieveable that no-one has attacked this practice, when it is capitalist exploitation, as bloody as it can get. It is predictable (and quite telling) that the Daily Heil, the Express and UKIP have never, ever criticised a firm for deliberatly employing overseas staff to cut wages. But I think that James does the left a disservice – no-one I know lionises migrants – they are as good (and bad) as the “indigenous” population. We just need to ensure that the playing field is level, and the lies and half truthspeddled by the Straws, Blunketts, and gutter/redtop press are addressed and answered.