It appears sadly impossible not to comment on Brexit at the moment; the astonishing scale of the government defeat in Parliament yesterday and the appalling self-serving behaviour of politicians on all sides compels attention.
The first and most obvious point is this; had Theresa May any honour, she would simply resign after her major political objective was rebuffed so dramatically by the legislature. But honour appears to be entirely out of fashion, so I shall not refer to it again today.
Parliament now appears ready to vote that it has confidence in the government when, clearly, it does not. This is because MPs wish to keep their jobs and careers intact. So from hereon the UK proceeds under the lie that it has a government which has a majority in Westminster for its views.
Even more remarkably, Theresa May has no intention of seeking a proposal that could command a majority. She seeks to move forward with cross-party discussions which exclude the leadership of other parties. She also insists that such discussions must be limited by her infamous “red lines” – but within those constraints, there is no deal materially different to the deal Parliament has just rejected which will ever be available.
The truth of course is that May’s “red lines” were in fact motivated by the only consistent strand that can be traced through Theresa May’s political career – hatred of immigrants. If you are going to end freedom of movement, then you have to leave the single market. That is very plainly the rule on which the single market was predicated, and the EU have repeated that ad nauseam in all negotiations. You cannot “cherry pick” to end free movement and keep free market access.
All of May’s “red lines” can be traced to a single source. If you ask “If you end EU immigration, what are the necessary consequences?” you get May’s red lines. Their basis is racism.
Both the SNP and Labour parties had put forward ideas that were broadly compatible. The Labour Party wants customs union, effective single market participation, and retention of worker and environmental protections. The SNP suggested permanent customs union and EEA membership. With minor differences, both these approaches are broadly “Norway plus” and both would limit the effects on the economy and remove the need for a hard border with Ireland.
But there was one major difference. The SNP accepted that single market membership must entail freedom of movement, and boldly argued that EU immigration is a good thing. The Labour Party position is entirely dishonest and predicated on a pretence that you can have single market access without freedom of movement – a position which is a lie.
The Labour Party has a large number of voters frequently described as “white working class”. The phrase is continually deployed as an euphemism for “racist”, which is highly unfair to the very many white working class people who do not share those attitudes. The desire not to alienate what I prefer to call the “John Mann voter” causes many in the Labour Party to adopt this dishonesty about the immigration consequences of single market access.
But it is worse than that. Many at the heart of what I might call “Old Labour” still harbour the dark thoughts that led in my youth to support from many trade union members for the views of Enoch Powell – the idea that immigrants depress wages and damage the working class. Unfortunately both Jeremy Corbyn and John MacDonnell, for both of whom I have much respect in general, still harbour this dinosaur opinion.
In July, Jeremy Corbyn said that immigration “would be a managed thing on the basis of the skills required… What there wouldn’t be is whole-scale importation of underpaid workers from central Europe in order to destroy conditions, particularly in the construction industries.”
Here Jeremy is putting forward a line on immigration “a managed thing on the basis of skills required” that is identical to the Tory line and plainly rules out free movement. Further he is promoting anti-immigrant myths. The economy is not a thing of fixed size with a limited number of jobs. Dynamic EU immigration has been entirely responsible for all growth in our economy this last decade; without it we would have been plunged into the deepest and still continuing recession. The cause of poverty is the obscene proportion of national wealth looted by the super wealthy, not the poor immigrant. The answer to the particular question Jeremy addressed is the establishment, or possibly post-Thatcher re-establishment, of strong legal protections for working conditions in the construction industry, to protect all workers there. The answer is not to attack Central European immigrants.
Until the Labour Party accepts the need to challenge anti-immigrant views head-on, it will continue to talk nonsense on Brexit.
For good measure, Nicola Sturgeon also played politics with a statement after last night’s vote which, remarkably, did not mention the word “Independence” at all. Sturgeon now appears entirely focused on keeping England and Wales inside the European Union against the will of the English and Welsh people, as opposed to having a clear and fixed aim of achieving Scottish Independence from this debacle.
[Update: Subsequently, at 5.32 am. Nicola corrected her position with the following tweet, presumably having absorbed party concerns overnight at her original key omission:
The criticism therefore falls, though it still worries me her first reaction was wrong.]
It seems to me the ultimate solution is plain. Scotland should become Independent and remain in the EU as its citizens overwhelmingly wish. England and Wales should leave the EU as its citizens wish (by a very clear majority if you take out Scotland and Northern Ireland). England and Wales should move to a Norway style relationship broadly as proposed by the Labour Party, with the racists told they cannot have everything they want. Northern Ireland should finally return to Ireland. Some bits of that will happen sooner than others – Scottish Independence in particular – but in a decade or so, I expect all that will have finally happened. If politicians were not so conniving and self-interested, we could get there a lot sooner.
A point you raise in the last paragraph regarding Nicola Sturgeon being “entirely focused on keeping England and Wales inside the European Union against the will of the English and Welsh people” is as flawed as me saying that about Theresa May saying the same thing about the Scottish people and the UK. The fear campaign during indyref 2014 along with the lies and broken promises were almost identical to the Brexit campaign. And just as the Scottish people are entitled to change their mind against these false promises and lies, so are the English and Welsh in my view. Frustrating as it is to all of us who want Scottish Independence ASAP, I still believe that Nicola Sturgeon’s tactics and politics have been spot on up till now. I think we should all hold off on bashing her for now and give it a bit more time – it may just be days it may be a week or two. I agree though that time is fast running out for us and we’ll need to show our intentions very soon. Just not now. Thanks for your valued and learned political commentary and analysis.
If Brexit is about racism then why did so many British Asians vote leave. If you look at places like Oldham there was a clear majority for leave. George Galloway was certainly aware of this when he supported the leave campaign. George has been proven right on Iraq, Russia, Israel and the EU which is more than most politicians.
It’s true, an ugly stereotype has been constructed about leave voters that flatters pro-status quo liberals. The motivations behind leave votes were far more varied and complex. For example, the London lborough with the lowest proportion of white British residents in the country – Newham – voted to remain by only 53-47; while places like Birmingham and Leicester voted Leave.
Ugly was the look on actress Emma Thompson’s face when the interviewer associated her with a Leave vote. Disgust looks pretty ugly. The ‘status quo’ liberals feel disgust at being associated with those who want to leave the EU, and Craig echoes that in suggesting it is racist to object to immigrants who make no contribution while burdening already over-stretched infrastructure. Brits just never get away from this class thing.
Because it IS racist to “object to immigrants who make…”etc
“The motivations behind leave votes were far more varied and complex.”
Which is the problem; a complex issue presented by politicians and the media as a simplistic binary choice to be made by an ill informed public. There is no simple solution to this other than the two only real choices available; no Brexit or a no deal Brexit, which is pretty much what the original ballot paper had on it in the first place, i.e. ‘Should the UK remain/leave the EU’. Brexit is many things to many people who voted leave and as such there is very little chance (i.e. none) of a deal being made that encompasses all those motivations while satisfying the EU, parliament and the electorate.
Deb O’Nair, for me, I am very concerned about the lack of perspective or knowledge within the Brexiteer camp. They seem to think a No Deal is o.k. There doesn’t seem to be any analysis or structured critique of what is currently occurring in this country as regards Brexit. It is a mess of monumental proportions – jobs are already being lost and more will follow. Large hikes in interest rates will be necessary – Mark Carney had it absolutely right – it wasn’t fear mongering it was the truth that he spoke. I do agree with others who have blogged that the Referendum should have set a %tge that had to be reached in the vote for either camp for it to be legitimate. I also agree with Tony Blair that the Referendum should have contained 3 options available to the British Public. Alas, we are we are and, as you said, a Single Party systems is being implemented in plain sight supported by the propaganda machine that is the MSM. Unless the sheeples don their yellow vest and hit the streets like our allies the French are, then totalitarianism under the guise of a parliamentary democracy here we come!
Because Asians can be racists too? That doesn’t seem like a difficult question.
No. It’s because most of them are on the wrong side of the socioeconomic apartheid that EU policies engender.
Unlike Emma Thompson of course, whose life will be garlanded by a more abundant, flexible, affordable, and compliant servant class.
Are you referring to Asians or British Asians?
The vast majority of British Asians I spoke to (32 out of 36) supported leave. This didn’t seem to vary across the class divide (which really separates our country) with consultants and taxi drivers giving similar responses. n=36 is too small a sample but it would be interesting to get some more robust data on this.
The “status quo” liberals may be peeing off more than the white working class with their calls for a secondary referendum.
Either
Who said brexit is all about racism? Craig said Theresa Mays red lines were about racism, and labour reluctance to argue for EU immigration as a good thing for the economy is not challenging racism. That doesn’t mean all brexit arguments or voters are racist. There are other possible reasons, and Theresa may was remain anyway wasn’t she?
Whatever Corbyn’s views on immigration, I hope he doesn’t underestimate the power he would have to lead the country away from this xenophobic abyss.
His anti-austerity and wealth redistribution agenda will itself be very popular, and if he ties continued membership of the EU in some form to that agenda, the working class will come with him.
Well, not that popular, given that he’s trailing an historically incompetent Tory government in the polls.
In the run up to the 2017 election Corbyn was at 27% when the election was called and May was at 45% (or rather their parties were). That’s an 18% gap.
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My lifetime overlapped by a small bit the lifetime of one J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover of course held the post of FBI director from its founding to his death. It was long rumored that Hoover held such a political post through a long succession of Presidents because of Hoover’s infamous file cabinet full of blackmail secrets that made Hoover invulnerable.
Today we live in a world of mass surveillance of which Hoover could not have dreamed. The spies capture everything, and can choose to listen to what they like. In the US, we’ve seen the NSA build a massive storage facility such that everything can be stored, making the capacity of the spies to listen a retroactive capability.
Is it a coincidence that the head of the spies in this age of mass surveillance that the former home secretary, who I believe manages the spies if I’ve got this correct, is now so powerful that she becomes the Prime minister? And I can’t help but notice that when successors to the Prime Minister are mentioned, the latest Home Secretary is always on the list, even if they’ve only been recently named to the post.
Are we living in the new age of spies and political blackmail? Are we now living in a world with a new group of J. Edgar Hoover with now massive file cabinets full of massive amounts of blackmail material?
No. Yes. Yes.
…and so we learn that “dynamic EU immigration has been entirely responsible for all the growth in our economy this last decade…”
This statement alone constitutes either stupidity of a level that is barely comprehensible or a truly insidious example of racism. Consider that currently annual migration to the UK comprises some 75,000 EU nationals and 250,000 non EU nationals. So the claim must be that the quarter of a million non EU nationals contribute nothing whatsoever – and are in fact supported entirely by the altruistic dynamism of EU nationals.
Craig,
it is an empirical question, isn’t it, whether immigration depresses wages in certain industries? Yet you characterise people who think it does as ‘anti-immigrant’, end of story. Surely it is possible to accept certain consequences of immigration without opposing immigration itself; even more so without being hostile to immigrants.
And it’s another leap to characterise opposition to free immigration from Europe as racism.
By characterising this as ‘anti-immigrant’ you are feeding the kind of insult-driven politics that lessens our ability to think about these issues and to reach more common agreement. I think you are making your own small contribution to the ‘poisoning’.
Matt
Yes, people who ignore empirical evidence in order to oppose immigration regardless of its measured effects on wages and employment are “anti-immigrant”. That seems fair.
What about those who ignore empirical evidence in order to support immigration regardless of its measured effects…?
But in many contexts immigration *is* used to depress wages and weaken labor. This was as true in the later 19th century (as Marx rightly observed) as it is true today in the US. To say so is not to be anti-immigrant (whatever that means) or racist. One rather has to ask what is it that causes immigrants to flock from their home countries to the US and U.K. in the first place? The answer to that question is likely not unrelated to the colonial and neocolonial policies of both countries (and the EU as a whole) toward less wealthy and less powerful nations in Africa, Eastern Europe, and South and Central America.
Murray is right that open markets require at their minimum the free movement of people, but he seems naively to assume that the movements of capital and of persons are equal and complementary when such is not at all the case. Capital today can be moved, consolidated, dispersed, etc almost instantly whereas the movement of persons from one country to the next remains a big and time consuming undertaking even in the best of cases. This means that capital will always have the advantage in such a situation absent other political constraints on its power, such as those provided by robust unions and/or a monitored immigration policy that prevents capital from being able to game the system, as it were.
In certain contexts, to be sure, immigration does not by itself depress wages–such as when a country faces a short term shortage of skilled workers it can only get from elsewhere–but in many contexts it does. Indeed, the history of wage labor in the industrialized West is in part the history of the various attempts by capitalists to depress wages as far as possible by glutting the workforce, with children, with (at the time legally unprotected) women, and, yes, with foreign immigrants. The key thing all three groups also have historically in common is the relative legal and social precariousness of their situation, thus making them easier to manipulate and oppress.
I think Murray’s heart is on the right side here. Of course one should be “pro-immigration” if the only other option is an implicitly or explicitly racist “anti-immigrant” position. (I am from the US. I know this dilemma well.) But the real problem is the simplistic framing of the debate itself and the extreme moralization it has taken on in our political culture.
Qui bono? I ask. Certainly neither the immigrants nor the existing labor force.
“…..the history of wage labor in the industrialized West is in part the history of the various attempts by capitalists to depress wages as far as possible by glutting the workforce, with children, with (at the time legally unprotected) women, and, yes, with foreign immigrants”
And of course the paradigm. The abomination of legalised slavery through the 18th century in Europe.
Indeed Matt, when will he realise that crying ‘racist’ at those who don’t hold his neo liberal leftist views doesn’t shut anyone up any more.
‘Scotland should become Independent’ ‘Northern Ireland should finally return to Ireland.’
Marketing advice – ‘Should and must’ are flags for failure and giving up.
I wonder how many working class people regardless of their skin color are getting sick and tired of professional race baiters?
It is true that the economy is not of a fixed size. It is also true that human labor accounts for less than 1% of work done (i.e energy applied) in the modern economy. Hence economic growth is very poorly correlated to population growth. The missing 99% comes almost exclusively from fossil fuels.
These would be the same fossil fuels that the same race baiters are so exercised about as causing global warming and planetary catastrophe. These would be the same fossil fuels whose cost of extraction is on a relentlessly upward curve.
The only growth seen in GDP since the turn of the century has been a consequence of massive monetary and credit expansion. This has created the illusion of GDP growth – and GDP remains the metric against which governments set taxation. This exercise in smoke and mirrors has resulted in the population being taxed against a wholly bogus measure of prosperity. When adjusted for theses lies personal prosperity in the UK has declined by 30% during the period 2001-2017.
So if EU immigrants are to be lauded for being responsible for headline levels of growth in the economy are they to be blamed for the decline in real wealth? Or is all this talk of immigration and racism considered preferable to actually seeking an understanding of the actual dynamics at play?
Interesting.
Indeed loon, central bankers and their ponzi monetary system are the root of all evil, it’s all going to end in tears, not so long to go ..
You should qualify the following phrase as follows:
“Scotland should become independent from the UK and remain in the EU as its citizens overwhelmingly wish.”
I have no problem with the citizens of Scotland to want to stay in the EU, but don’t pretend that makes you independent. It doesn’t. Independent from the UK yes, but dependent on the EU.
“Independent from the UK yes, but dependent on the EU.”
Well 62% did vote to remain in the EU, also Westminster would be kicking Ireland around like a football right now if it didn’t have the backing of the EU.
But RoS
55.3% also voted to remain in the UK in 2014.
An independent Scotland (and let the rest stew) should only be a last resort. I don’t enjoy watching the rest of the UK tear itself part just because I live in Scotland, so I might be alright, Jack. True independence means independence from neoliberal economics. Independence from corporate control. Independence from a biased media. Independence from poverty. Independence from debt slavery. Independence from eternal war. Independence from climate catastrophe (well, actually there is no escaping that one). That kind of independence I would love to embrace with the whole UK. But if that is not possible, then I’ll take it in Scotland and try and lead by example.
The only problem was that at the time of the last referendum, the SNP (who would make up the majority of the government in a newly independent Scotland) were offering none of that. You cannot have independence without your own sovereign currency – you simply become a slave to the bond markets and have neoliberalism imposed upon you. On offer last time was pretty much business as usual: false wealth from continued oil extraction, investment still largely controlled by private banks, lower corporation taxes to try and tempt corporations to exploit us a bit more. I voted Yes last time through gritted teeth, as there was not much else on offer at the time. Jeremy Corbyn has changed that somewhat, although I don’t think he is nearly radical enough for the multiple crises we’re facing.
If independence is the only option, then lets ensure this time it’s based on an independent currency with a massive Marshall-plan style government investment to get to a zero-carbon Scotland generating meaningful jobs. Then I’ll buy it.
“I don’t enjoy watching the rest of the UK tear itself part just because I live in Scotland”
Are you suggesting that Scotland is immune form the turbulence?
“An independent Scotland (and let the rest stew) should only be a last resort. I don’t enjoy watching the rest of the UK tear itself part just because I live in Scotland, ”
What did you think was going to happen, did you think it would a clean fight, polite and civil, Westminster wants to keep Scotland by hook or by crook. The S&G needs to get down and dirty to win this war of attrition, and it will eventually.
SAM – Well spoken. I fear Nationalism. The power and wealth is moving from West to East. Building walls actually keeps the builders IN. Yes, the huge majority of people in Catalan want to break away from Spain. They are also very strong economically. I am ok Jack ! ….So looks like some want to circle the waggons. Keep the other out. I cant see the EU project lasting. Economic decline combined with mass distraction and the wars are consuming us. Real Independence is the ability to develop and trade with peace, not domination and threat. After the end of the USSR we had a great opportunity to allow Russia to becomes equal yet Independent partners. We blew it. Now China and Russia are going off to the rest of the world to trade. If India, Germany and Japan join them, we have only ourselves to blame.
How depressing to see someone who by all accounts is eloquent and thoughtful spout the tired old codswallop about Brexit racism and immigration. The standard opinion of the unthinking jejune metropolitan. This is compounded by ignorance of basic economics that wages can and often are depressed by immigration. The reason metropolitans and the self-identified left left get this so wrong is they point to “studies” to prove to themselves they are correct. In contrast people who experience this themselves (and also know from first principles to be true) are essentially told they are lying and stupid. Hence referendums and elections are lost by the inability to listen to what people actually say without sneering due to ideological deafness. So economics both theoretic and observed: In occupations with low barriers to entry a large enough volume of immigrants within an area (not necessarily a country), will undercut the wages of existing participants. Immigrants on the whole, in the short to medium term are willing to lower living standards and have lower fixed costs. This results in lower wages, as in medium term demand is inelastic.
A permanent open door to a vast pool of reserve low wage labour is entirely of a piece with the EU’s other constitutional ‘freedoms.’ One straight from the Milton Friedman recipe book.
“A permanent open door to a vast pool of reserve low wage labour”
Who pay their taxes and contribute to society.
Are you absolutely sure about that?
It is estimated that the UK is currently home to 136,000 slaves – many of them being foreign nationals
https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/country-studies/united-kingdom/
Do slaves pay tax? I guess they contribute to society – but not to the kind of society most people would want to be a part of.
Even the most committed race baiter would find it hard to argue that slaves contribute to rising wages.
Yes I’m sure, there’s hundreds of thousand in work and paying taxes, and not a Clash lyric in sight.
Low wage labour brings nothing to the state coffers, quite the reverse: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/apr/20/taxpayers-spend-11bn-to-top-up-low-wages-paid-by-uk-companies
Next…
At the very least it keeps the company in business who employs them a company that pays tax.
Low wage earners also spend their earnings in shops etc, that helps keep other folk in work and businesses afloat.
If they’re not working for Amazon they’re buying from there. Everyone’s happy. Classic
I think ‘Fly Fishing’ was by J. R. Hartley, I don’t think it’s the same guy.
The fact that JR Hartley is a fictional character may have given you a clue. Ah well.
I think everybody knows there will be no Brexit, thank God. But it has been wonderful, and will continue to be wonderful for some months, for Theresa May, and the government in general. With dawn to dusk media coverage it has enabled spooks, scriptwriters and artistic directors to take a break from the everyday chores of manufacturing events (the Skripal affair for example) to take people’s minds off just how bad things are at home with abject poverty, homelessness and illness, by creating a bogey-man in Russia.
When did you last hear anything about the Skripals? Probably from me on here. Because as long as I have breath and a brain I will be questioning what happened to them. Why can’t our super MSM journalists interview either of them? I will tell you why. What they would tell us if they could will never be known. They are dead. That’s why. They have passed through Porton Down like millions of other animals in countless torture and vivisection experiments and become another statistic of its incinerator.
I think your economic argument needs to be worked out in more detail. Increasing the population will tend to increase GDP because of boosting demand – but unless the country as a whole can pay its way, debt will continue to increase – or, as seems increasingly likely, the financial foundations of the Welfare State and the NHS will be shaved away.
At a time of depressed wages – which have hardly risen in real terms for the last 40 years and more – and high unemployment disguised by increased numbers in tertiary education, short-hours work etc – new admissions to the UK should have regard to specific gaps in the domestic labour market. The proposed £30k+ earnings requirement is stupidly simplistic.
What a shame. I’m a great admirer of Craig. His penetrative intelligence, industry and bravery in betraying the omerta of his class. But this piece articulates and conflates the two areas of where his emotion clouds any logic. Immigration, and Scots nationalism
Craig’s dogged insistence on a zero-sum perspective of immigration dooms him from the start to a balanced perspective. There’s no doubt that the economy is dynamic rather than fixed. There’s also no doubt that millions of working age immigrants in the UK since the late 90s has boosted the economy and increased GDP. However neither of these facts negate the resultant downward pressure on wages and working conditions in the lower or entry-level jobs market. It is a fallacy that Craig sadly mouths in synchronicity with Tony Blair, George Osborne, and Goldman Sachs.
How can I put it more clearly Craig? … The dynamic nature of the economy, does not negate the capitalist imperative to ensure surplus labour. Why? Because surplus labour – in the form of practically unlimited immigration from weaker economies – is also dynamic. Because of the extreme labour market liquidity of open border immigration, however much an economy is grown by immigration, the lower rungs of employment markets will always be super-saturated.
This is exactly right. See also my comment to same effect above.
Wow Craig you have really jumped the shark here. Wanting to maintain sensible controls over immigration is simply not racist!
The most racist person I have encountered in recent years was just last week – a black man who spoke with a fairly thick African accent, telling me how he doesn’t like Polish people (“I just don’t like them”, he said), and, wait for it…….”people from Azerbaijan and places like that”. He didn’t like them either. I nearly choked. The fact is that there are different types of racism, and there’s a bit of racism in all of us, because we are tribal animals, at least for the time being. There is hate based racism, say members of the BNP. There is ignorance based racism, like you see all across the Westcountry, where they openly use racist terms, 70s/80s style, but crumble in their pants if they actually end up in conversation with someone who is non-white. Then there is fear based racism, where people have been made fearful of an ethnic group, like after 9/11 when Islamaphobia was actively encouraged by the MSM, even though all the evidence suggests 9/11 was a Zionist-led operation.
Racism is quite complicated and sometimes it is justified. The UK took in virtually 100% of the Eastern Bloc immigrants when they joined the EU, because the UK was the only place they could get into – France and Germany did not allow unlimited immigration, it was ONLY the UK that did. Everyone speaks English, we have a world renownwed economy and lo and behold, millions of people poured in to the country before anyone really knew what was going on. This pissed a lot of people off. No surprise there. No-one asked for millions of people to come here. I’m sure there have been economic benefits etc, but to allow such enormous numbers of people in, plus all the non-EU immigration we have, is crazy and is very obviously going to put a lot of peoples’ noses out of joint, which it has, and which it was designed to do. There are no accidents in politics. If millions of Brits suddenly poured into Poland overnight, there would be absolute fucking uproar. Quite right. No nation on earth would be happy about millions of people from another country coming in and setting up shop in a very short space of time, that is human nature and survival intincts doing their job. You can blame God for that.
But the immigrants are not the enemy. They are just regluar people trying to improve their lives. The enemy is those responsible for causing and enabling unlimited immigration, such as we have seen. After Brexit, there is supposedly going to be a huge upturn in non-EU immigration, which already makes up more than half of immigration into the UK. If people are unhappy about EU immigration, just wait until those hundreds of thousands of EU immigrants are replaced by African immigrants. This is not what people want, but this is what they are going to get. People need to look harder at who is pulling the strings, and identify the common enemy. The bought and paid for traitors in Parliament, for one, and those they serve
Well observed Craig.
Brexit leading to EEA membership for England was always do-able, and perhaps desirable. The EU has not covered itself in either Kiev or Barcelona. But once English nationalism – so often tinted with racism – was stirred into the mix, disaster was inevitable.
Hence from From Day 1, May was much more concerned about hurting EU citz in the UK and stopping any more coming than she was about Brits in the EU/EEA or for that matter retaining all UK citizens’ rights to live and work in the EU/EEA.
One of the most striking (and under-reported) facets of Brexit is the way that families and people’s lives will be torn apart by the end of Freedom of Movement. And future plans scotched. If you stop to read a few of the stories, it is heartbreaking. But hardly anyone inn the Tories or Labour seems to give a damn.
May now leads a weird looking “English National Party” and Corbyn just plays political games. Frankly he looks quite happy to have some kind of hardline Brexit, just so long as he doesn’t get the blame.
What did we do to deserve these two duds?
Ah yes peoples lives being torn apart by the end of Freedom of Movement.
Just take a look at these peoples lives have been enhanced by Freedom of Movement
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4882340/Majority-London-s-rough-sleepers-come-overseas.html
1,546 Romanian nationals sleeping on British streets – how humanitarian of you in freely giving up pavement space to accommodate foreign homeless people. You should be so proud.
Straw man argument.
UK govt has always had the ability to address this problem.
But chose to do nothing.
Don’t blame Freedom of Movement for Home Office failings.
http://ngobox.org/fellowship_full–Open-Society-Fellowship-for-journalists,-activists,-academics,-and-practitioners-from-around-the-world-Open-Society-Foundation_5369
“Brits would prefer the Tories to continue in office instead of having a general election:”
“Conservatives remain in government for now – 48%”
“Conservative government should resign and call a general election – 29%”
https://mobile.twitter.com/YouGov
Silly claptrap, unusual for Craig.
Racism interferes with Brexit debate as much as anti-semitism inteferes with Palestine/israel debate. it is a poor excuse for derailing discussion.
In 35 years GDP is up 100%, median incomes 10% – now if you don’t agree that that is plain and simple the most important issue in voters minds now, you should give up politics as an interest.
A small but hugely visible part of that results from increased labour competition at the bottom end from immigrants.
The much bigger parts come from technological changes and corresponding requirements for top end workers, low tax, and simple greed and disinformation by the elites. But the real reasons and THE TRUTH ABOUT INEQUALITY are simply never discussed.
2nd generation immigrants feel just the same as “the white working class”. They may not be clear quite what is wrong, but they know it is not their white colleagues that are doing any better than they are, but that a small handful of all races are doing far far better than everyone. Of the thousands of GPs on £100k+, how many are dark skinned? Most I suspect, certainly most in London.
So this is not really the time for anyone to start helping the government by trying to put a big wedge between opposition parties. Trying to tie Scottish independence with the Brexit debacle is like fishing in muddy waters, but it helps only the Tories. Many on this blog enjoy bashing Corbyn as much as they like bashing May. Corbyn has to steer a very tight course. Moreover on all this discussion it is forgotten that immigrants from poorer EU countries seeking a better life in the west is also exploitative as some of these countries like Bulgaria have become depopulated. Others also do not see that any nationalistic movement may also encourage more racism whether overtly and immediately or covertly and slowly.
Pretty much spot on.
Did you know that 2.2 million Bulgarians work in Bulgaria and that 2.5 million Bulgarians work outside of Bulgaria. Now consider that the British are often told that immigrants are needed to inter alia look after an ageing population. What do imagine that life is like for aged Bulgarians? Naturally to have any concern for old, poor Bulgarians inside of Bulgaria is racist.
The practice of poaching Doctors and the like from developing countries, as opposed to training our own to do those jobs, because it is cheaper and easier to work this way, is nothing short of fucking disgusting. But fucking disgusting just about sums up the culture of the UK
The policy is deliberate and based on this exploitation and is a collusion between the government and the professional bodies. Of course as you say it is cheaper to get ready trained doctors and nurses, otherwise we would not be able to run the NHS because we do not have them home trained. This also helps the profession because not all trained doctors can become consultants because of the somewhat pyramidal structure, and guess who ends up doing the perpetual junior work and the non-career posts and the locums? In the last one the fat agencies also get their cut of the lucre.
Craig is a great writer and thinker but on this issue his thinking seems bound by motivation not reason.
Whatever you think of the positive/negative effects of immigration you cannot doubt that immigration has an impact on life in the UK, and not just economically. There may be racists who support ending immigration, but a desire to increase immigration controls cannot surely be cast as racist in itself? If I asked Craig if he was happy for 20 million immigrants to move to Edinburgh tomorrow he might say it is not feasible for the city to accommodate them that quickly, and this is would not be a racist motive. Even if that example does not correlate to real life the precedent is set that it is possible that certain controls over immigration may be necessary at some point.
Craig rightly points out that MPs are create division in this country by sticking to impossible positions. But so is he by making such incendiary and unreasonable statements on a popular blog like this. It is not conciliatory and it merely serves to stoke division between two opposing sides.
Yes. Any full and realistic discussion of immigration in the U.K. and other Western European countries would also be a discussion about Labour’s and other historically “Left” parties’ capitulation to global neoliberalism, finance capitalism, the NATO project, and so on. But the state of our political discourse is such that one only has the time and conceptual resources for one of two equally asinine emotive stances toward immigration: BOO immigrants! and YAY immigrants!
I bet many of these same immigrants, by the way, would have preferred to be able to work and earn a living and raise a family in their own native country. What are the conditions–political, military, economic–that prevent them from doing so, and how are these conditions related to Britain’s, or the US’s or the EU’s or the World Bank’s etc. present and/or past treatment of the region? *That* is the question the moralized pseudo immigration debate prevents us from having to address.
Focusing on racism is a red herring. The fact is open borders harm both the countries receiving migrants and those the migrants are escaping from. Downward pressure on wages in host countries (no, it’s not a myth) and a brain drain from the countries people are leaving en masse. Besides most people’s idea of a good life does not involve leaving their home country to work at low-paying jobs far away from their family, friends and social networks.
This does not mean we should throw out migrants and immigrants or make them scapegoats for structural problems beyond their control. We need to ask why people are compelled to flee their countries or immigrate to “greener pastures” (war and/or economic instability often caused by the nations receiving them) and why the neoliberals are so hell bent on open borders and mass immigration (globalization and the dissolution of the nation state is their goal as it “empowers”, to use neoliberalspeak, “wealth creators” and “entrepreneurs” like the humble Jeff Bezos and his while making it impossible for people to hold the massive power accrued by corporations and banks to account).
There is a lot to discuss here and crying “racism” means you’ve been manipulated by the usual suspects who are using people’s decency and craving for social acceptance to divert attention from serious issues that affect our world. I do wish the left would remember who the enemy is (capital concentrated in the hand of neoliberal social Darwinists).
If you really want to lessen racism in our society focus on making changes “on the ground” (e.g. stopping wars against Muslims and building a fair and self-sufficient society that does not rely on endless growth or the destruction of foreign nations and their economies). Virtue signaling your opposition to bigotry or telling said bigots they are being mean is silly and counterproductive.
Brilliant comment. Articulated excellently what I’ve been trying to communicate for some time. Massive economic immigration of this kind harms both the scion and donor countries. The effects in the scion country are often discussed, but for those of us who live and work with Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles etc, it’s clear that the exodus of young working-age people only distils the negative aspects of Eastern European life they left behind: economic depression, corruption, wealth disparity.
As for why Tony Blair/George Osborne/Goldman Sachs are so insistent on Shengen? Pretty obvious – it optimizes liquidity in a commodity (labour) market which has massive asymmetry (economy differences between UK and Eastern Europe). This is can be – and has been – leveraged to massive profit gains. These gains represent the UK economic growth Craig naively celebrates, however only the employer classes get a slice of this.
Either way. Very disappointing to see Craig dropping his intellectual guard like this.
I second Garreth Brady’s praise for this comment. Well said!
I also concur with the comments above. The situation is akin to people from the likes of Barrow moving to London for career opportunity. This causes overheating of the economy in London and stagnation in Barrow.
In a EU context, donor countries are complicit as outward migration massages their unemployment figures and welfare payments downwards – a hidden subsidy from the recipient countries.
The EU is merely the legislative arm of Neoliberalism as it accepts unquestioningly the Neoliberal agenda as orthodox.
Also it is very revealing that Craig writes that the ‘Labour Party wants customs union’.
This doesn’t make sense as a sentence – he should say ‘a custom union’ or ‘the customs union’. But he doesn’t because Labour doesn’t understand what it wants and what the customs union really is.
We cannot leave the EU and be inside its custom union – it is impossible. We could have ‘a customs union’ like Turkey has agreed with the EU, but this does not solve cross-border trade – there are still huge delays on the border between Turkey and the EU.
The Single Market is what creates ease of travel of people and goods, as well as regulatory harmony between us and the EU. The Customs Union is an irrelevance and we should have nothing to do with it.
Whilst I can agree with the first few paragraphs, the headline and the rest of what Craig wrote here is dire.
Tony
Without wishing to resurrect your past traumas, may I point out that he who sees it as his mission to expose all things anti-semitic, Mark Lewis has been involved in Gilad Atzmon’s troubles: http://thesaker.is/appeal-for-help-from-gilad-atzmon/
“The truth of course is that May’s “red lines” were in fact motivated by the only consistent strand that can be traced through Theresa May’s political career – hatred of immigrants.”
Are you accusing the Prime Minister of racism, Craig? (BTW, I am not a Tory).
You are a coward Craig.
You would throw your rattle out of the pram if anyone accused you of racism, yet – without any genuine evidence – you the Prime Minister of it. Your hatred of Theresa May is clear, her views on immigrants are not.
Personally I would prefer a sensible migration policy, in order to ensure that this country does not become overcrowded. I daresay in Scotland you have plenty of space so you should allow all comers. Just make sure you can cater for them all first.
I’m a bit strange, I prefer open space and the countryside to row upon row of houses. I’m not a bit fan of other people to be honest. Call me a misanthrope, I got bullied as a teenager.
TM doesn’t hate immigrants, she just hates poor people.
As the middle class do in general.
I love this comment.
May is, as it were, an accidental racist.
If all immigrants were multimillionaire Tory donors, then those red lines turn into green dollars (or whatever color the pound notes are these days.)
By the same token, one sometimes gets the sense that May would prefer that whole sections of Liverpool and London be deported off to some suitable place (probably, given British custom, Ireland, India or Australia) upon Brexit.
John, I too like the countryside. But it’s actually a lot more serious than that. According to Wikipedia,
“Agriculture in the United Kingdom uses 69% of the country’s land area, employs 1.5% of its workforce (476,000 people) and contributes 0.62% of its gross value added (£9.9 billion).[1] The UK produces less than 60% of the food it eats”.
Just think that over for a moment – especially the last sentence. If anything happened to interrupt the flow of food from abroad, tens of millions of people would be doomed to starvation.
During WW2, by ingenuity and effort, the government managed to make Britain nearly self-sufficient in food. Within years, that huge achievement was thrown away in the mindless pursuit of ever-greater profits.
Today, after decades of foolish and ignorant governments, we are all living on the edge of a very high precipice. Bringing more people into the country, whoever they are, is a step in exactly the wrong direction.
Not if you’re a globalist, be it political and/or commercial.
Better not to conflate immigration with racism. Totally different things. Some might be concerned about race, but others are more concerned about total numbers arriving. (How will the housing crisis ever be solved (with or without social housing) when the UK population rises by a number equal to the population of Newcastle every year?)
And many do not see advantage in an independent Scotland being in the EU. EU? Independent??? The EU looks like it is in the process of falling apart. How much better it would be to have a Federation of the British Isles with open borders.
The conflation of immigration with racism is entirely intentional. Standard rhetoric even.
Let’s hang on for the EU elections in May.
This should be attractive to all both Remainers and Brexiteers.
It’s attractive to those who want to remain because it extends that possibility.
It’s attractive to those opposed to a super state US of Europe because it ay be about to change and that may become apparent from May.
If we get an extension of time and participate in the May elections then they will be a natural vote on EU. Either the parties work out their position vis a vis EU and so by voting for a party you get to vote for a position on EU or tag a 2nd referendum onto the ballot.
Brexiteers may be hostile to a second referendum but the election is on Europe so it’s a natural fit and even if there is no referendum merely by participating in that election (if we do) will in effect be a referendum (provided parties can state their position). Brexiteers should also consider whether the outcome of the EU elections could cause them to review their views on Europe i.e. whether there will be, as some predict, a move away from a journey to a Federal States of Europe and increased diversity and national power which they might feel more comfortable with.
The EU proposed to reduce European Parliament seats by 50 in Feb last year in anticipation we were to have left by this May, but the UK Electoral Commission later announced they had put circa £1million aside as a contingency in case we do participate in the election.
If Germany don’t want to offer us an extension then for goodness sake put together a coalition team of negotiators from all parties, industry and the unions to show good faith.