December 2, 2024 - 7:00am
It is well established in the field of psychology that a feeling of “control” is a major contributor to a person’s sense of wellbeing and happiness — on a par with health, material wealth and class background. Pity the British public then, who haven’t felt “in control” of migration for a very long time.
The lack of control over immigration has profound implications for the political landscape, particularly on the Right. But it was on the Left that this point was acknowledged last week. “Failure on this scale isn’t just bad luck,” said Keir Starmer. “It isn’t a global trend or taking your eye off the ball. No, this is a different order of failure. This happened by design, not by accident”. “Policies were formed deliberately to liberalise immigration,” he continued. “Brexit was used for that purpose — to turn Britain into a one nation experiment in open borders,” he added.
But on Sunday, senior cabinet minister Pat McFadden confirmed that the new Labour government would not re-commit to a numerical target, a few years after Boris Johnson jettisoned the original Tory promise to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands (to achieve that target, Britain would need to reduce last year’s newly revised migration figures of 906,000 by 90%). “Targets for net migration haven’t worked very well,” McFadden said.
This implies an undue sense of inevitability about net migration figures. McFadden added that the figure would “depend on the needs of the economy”, which is a cop-out answer — an attempt to depoliticise the innately and intimately political. The Government could control it to a far greater extent if it wanted to. Whether it would want to experience the consequences of actioning that choice is another matter. Everything in politics is a choice, constrained by circumstances or otherwise.
Eventually, the vague ambitions of this Labour government will have to crystallise into a policy platform, numerical net migration target or not. While there have been a couple of unusual events (rehoming Ukrainian refugees and offering passports to those fleeing Chinese persecution in Hong Kong), relying on net migration levels falling simply due to changes in conflicts or political circumstances in other regions is not enough. We would be better served by more clarity and accountability.
As Starmer said, these levels are a choice. In order to exercise greater control, perhaps we could begin with a further crackdown on the more-than-doubling expansion in study visas. Higher education institutions are increasingly using international students to make up for an inflationary squeeze on higher education finances, producing graduates of dubious quality.
While international student visa numbers have already dropped, leaving some universities facing severe financial shortfalls — the bigger question of whether higher education institutions should exist at the scale they do in the first place, remains unanswered. This is something Starmer must contend with.
For the best part of a decade, the Conservatives campaigned on a platform of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands while governing with levels approaching three times higher. Though Labour is not at fault here, it now risks going down the same path. Starmer cannot afford to be a passenger — he must make active, and often painful, decisions. Otherwise this country will once again be forced to suffer in silence at the hands of political leaders who did not listen to the voters.
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SubscribeReducing immigration is the only policy that matters. It has been the driver of all British politics since the early 2010s (ditto the rest of the West). The party that gets immigration sustainably under 100k per year can look forward to several terms of office. Labour have already run up the white flag on the issue and will inevitably be jettisoned at the next election. Whether the Tories can re-establish any credibility is down to Kemi. If she can’t, Elon’s $100M donation to Reform UK will lead to Farage (or my outside bet -Boris) being in no10.
There is no white flag it is policy though like several of theirs – as with the Tories – not one they wish to come clean about. They know what they are doing, it is by design not accident.
You are probably right Mrs R.
“Though Labour is not at fault here”.
Really ?
They only voted against every single attempt to limit and control immigration during the past five years. They are only the party of human right lawyers and judicial reviews who’ve done everything possible to obstruct progress.
Starmer’s claim that Brexit was used as a deliberate experiment in open borders is equally ludicrous. I’m coming round to the view that he’s actually stupid enough to believe some of the nonsense he spouts.
“Though Labour is not at fault here”.
This is utterly laughable and only true if you have a 14-year memory limit. Is it time for that quote about ‘rubbing the right’s nose in diversity and rendering their arguments out of date’ again?
In 2012 the UN dispatched its migration chief to lecture the House of Lords on the need for immigration – Cameron had been talking about reducing it to the tens of thousands. In his speech Peter Sutherland pronounced that it was the duty of all EU leaders to undermine national homogeneity in order to ensure the success of globalisation and create dynamic economies. A report on this can be found on the BBC’s own website for June of that year.
To pretend that the levels of immigration we have seen is some post Brexit consequence rather than a well honed plan is duplicitous at best.
Once against the powers that be are taking the general public for fools.
It should also be remembered that we have no accurate figures on how many EU nationals came here when we were members. We do know that when we offered indefinite leave to remain to those EU nationals who were already here after Brexit, twice as many people applied as the ONS thought had ever been here. The total number of net immigrants per year from 2003-2020 may have been 3 or 4 times the official 300k that are frequently quoted.
Fascinating. Please supply the URL for the BBC stuff. Thanks
bbc.com/news/uk-politics-18519395.amp
That will take you to it although perhaps need to put www.
It appears targets are set for just about everything and are expected to be met… except for immigration.
Spot on. We do indeed need a discussion about universities. It seems ridiculous that there are universities whose sole purpose seems to be as visa factories for Asia and Africa. What benefit does that have for the uk other than providing us with limitless deliveroo riders?
Most of those universities can be repurposed as FE colleges, or merged. It just needs grit and a bit of imagination.
I suggest it would also need a completely different set of staff. Who may or may not exist.
But totally agree with your main point.
Agreed but we should also look at our domestic university intake too. It seems to me nonsensical that mediocre students are encouraged to take degrees that do not add to their earning potential or to the economic health of the country. Half of all student loans are not repaid due to the graduate never earning enough to reach the repayment threshold.
I think academic degrees should be the preserve of the top 20% of students that can achieve high A-level grades (ABB minimum in old money). All other 18-year-olds should take vocational courses, apprenticeships or just start working. Vocational courses which relate to jobs where we are in need of workers should get additional funding to encourage take-up (currently the Shortage Occupations are: nursing and health care, pharmaceutical technician, lab technician, construction, specialist trades (e.g. specialist welders), ship building trades, agricultural trades, web & graphic design – all pretty good jobs).
That would kill two birds with one stone: reducing the need to import immigrant labour while also giving these kids a career that will pay their way.
In my day, many years ago, only about 5% of school leavers went on to University – mostly from Grammar Schools.
I don’t see any likelihood of the ‘comprehensive schooling’ being revisited – all must win prizes after all, just very small, cheap, and tatty prizes.
Agree 100%. Might I add that “enlisting in the military” be added to the list of career pursuits?
I have never understood, nor heard an explanation, of how the boats can be stopped. A trivial suggestion is that we could rejoin the EU – an awfully big decision to make, to be ruled from Brussels again, to have the Euro.
The Aussies managed it – stop rescuing them (I realise that this will never happen).
Another way would be to tighten things up here – crack down on the black economy and benefits provision. This would almost certainly mean all citizens carrying ID cards and a switch to insurance based healthcare. Also unlikely to happen, due to human rights concerns on the left and personal freedom concerns on the right.
Well the “boats” accounted for 30,000 people in a time period that drove net-immigration of 900,000 which was driven by legal immigration by visas.
Take a leaf out of Trump’s playbook – share the pain. Every illegal immigrant crossing the channel reduces the amount we pay the French (£500 million over 3 years) by £10,000 a head.
Seriously? You can’t figure out how to stop small boats full of Africans from crossing the channel?
Starmer’s about-face on immigration has to be the most egregious piece of political gaslighting of the past thirty years. The sheer effrontery is breathtaking. I think this man must despise the people of this country even more than Blair/Campbell.
It is just words. As always. Nothing will change.
I’ve argued elsewhere that Starmer is really the Son of Blair. Bigging up Cooling Britannia, choosing to allow illegal immigration.
All the same sleight of hand – but none of the charisma.
In 2022-2023 about 30,000 people arrived on boats to the UK. Well over a million immigrated here legally. It may be high numbers but it is legal and it is controlled. The question is why did the tories ramp up visas since 2022? I don’t feel that continuing to have net-immigration of over 1.5 million over 2 years is sustainable. A problem is many of those who want reduced immigration refuse to see it as a joined up effect of the creation of large numbers of low paid jobs, an aging population, low birthrate and having many Brits signed off sick. And Reform and co are not answering those questions. Clamping down on labour market abuses may do more. Rachel Reeves increase in employers national insurance may actually price out UK based human resources in favour of automation and offshoring.
The level of political disingenuousness and incoherence of policy about legal immigration is now under Labour, and was before under Tory governance, simply breathtaking. Starmer and his woke front bench know full well the unhappiness of the majority of the UK electorate about levels of immigration but the truth is they couldn’t care less. Worshipping at the altar of the new pseudo-religion which is diversity and its incalaculably stupid cousin multiculturalism are the only demonstrations of faith the illiberal left will tolerate. Any dissent to this divisive creed is either racist, xenophobic or Islamophobic or, possibly, a hateful mix of all three – which labelling effectively silences meaningful public discourse.
It is well known that Starmer loves the Davos set whose masturbatory fantasy of choice is ‘Equity, Diversity and Inclusion’ so don’t hold your breath for any meaningful change in the pace of demographic change in the UK for the duration of this unbearable administration’s period of governance.
It’s more comprehensive than diversity and multiculturalism. It’s universalism. A subset of universalism is compensatory equality (wokeness), but universalism is the umbrella ideology. That’s the intellectual basis. There’s also, for those who aren’t thinkers, just compassion. And finally, there’s simple tribal and ancestral hatred on the part of those who think the British and Whites in general must suffer “karma”. “Karma’s a b***h” as they are fond of saying.
A major issue is too many people are opting out of labour market which creates the requirement for immigration. We also have an ageing population with a low birth rate. Both will drive an economic need for immigration in the future.
There is some truth in that with middle class, mortgage free boomers on final salary pensions picking and choosing their hours.
However automation can replace immigration or else we will continue this death spiral ponzi scheme
Totally agree, I’d only say it’s better productivity we need … automation is only one part of improving productivity.
Without an increase in GDP per capita we are destined to continue the Ponzi scheme.
As per Prof David Miles (Imperial/OBR), each low skilled migrant arriving at 25 and leaving at 65 costs UK £450k; if they remain (indeed live) to 85 the cost goes up to £750k. The breakeven salary for the 25 yo immigrant is £48k (UK median salary £36k). Last year only 54% of non-student visas were for workers – the rest were for workers dependents presumably putting Miles’s figures on steroids. We are within 10 years of affordable and effective robotics, alongside AI applications built on LLMs and a great deal of unrest as we move through the implications of this technology. Conflation of mass immigration at a time of hyper automation will prove very difficult, and will run parallel with a civilisational (and thus secular but theologically-based) fight for dominance in a new geopolitical reality where sides will be picked and allegiances tested. I can think of omly.one event which could both integrate a disparate society in common cause and reduce numbers, but hopefully better minds can find better alternatives.
This implies an undue sense of inevitability about net migration figures. McFadden added that the figure would “depend on the needs of the economy”, which is a cop-out answer
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It is a f*****g PONZI scheme and has been for 20 years.
200k in 00s became 350k in 10s and now topping 700k in 2020s.
What is acceptable to politicians in 2030s? 1.5m
Neither Party has “failed” on immigration. They are achieving precisely what they intended, and will continue to do so.
Oh they aren’t in danger of following the tories, they are determined to.
There is a major muddle here. There is more than one type of immigrant. Some will go home again (viz the migrants from Eastern Europe following the opening up of opportunities Europe-wide after the collapse of the Soviet Union). Not all, but many as their country of origin becomes better off)
Others, the illegals, or un-officials, it is futile to put a cap on numbers on. You can do that all you like, numbers will have no effect.
And that leaves allowed migrants, those who come in to fill much-needed shortages in the workforce. What possible effect is a cap on numbers going to have on that? Other than to be ignored or broken over and over again?
All very well to have numbers. reality will always supersede numbers!
You have to be totally unhinged from reality to think you can keep on importing an unlimited number of people without there being environmental and social collapse.
Utilitarianism is a completely failed ideology, all without electoral consent. Having artificially added 7.5 million over 30 years, our taxes are the highest they’ve been in 75 years and that’s with more than a decade of cuts in public expenditure. Services and infrastructure buckling under strain, polluted rivers and a major loss of species. The largest transfer of wealth in centuries but with very little overall economic growth, zero innovation and massive debt.
The question is, why are you in support of it?
This is a test.
I see nobody talking directly about the real, very scary issue of immigration into Great Britain and the EU. Islamism. You, and the West in general, are in danger of dying as the fount of Western culture and jurisprudence is replaced by a defacto Caliphate and Shari’a Law. Islamic believers DO NOT INTEGRATE! Here’s the sequence: Immigrate, Procreate, Aggregate, Nominate (and win–how many cities now have Muslim mayors in Britain?), Dominate, and finally Subjugate. Egypt is a classic example. Unless the West focuses on whom they wish to keep (that will integrate) and expel the rest, we are doomed as a culture. France is already toast unless it wakes up.
And we need to full-stop the demands that come out of Davos. DEI is dying in major companies in the US (Wal Mart is the latest). I hope it dies everywhere. We need MEI instead. Merit, Excellence and Intelligence.
(I have URL references to the key parts of my argument but don’t know if they are allowed)