When Ed Miliband talks about ‘bearing down on immigration,’ and apologises for Labour immigration policy a full decade ago, the message to voters is clear: Labour accepts too many people were let into Britain.
But ask how Labour will stop people coming into the country, and Labour’s answer is to talk about enforcing the minimum wage and stopping labour market exploitation.
This is all worthwhile and needed.
But the political reality is that no British government, led by a major party, can definitively say it will reduce net immigration.
The reason is simple. Two of the three main determinants of net migration (the total number of people coming in minus those that are leaving) are outside of the government’s, any government’s control.
Britons leaving the UK and EU citizens arriving cannot be regulated. Only the numbers of people coming to the UK from outside the EU are under government control.
Next year, net migration will probably be at the same level it was when Labour left office, roughly 250,000. David Cameron will have to explain to electors why it is well over double the tens of thousands that he promised.
In the latest YouGov polling on immigration, the proportion of the public that believes the Conservatives have the best policies on immigration has plummeted from 38 per cent in 2010 to 23 per cent in 2014.
But Labour has not been the beneficiary of this collapse. The party’s rating has risen only one point from 15 per cent in 2010 to 16 per cent in 2014.
In the bidding war on who can talk the toughest, the only real winner has been Nigel Farage.
Labour needs to be smarter.
Politically, without a compelling rationale that demonstrates migration to be in the national interest, a future Labour government will struggle when the economy grows and immigration rises, just as the Conservatives are floundering at the moment.
The good news is that there is a valid case to be made. There are significant economic benefits from immigration.
As a nation, we desperately need migrants’ skills. For example, in the NHS, according to the General Medical Council, almost 40 per cent of our doctors are migrants. Without immigration our health service would collapse.
On the economy, we need the funds migrants plough into government. According to economists at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the net surplus of taxes paid by migrants even after deducting the cost of public services used, pays for over half of government spending on primary and secondary school pupils.
And on employment, research by the Centre for Entrepreneurs has shown that businesses founded by migrants are responsible for one in seven jobs.
The case for immigration is a compelling one. The experience of last week’s Scottish referendum shows that a well-articulated case, based on strong economic self-interest, will cut through emotion to sway voters.
The past four years have moved the polling needle for Labour, on immigration, by a paltry one point. It is time to change the approach. Labour needs to stop saying sorry and make the case for immigration.
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Barbara Roche is chair of the Migration Matters Trust
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The argument here is: let’s replace the British people with some other people because they’re not good enough, and meanwhile let gallopping demand for housing and services price them out of their own country. This argument is now familiar and doesn’t work any more now we can see what it means. It’s unfortunate that so many senior people in and around the party continue to push it: http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-immigrationists-continuing-their.html