Trump supporters are probably the kind of dog owners who let their dog shit on the pavement or tell you "he's just being friendly" when their Rottweiler knocks your child to the ground.
Their American Pit Bulls love children, but they couldn't eat a whole one.
Cats are better because they clean up after themselves.
Then why do I have to pick their crap up out of my garden, and hose their piss off the front of my van?
They've heard of your reputation, and are returning the antipathy ?
I have a continuing battle with a manky, fat ginger creature, a sleek black cat and a fluffy black and white thing. They crawl under my drive gate, piss up my van in the car port, then muck about in the garden. I devise all sorts of schemes in my mind to deter them. Nothing works. I'm waiting for the inevitable day their obituary gets posted on Facebook.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
We would have probably had less migration without Brexit, if we're doing one of RCS's alternative histories.
I’m a convert to having fish in a pond. Better than either cats or dogs. The pond is endless hours of fun and tinkering, aiming to get the water as clear and healthy as possible, and protecting from herons.
With a dog or cat you don’t get to create an ecosystem too.
Not sure what the polling crossbreaks for fishpond owners would be. Tory, at a guess.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
What has been the effect of ending FOM on the numbers of Britons retiring to the likes of France, Italy and Spain?
I wonder if Sir Keir now considers FoM to have been a "failed free market approach to immigration".
In a EU context he is an idiot if he does.
Does he regret the Irish workers coming over to dig the canals and railway cuttings?
Think they were part of the country at the time, no?
They still migrated across the sea and pissed off the Reformers of the day. When they dug the motorways they were no longer UK citizens. Likewise the post war Commonwealth ( Windrush) immigration.
Mail on Sunday not having Sir Keir’s pretend concern about the effects of the mass immigration he & Labour supported but are trying to disown
Labour have tried to face both ways on this for some time now. But in a new White Paper they plan to embrace a ‘crackdown’ ostensibly intended to deport immigrants who commit any crime, and to somehow overcome the ‘Human Rights’ provisions which make deportation so hard and which Labour themselves wrote into British law.
We are also promised less complacency about the questionable economic benefits of mass immigration, which is seriously straining our health, welfare and school systems.
These moves are designed to create helpful headlines. But should we take any of it seriously?
While they thought they were safe from voter anger, Labour energetically pursued an open borders policy.
Now they are scared of electoral oblivion, they try to ape Nigel Farage. How they used to jeer and sneer at those who warned that their policy was foolish and unrealistic, such as the fact-based campaigning body Migration Watch.
Anyone who suggested that the levels of migration were impractically high was dismissed as some sort of bigot.
Well, now Home Office experts are admitting what Migration Watch said many years ago, that net migration has reached such levels that it is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Edinburgh to the population of the UK each year. Who are the bigots now?
There is some (deliberate) conflation here between asylum seekers/small boats/illegal migration, and legal immigration. Just look at the photo that they use - that's not of people on student visas overstaying, is it?
I think it's perfectly natural for a "labour" party to be against immigration. The minimum wage was a control against it in some respects, because it prevented the flooding of our labour market with low-wage workers. Now that we are out of the EU, I guess you could make the argument that we don't need it anymore as long as there are restrictions on inwards migration/salary controls.
And the bigoted thing is tiresome. The trouble is that some of those who are most against immigration are bigots, dominate the discussion about it and don't like being called out.
And many of those who are most happy clappy about migration too use the bigot label on everyone who dares criticise immigration.
Mail on Sunday not having Sir Keir’s pretend concern about the effects of the mass immigration he & Labour supported but are trying to disown
Labour have tried to face both ways on this for some time now. But in a new White Paper they plan to embrace a ‘crackdown’ ostensibly intended to deport immigrants who commit any crime, and to somehow overcome the ‘Human Rights’ provisions which make deportation so hard and which Labour themselves wrote into British law.
We are also promised less complacency about the questionable economic benefits of mass immigration, which is seriously straining our health, welfare and school systems.
These moves are designed to create helpful headlines. But should we take any of it seriously?
While they thought they were safe from voter anger, Labour energetically pursued an open borders policy.
Now they are scared of electoral oblivion, they try to ape Nigel Farage. How they used to jeer and sneer at those who warned that their policy was foolish and unrealistic, such as the fact-based campaigning body Migration Watch.
Anyone who suggested that the levels of migration were impractically high was dismissed as some sort of bigot.
Well, now Home Office experts are admitting what Migration Watch said many years ago, that net migration has reached such levels that it is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Edinburgh to the population of the UK each year. Who are the bigots now?
As I posted on the previous thread. Thanks to the Boriswave and ILR after Five years, we have a ticking time bomb that will cost up to 234 Billion GDP of low wage workers with economically inactive dependents.
This is something Starmer needs to do something about. He won’t as he, and his party, are fundamentally wedded to it.
For this reason alone the Tories should have a long and tormented road back to power.
Both Labour and Tories should be consigned to the dustbin of history.
What swamp are you going to dredge for their replacements though?
More of the same is not the answer.
It says "eventually voters found them out", but ironically none of the three leaders mentioned (Trudeau, Sturgeon and Ardern) lost an election. They might well have gone on to do so, but that's true of most leaders.
Interesting to see that the Murdoch press is putting up such a hatchet job on Davey and the Lib Dems. I think they are reading the runes for the Tories and finding that they Lib Dems are set to gain a powerful revenge for the 2015 attempt by Cameron to destroy them.
I think that as the Lib Dems make further progress we will see a lot more of this. However as the power of mass media continues to decline it is an open question as to how effective it will be. I think the Lib Dems will live to see the body of Murdoch floating past down the stream as they have several other of their enemies of recent years.
Cameron also set out to destroy them. Witney is now a Lib Dem seat.
Caveat - the polling doesn't show the Lib Dems doing particularly well, and the last few polls I looked at does not demonstrate many GE '24 Tories switching over to them. Even if there was massive tactical voting on the left, the LDs would not get much more than 100 seats.
It's the same as for Labour switchers to Reform - the Tories that were going to switch to the Lib Dems have already done so.
I find the Tory -> Lib Dem switcher thing quite interesting. I am sure it exists, particularly given their recent success in the southern county battles, but as someone who would class myself as a thoroughly fed up, politically homeless centre-right voter who has absolutely no clue who I will vote for next time at the moment (having voted Labour in 2024) I should really be gravitating towards the LDs. But I’m not.
If I was forced to explain why, I think it’s because they are still far too much the “all things to all people” party. The NIMBY opportunism puts me off, and given the state of the country I would respect them far more if they told some uncomfortable truths. To Davey’s credit he does come across very authentically on the care question. I would need to see a lot more of things like that, if I were to consider lending them a vote.
Mail on Sunday not having Sir Keir’s pretend concern about the effects of the mass immigration he & Labour supported but are trying to disown
Labour have tried to face both ways on this for some time now. But in a new White Paper they plan to embrace a ‘crackdown’ ostensibly intended to deport immigrants who commit any crime, and to somehow overcome the ‘Human Rights’ provisions which make deportation so hard and which Labour themselves wrote into British law.
We are also promised less complacency about the questionable economic benefits of mass immigration, which is seriously straining our health, welfare and school systems.
These moves are designed to create helpful headlines. But should we take any of it seriously?
While they thought they were safe from voter anger, Labour energetically pursued an open borders policy.
Now they are scared of electoral oblivion, they try to ape Nigel Farage. How they used to jeer and sneer at those who warned that their policy was foolish and unrealistic, such as the fact-based campaigning body Migration Watch.
Anyone who suggested that the levels of migration were impractically high was dismissed as some sort of bigot.
Well, now Home Office experts are admitting what Migration Watch said many years ago, that net migration has reached such levels that it is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Edinburgh to the population of the UK each year. Who are the bigots now?
There is some (deliberate) conflation here between asylum seekers/small boats/illegal migration, and legal immigration. Just look at the photo that they use - that's not of people on student visas overstaying, is it?
I think it's perfectly natural for a "labour" party to be against immigration. The minimum wage was a control against it in some respects, because it prevented the flooding of our labour market with low-wage workers. Now that we are out of the EU, I guess you could make the argument that we don't need it anymore as long as there are restrictions on inwards migration/salary controls.
And the bigoted thing is tiresome. The trouble is that some of those who are most against immigration are bigots, dominate the discussion about it and don't like being called out.
And many of those who are most happy clappy about migration too use the bigot label on everyone who dares criticise immigration.
Who is "happy clappy" about immigration, except of course Johnson?
Mail on Sunday not having Sir Keir’s pretend concern about the effects of the mass immigration he & Labour supported but are trying to disown
Labour have tried to face both ways on this for some time now. But in a new White Paper they plan to embrace a ‘crackdown’ ostensibly intended to deport immigrants who commit any crime, and to somehow overcome the ‘Human Rights’ provisions which make deportation so hard and which Labour themselves wrote into British law.
We are also promised less complacency about the questionable economic benefits of mass immigration, which is seriously straining our health, welfare and school systems.
These moves are designed to create helpful headlines. But should we take any of it seriously?
While they thought they were safe from voter anger, Labour energetically pursued an open borders policy.
Now they are scared of electoral oblivion, they try to ape Nigel Farage. How they used to jeer and sneer at those who warned that their policy was foolish and unrealistic, such as the fact-based campaigning body Migration Watch.
Anyone who suggested that the levels of migration were impractically high was dismissed as some sort of bigot.
Well, now Home Office experts are admitting what Migration Watch said many years ago, that net migration has reached such levels that it is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Edinburgh to the population of the UK each year. Who are the bigots now?
As I posted on the previous thread. Thanks to the Boriswave and ILR after Five years, we have a ticking time bomb that will cost up to 234 Billion GDP of low wage workers with economically inactive dependents.
This is something Starmer needs to do something about. He won’t as he, and his party, are fundamentally wedded to it.
For this reason alone the Tories should have a long and tormented road back to power.
Both Labour and Tories should be consigned to the dustbin of history.
What swamp are you going to dredge for their replacements though?
More of the same is not the answer.
It says "eventually voters found them out", but ironically none of the three leaders mentioned (Trudeau, Sturgeon and Ardern) lost an election. They might well have gone on to do so, but that's true of most leaders.
Interesting to see that the Murdoch press is putting up such a hatchet job on Davey and the Lib Dems. I think they are reading the runes for the Tories and finding that they Lib Dems are set to gain a powerful revenge for the 2015 attempt by Cameron to destroy them.
I think that as the Lib Dems make further progress we will see a lot more of this. However as the power of mass media continues to decline it is an open question as to how effective it will be. I think the Lib Dems will live to see the body of Murdoch floating past down the stream as they have several other of their enemies of recent years.
Cameron also set out to destroy them. Witney is now a Lib Dem seat.
Caveat - the polling doesn't show the Lib Dems doing particularly well, and the last few polls I looked at does not demonstrate many GE '24 Tories switching over to them. Even if there was massive tactical voting on the left, the LDs would not get much more than 100 seats.
It's the same as for Labour switchers to Reform - the Tories that were going to switch to the Lib Dems have already done so.
If the stories about Ahern's now husband which I heard in every Bar in North Island were even a quarter true I don't think she will be a guest star at any Lib Dem conference here soon. Google Ninety Mile Beach
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
What has been the effect of ending FOM on the numbers of Britons retiring to the likes of France, Italy and Spain?
Rather annoying given that it was my retirement plan...
Mail on Sunday not having Sir Keir’s pretend concern about the effects of the mass immigration he & Labour supported but are trying to disown
Labour have tried to face both ways on this for some time now. But in a new White Paper they plan to embrace a ‘crackdown’ ostensibly intended to deport immigrants who commit any crime, and to somehow overcome the ‘Human Rights’ provisions which make deportation so hard and which Labour themselves wrote into British law.
We are also promised less complacency about the questionable economic benefits of mass immigration, which is seriously straining our health, welfare and school systems.
These moves are designed to create helpful headlines. But should we take any of it seriously?
While they thought they were safe from voter anger, Labour energetically pursued an open borders policy.
Now they are scared of electoral oblivion, they try to ape Nigel Farage. How they used to jeer and sneer at those who warned that their policy was foolish and unrealistic, such as the fact-based campaigning body Migration Watch.
Anyone who suggested that the levels of migration were impractically high was dismissed as some sort of bigot.
Well, now Home Office experts are admitting what Migration Watch said many years ago, that net migration has reached such levels that it is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Edinburgh to the population of the UK each year. Who are the bigots now?
As I posted on the previous thread. Thanks to the Boriswave and ILR after Five years, we have a ticking time bomb that will cost up to 234 Billion GDP of low wage workers with economically inactive dependents.
This is something Starmer needs to do something about. He won’t as he, and his party, are fundamentally wedded to it.
For this reason alone the Tories should have a long and tormented road back to power.
Both Labour and Tories should be consigned to the dustbin of history.
What swamp are you going to dredge for their replacements though?
More of the same is not the answer.
It says "eventually voters found them out", but ironically none of the three leaders mentioned (Trudeau, Sturgeon and Ardern) lost an election. They might well have gone on to do so, but that's true of most leaders.
Interesting to see that the Murdoch press is putting up such a hatchet job on Davey and the Lib Dems. I think they are reading the runes for the Tories and finding that they Lib Dems are set to gain a powerful revenge for the 2015 attempt by Cameron to destroy them.
I think that as the Lib Dems make further progress we will see a lot more of this. However as the power of mass media continues to decline it is an open question as to how effective it will be. I think the Lib Dems will live to see the body of Murdoch floating past down the stream as they have several other of their enemies of recent years.
Cameron also set out to destroy them. Witney is now a Lib Dem seat.
Caveat - the polling doesn't show the Lib Dems doing particularly well, and the last few polls I looked at does not demonstrate many GE '24 Tories switching over to them. Even if there was massive tactical voting on the left, the LDs would not get much more than 100 seats.
It's the same as for Labour switchers to Reform - the Tories that were going to switch to the Lib Dems have already done so.
If the stories about Ahern's now husband which I heard in every Bar in North Island were even a quarter true I don't think she will be a guest star at any Lib Dem conference here soon. Google Ninety Mile Beach
Have you just randomly brought up an unsubtantiated internet rumour about a man with known litigious tendencies?
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
What has been the effect of ending FOM on the numbers of Britons retiring to the likes of France, Italy and Spain?
Rather annoying given that it was my retirement plan...
I was schooled on this a couple of years ago by @Richard_Tyndall and it does seem that in most of those countries if you have sufficient income and assets there are ways to spend most of your time abroad. It’s harder if you’re a. poor, or b. looking to work, and/or c. wanting to rely on local healthcare and social services.
FPT - isn't the issue that degrees used to be the gold standard for an excellent education and highly skilled worker ready to enter the workforce, and no longer are?
Is a 2025 graduate from a Russell Group university worth the same as a 1995 one?
Probably but the issue is the sheer number of graduates. One of mine was Russell Group but most went on to a Masters or PhD to differentiate. Some did all three!
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
The Conservatives were unlucky. I don't think we would have noticed the Boriswave of legal economic/student migration to the same extent if it wasn't for the massive spike in Albanians coming over on small boats in 2022.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
The Conservatives were unlucky. I don't think we would have noticed the Boriswave of legal economic/student migration to the same extent if it wasn't for the massive spike in Albanians coming over on small boats in 2022.
Once they decided they wanted to bump up student numbers to 500k they simply had to go back to excluding them from migration stats. That they did not do that is incompetence not bad luck. From a practical point of view we needed to build accommodation for said students too, and we didn't. Probably didn't even think about, just policy pick'n'mix rather than thought through.
There is no way this wouldn't be an issue regardless of the asylum situation, although that has made it worse.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
His problem there will be that the voters he is trying to con with his phoney concern don't think the low hundreds of thousands is sensible
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
The USA has a large urban-rural political divide. Id have thought people in more rural areas and suburbs would be more likely to be dog owners compared to their urban counterparts so the polling reflects this.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
GDP per capita is tricky because a working immigrant is almost always going to increase that, unless they bring in more dependents than our current working:non-working ratio.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
His problem there will be that the voters he is trying to con with his phoney concern don't think the low hundreds of thousands is sensible
I doubt it is phoney. I hold a similar view and it is genuine, the numbers are too high recently especially without house building.
And the people who thought the low hundreds of thousands were a problem are the very same people who put someone in charge who brought in close to a million instead, just perhaps their judgment isn't all that good......
Neidle's X makes it sounds like local party associations are in fact evading tax tbh
"Why aren’t they paying tax?
On the basis of the discussions we had with some of the local parties, we believe the most common reason is simply: they don’t understand that they should be filing and (in most cases) paying corporation tax."
This sort of thing has been going on in America for the last couple of decades at least. Not tariffs or voting for Trump, but people playing by what they think are the rules to get ahead, and then getting screwed. Working hard at school and college but the firm is taken over, the factory closes or IT jobs are outsourced and admin jobs automated away, or in this case setting up a side-hustle that might grow into a small business. It is the death of the American dream. It is why people voted MAGA (even if we laugh at the irony of Trump making things worse).
It is happening here as well, perhaps in a slightly different form. We've been discussing student loans but of course we are sending half the population to university on the promise of good jobs when they graduate but for most, either there are no jobs or there are no good jobs.
It is the same story. People are following the rules, or what they were told were the rules to get ahead, but it's not working because politicians lied, or well-meaning politicians were too stupid to realise they were lying.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
As with the header, GDP per head might correlate with increased immigration, but it may just be coincidence, or caused by something else. Intuitively, the big increase in numbers of retired people feels like it ought to be more relevant.
Another mystery. Most countries that import workers tend to do so at the bottom of the pay scale, leaving the top jobs for the locals. The UK political consensus seems to be heading the other way. It's possible that we're right and they're wrong, but it's strikingly odd.
This sort of thing has been going on in America for the last couple of decades at least. Not tariffs or voting for Trump, but people playing by what they think are the rules to get ahead, and then getting screwed. Working hard at school and college but the firm is taken over, the factory closes or IT jobs are outsourced and admin jobs automated away, or in this case setting up a side-hustle that might grow into a small business. It is the death of the American dream. It is why people voted MAGA (even if we laugh at the irony of Trump making things worse).
It is happening here as well, perhaps in a slightly different form. We've been discussing student loans but of course we are sending half the population to university on the promise of good jobs when they graduate but for most, either there are no jobs or there are no good jobs.
It is the same story. People are following the rules, or what they were told were the rules to get ahead, but it's not working because politicians lied, or well-meaning politicians were too stupid to realise they were lying.
Guy who runs an import business, voting for the tariff candidate, isn't "following the rules"; he's just being foolish.
Yes, Trump lies every time he opens his mouth, but that was one thing that was quite predictable.
It's an absolute disgrace, Labour trying to win back voters that they have lost to Reform. How dare they!
For the record, there's lots of us on the left who think:
a) legal migration has been far too high over the last 5 years, and b) the asylum system is a shambles, and it's ludicrous that asylum seekers have to be housed in hotels and other unsuitable accommodation - it needs sorting.
I wonder if Sir Keir now considers FoM to have been "a failed free market approach to immigration".
Yvette Cooper said something like that on the BBC this morning. They are so two faced, it feels like I'm in another dimension
They have more faces than the town clock never mind two. She is as useless as ever , an empty windbag with no clue about anything.
Yvette Cooper for Chancellor!! She's got a mathematician parent like Liz Truss, and an Oxford PPE degree and MSc in Economics from the LSE, like Rachel Reeves. What could go wrong?
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
His problem there will be that the voters he is trying to con with his phoney concern don't think the low hundreds of thousands is sensible
I doubt it is phoney. I hold a similar view and it is genuine, the numbers are too high recently especially without house building.
And the people who thought the low hundreds of thousands were a problem are the very same people who put someone in charge who brought in close to a million instead, just perhaps their judgment isn't all that good......
I think there's also the fact nobody doubts that families of Polish, Romanian etc. workers would be about as 'foreign' as the Huguenots now are within a generation or two.
Cats are better because they clean up after themselves.
Then why do I have to pick their crap up out of my garden, and hose their piss off the front of my van?
They've heard of your reputation, and are returning the antipathy ?
I have a continuing battle with a manky, fat ginger creature, a sleek black cat and a fluffy black and white thing. They crawl under my drive gate, piss up my van in the car port, then muck about in the garden. I devise all sorts of schemes in my mind to deter them. Nothing works. I'm waiting for the inevitable day their obituary gets posted on Facebook.
Manky fat ginger creature? I now can’t unsee a vision of Trump crawling under your gate!
It's an absolute disgrace, Labour trying to win back voters that they have lost to Reform. How dare they!
For the record, there's lots of us on the left who think:
a) legal migration has been far too high over the last 5 years, and b) the asylum system is a shambles, and it's ludicrous that asylum seekers have to be housed in hotels and other unsuitable accommodation - it needs sorting.
And c) whatever is done has to be within the bounds of law, practicality and decency. That doesn't have to mean "let them all in", but it's all Team 2019-24 we're capable of.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
As with the header, GDP per head might correlate with increased immigration, but it may just be coincidence, or caused by something else. Intuitively, the big increase in numbers of retired people feels like it ought to be more relevant.
Another mystery. Most countries that import workers tend to do so at the bottom of the pay scale, leaving the top jobs for the locals. The UK political consensus seems to be heading the other way. It's possible that we're right and they're wrong, but it's strikingly odd.
What we say and what we do is different though. Very much so under the Tories.
Logically looking at vacancy rates, demographics, clearly we need people to work in care. The rest we could probably fudge without immigration at a cost, especially if we settle for a more limited health service.
Then what we should want is the high value, high tax generating type of immigration on top.
The right only talk about what we want and not what we need.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
His problem there will be that the voters he is trying to con with his phoney concern don't think the low hundreds of thousands is sensible
I doubt it is phoney. I hold a similar view and it is genuine, the numbers are too high recently especially without house building.
And the people who thought the low hundreds of thousands were a problem are the very same people who put someone in charge who brought in close to a million instead, just perhaps their judgment isn't all that good......
That's a nice attempt a smart arse pay off, but I think you should know better than that.
Basically voting for Boris was the only way anyone who wanted what they thought in 2016 would be the straightforward process of voting Leave being recognised. It's to the shame of people like Starmer that they tried so hard to ignore the democratic vote they promised to implement.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
But is that necessarily a bad thing ?
Is having hundreds of thousands circling in and then out a few years later better for communities than having hundreds of thousands staying and becoming part of that community ?
Of course who the individual immigrants are is also a factor.
For example English speaking Nigerian Christians have a better chance of integrating well than many other groups, including some from the EU.
It's an absolute disgrace, Labour trying to win back voters that they have lost to Reform. How dare they!
For the record, there's lots of us on the left who think:
a) legal migration has been far too high over the last 5 years, and b) the asylum system is a shambles, and it's ludicrous that asylum seekers have to be housed in hotels and other unsuitable accommodation - it needs sorting.
Trouble is, the corollary of (b) might be even worse politically, if HMG moves asylum seekers out of hotels and into Angela Rayner's newly-built homes.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
The Sunak and Cleverly visa restrictions and controls on dependents migrating too should cut the immigration figures even before Cooper's measures announced today
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
His problem there will be that the voters he is trying to con with his phoney concern don't think the low hundreds of thousands is sensible
I doubt it is phoney. I hold a similar view and it is genuine, the numbers are too high recently especially without house building.
And the people who thought the low hundreds of thousands were a problem are the very same people who put someone in charge who brought in close to a million instead, just perhaps their judgment isn't all that good......
That's a nice attempt a smart arse pay off, but I think you should know better than that.
Basically voting for Boris was the only way anyone who wanted what they thought in 2016 would be the straightforward process of voting Leave being recognised. It's to the shame of people like Starmer that they tried so hard to ignore the democratic vote they promised to implement.
The only reason people like Starmer even have power right now because Boris and the ERG wing of the Tories took Leave voters for fools.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
It's about as authentic as a Sunak tweet. No-one seriously believes Starmer talks or thinks like this - so it's only going to reinforce perceptions of him, further alienating both Reform-leaners and LD/Green/SNP/Plaid-leaners. And for Labour there are far more of the latter than the former. The lesson to learn from Nigel Farage is not about being tough on immigration, it’s about not allowing your political opponents to set the agenda. Sunak never learned this lesson. Starmer hasn't either.
It's an absolute disgrace, Labour trying to win back voters that they have lost to Reform. How dare they!
For the record, there's lots of us on the left who think:
a) legal migration has been far too high over the last 5 years, and b) the asylum system is a shambles, and it's ludicrous that asylum seekers have to be housed in hotels and other unsuitable accommodation - it needs sorting.
Maybe, but let’s not pretend the general language of the left in the past decade or so has in any way majored on this - often the opposite. There is a reason why people don’t feel Labour are in tune with their concerns on this. Now they may be able to recover some good standing, but they start from a position of distrust, and the jury is still out.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
The economic case for migration seems to come from one (foreign) individual:
Let’s start in 2003. That was the year the Home Office published its official report, authored by the UCL economist Christian Dustmann (of whom more later) estimating that only 5,000-13,000 additional migrants a year would come to Britain when the eastern bloc acceded to the EU in 2004. By 2007, 750,000 had arrived.
...
Since at least 2002, we’ve been told by officialdom that more immigration always brings economic benefits. Among the most influential papers supposedly proving this were: a 2005 Home Office study claiming migrants had little impact on native jobs and wages; a 2010 study published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies finding that migrants from the eastern bloc were large net contributors to the exchequer; and a 2014 update arguing the same in more detail. What all of these studies have in common is their lead author: Christian Dustmann. The very same Dustmann whose hopelessly flawed model was used to justify opening the gates in 2004.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
His problem there will be that the voters he is trying to con with his phoney concern don't think the low hundreds of thousands is sensible
I doubt it is phoney. I hold a similar view and it is genuine, the numbers are too high recently especially without house building.
And the people who thought the low hundreds of thousands were a problem are the very same people who put someone in charge who brought in close to a million instead, just perhaps their judgment isn't all that good......
That's a nice attempt a smart arse pay off, but I think you should know better than that.
Basically voting for Boris was the only way anyone who wanted what they thought in 2016 would be the straightforward process of voting Leave being recognised. It's to the shame of people like Starmer that they tried so hard to ignore the democratic vote they promised to implement.
The only reason people like Starmer even have power right now because Boris and the ERG wing of the Tories took Leave voters for fools.
I would put it the other way round. The leave voters were fools for believing Boris and the ERG.
Mail on Sunday not having Sir Keir’s pretend concern about the effects of the mass immigration he & Labour supported but are trying to disown
Labour have tried to face both ways on this for some time now. But in a new White Paper they plan to embrace a ‘crackdown’ ostensibly intended to deport immigrants who commit any crime, and to somehow overcome the ‘Human Rights’ provisions which make deportation so hard and which Labour themselves wrote into British law.
We are also promised less complacency about the questionable economic benefits of mass immigration, which is seriously straining our health, welfare and school systems.
These moves are designed to create helpful headlines. But should we take any of it seriously?
While they thought they were safe from voter anger, Labour energetically pursued an open borders policy.
Now they are scared of electoral oblivion, they try to ape Nigel Farage. How they used to jeer and sneer at those who warned that their policy was foolish and unrealistic, such as the fact-based campaigning body Migration Watch.
Anyone who suggested that the levels of migration were impractically high was dismissed as some sort of bigot.
Well, now Home Office experts are admitting what Migration Watch said many years ago, that net migration has reached such levels that it is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Edinburgh to the population of the UK each year. Who are the bigots now?
There is some (deliberate) conflation here between asylum seekers/small boats/illegal migration, and legal immigration. Just look at the photo that they use - that's not of people on student visas overstaying, is it?
I think it's perfectly natural for a "labour" party to be against immigration. The minimum wage was a control against it in some respects, because it prevented the flooding of our labour market with low-wage workers. Now that we are out of the EU, I guess you could make the argument that we don't need it anymore as long as there are restrictions on inwards migration/salary controls.
And the bigoted thing is tiresome. The trouble is that some of those who are most against immigration are bigots, dominate the discussion about it and don't like being called out.
Yes, it is natural that a party called Labour should want to protect British workers from the effects of mass migration, but as we all know, Labour isn't that sort of party, if it ever was, and has long since given itself over to representing global corporate interests against the people it has used as voting fodder.
Like your surprise post the other day that 'we must subsidise industrial energy because it's too expensive', this is a dog's dinner of excuses, 'twas ever thus's, and half-hearted acknowledgements, because you've realised politics is massively swinging away from the deeply damaging and anti-human policies that you and others have espoused.
It is inadequate and tissue thin, but it is an improvement at least on 'we just need someone with charisma who can put a positive spin on this' that has been the general PB-leftie vibe since the election.
Mail on Sunday not having Sir Keir’s pretend concern about the effects of the mass immigration he & Labour supported but are trying to disown
Labour have tried to face both ways on this for some time now. But in a new White Paper they plan to embrace a ‘crackdown’ ostensibly intended to deport immigrants who commit any crime, and to somehow overcome the ‘Human Rights’ provisions which make deportation so hard and which Labour themselves wrote into British law.
We are also promised less complacency about the questionable economic benefits of mass immigration, which is seriously straining our health, welfare and school systems.
These moves are designed to create helpful headlines. But should we take any of it seriously?
While they thought they were safe from voter anger, Labour energetically pursued an open borders policy.
Now they are scared of electoral oblivion, they try to ape Nigel Farage. How they used to jeer and sneer at those who warned that their policy was foolish and unrealistic, such as the fact-based campaigning body Migration Watch.
Anyone who suggested that the levels of migration were impractically high was dismissed as some sort of bigot.
Well, now Home Office experts are admitting what Migration Watch said many years ago, that net migration has reached such levels that it is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Edinburgh to the population of the UK each year. Who are the bigots now?
There is some (deliberate) conflation here between asylum seekers/small boats/illegal migration, and legal immigration. Just look at the photo that they use - that's not of people on student visas overstaying, is it?
I think it's perfectly natural for a "labour" party to be against immigration. The minimum wage was a control against it in some respects, because it prevented the flooding of our labour market with low-wage workers. Now that we are out of the EU, I guess you could make the argument that we don't need it anymore as long as there are restrictions on inwards migration/salary controls.
And the bigoted thing is tiresome. The trouble is that some of those who are most against immigration are bigots, dominate the discussion about it and don't like being called out.
Yes, it is natural that a party called Labour should want to protect British workers from the effects of mass migration, but as we all know, Labour isn't that sort of party, if it ever was, and has long since given itself over to representing global corporate interests against the people it has used as voting fodder.
Like your surprise post the other day that 'we must subsidise industrial energy because it's too expensive', this is a dog's dinner of excuses, 'twas ever thus's, and half-hearted acknowledgements, because you've realised politics is massively swinging away from the deeply damaging and anti-human policies that you and others have espoused.
It is inadequate and tissue thin, but it is an improvement at least on 'we just need someone with charisma who can put a positive spin on this' that has been the general PB-leftie vibe since the election.
Labour was once the party to protect British workers, but gave it up under Blair in return for power.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
FOM was and is very fluid. In many southern and eastern European countries, for example, economies have developed and the need to go elsewhere to find decent paying work has substantially reduced. We would not be getting close to as many Poles coming to the UK now as we did prior to Brexit. We'd still be sending our non-productive pensioners to the sunny south though.
I wonder if Sir Keir now considers FoM to have been "a failed free market approach to immigration".
Yvette Cooper said something like that on the BBC this morning. They are so two faced, it feels like I'm in another dimension
They have more faces than the town clock never mind two. She is as useless as ever , an empty windbag with no clue about anything.
Yvette Cooper for Chancellor!! She's got a mathematician parent like Liz Truss, and an Oxford PPE degree and MSc in Economics from the LSE, like Rachel Reeves. What could go wrong?
But she doesn't wear the necklace. Can she deliver the smack of firm government? Maybe Ed can advise.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
It's about as authentic as a Sunak tweet. No-one seriously believes Starmer talks or thinks like this - so it's only going to reinforce perceptions of him, further alienating both Reform-leaners and LD/Green/SNP/Plaid-leaners. And for Labour there are far more of the latter than the former. The lesson to learn from Nigel Farage is not about being tough on immigration, it’s about not allowing your political opponents to set the agenda. Sunak never learned this lesson. Starmer hasn't either.
Um, yes and no. 1) Labour still needs to try and keep it's Reform-curious voters on board. Delivering on what it's good at such as public services, the NHS etc. I agree is the best way to do so, but it still needs to allay their concerns on migration to some degree (even if they can't outbid Farage in this area). 2) Some non-Lab progressive voters can be squeezed if Labour are in a two-horse race with Farage... particularly in Lab-Ref marginals. 3) There are 2019 Tory voters who sat on their hands last time, who might come and vote for Farage next time. Even if Labour can't win these voters, they are still going to want them to stay home then piss them off so much they decide to turn out for Farage.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
His problem there will be that the voters he is trying to con with his phoney concern don't think the low hundreds of thousands is sensible
I doubt it is phoney. I hold a similar view and it is genuine, the numbers are too high recently especially without house building.
And the people who thought the low hundreds of thousands were a problem are the very same people who put someone in charge who brought in close to a million instead, just perhaps their judgment isn't all that good......
That's a nice attempt a smart arse pay off, but I think you should know better than that.
Basically voting for Boris was the only way anyone who wanted what they thought in 2016 would be the straightforward process of voting Leave being recognised. It's to the shame of people like Starmer that they tried so hard to ignore the democratic vote they promised to implement.
The only reason people like Starmer even have power right now because Boris and the ERG wing of the Tories took Leave voters for fools.
I would put it the other way round. The leave voters were fools for believing Boris and the ERG.
At the 2019 GE, Leave voters had a choice between voting Tory, & having their Leave vote implemented, or voting for anyone else and tossing a coin about the referendum result being overturned. So it wasn't a case of being made fools of; Boris did implement the Leave vote, and that's why we voted for him. He didn't do as expected on immigration, but at least we have the ability to do something about it now.
Mail on Sunday not having Sir Keir’s pretend concern about the effects of the mass immigration he & Labour supported but are trying to disown
Labour have tried to face both ways on this for some time now. But in a new White Paper they plan to embrace a ‘crackdown’ ostensibly intended to deport immigrants who commit any crime, and to somehow overcome the ‘Human Rights’ provisions which make deportation so hard and which Labour themselves wrote into British law.
We are also promised less complacency about the questionable economic benefits of mass immigration, which is seriously straining our health, welfare and school systems.
These moves are designed to create helpful headlines. But should we take any of it seriously?
While they thought they were safe from voter anger, Labour energetically pursued an open borders policy.
Now they are scared of electoral oblivion, they try to ape Nigel Farage. How they used to jeer and sneer at those who warned that their policy was foolish and unrealistic, such as the fact-based campaigning body Migration Watch.
Anyone who suggested that the levels of migration were impractically high was dismissed as some sort of bigot.
Well, now Home Office experts are admitting what Migration Watch said many years ago, that net migration has reached such levels that it is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Edinburgh to the population of the UK each year. Who are the bigots now?
There is some (deliberate) conflation here between asylum seekers/small boats/illegal migration, and legal immigration. Just look at the photo that they use - that's not of people on student visas overstaying, is it?
I think it's perfectly natural for a "labour" party to be against immigration. The minimum wage was a control against it in some respects, because it prevented the flooding of our labour market with low-wage workers. Now that we are out of the EU, I guess you could make the argument that we don't need it anymore as long as there are restrictions on inwards migration/salary controls.
And the bigoted thing is tiresome. The trouble is that some of those who are most against immigration are bigots, dominate the discussion about it and don't like being called out.
Yes, it is natural that a party called Labour should want to protect British workers from the effects of mass migration, but as we all know, Labour isn't that sort of party, if it ever was, and has long since given itself over to representing global corporate interests against the people it has used as voting fodder.
Like your surprise post the other day that 'we must subsidise industrial energy because it's too expensive', this is a dog's dinner of excuses, 'twas ever thus's, and half-hearted acknowledgements, because you've realised politics is massively swinging away from the deeply damaging and anti-human policies that you and others have espoused.
It is inadequate and tissue thin, but it is an improvement at least on 'we just need someone with charisma who can put a positive spin on this' that has been the general PB-leftie vibe since the election.
Labour was once the party to protect British workers, but gave it up under Blair in return for power.
Labour in the 20th century was the party of the white working class.
Labour in the 21st century is the party of the public sector, ethnic minorities, especially Muslims and students as their core vote (albeit with some leakage now even of those groups to the Greens and Independents since Starmer became their leader).
Reform have now replaced Labour as the main party of the white working class
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
That's a narrative which makes no differentiation between net migration of (for example) 160k p/a and 750k p/a. Which is clearly bullshit.
There's a good case to be made for limiting migration to manageable levels - and a serious debate about what that number might be.
Your account isn't that - it's just "immigration is unacceptable".
Mail on Sunday not having Sir Keir’s pretend concern about the effects of the mass immigration he & Labour supported but are trying to disown
Labour have tried to face both ways on this for some time now. But in a new White Paper they plan to embrace a ‘crackdown’ ostensibly intended to deport immigrants who commit any crime, and to somehow overcome the ‘Human Rights’ provisions which make deportation so hard and which Labour themselves wrote into British law.
We are also promised less complacency about the questionable economic benefits of mass immigration, which is seriously straining our health, welfare and school systems.
These moves are designed to create helpful headlines. But should we take any of it seriously?
While they thought they were safe from voter anger, Labour energetically pursued an open borders policy.
Now they are scared of electoral oblivion, they try to ape Nigel Farage. How they used to jeer and sneer at those who warned that their policy was foolish and unrealistic, such as the fact-based campaigning body Migration Watch.
Anyone who suggested that the levels of migration were impractically high was dismissed as some sort of bigot.
Well, now Home Office experts are admitting what Migration Watch said many years ago, that net migration has reached such levels that it is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Edinburgh to the population of the UK each year. Who are the bigots now?
There is some (deliberate) conflation here between asylum seekers/small boats/illegal migration, and legal immigration. Just look at the photo that they use - that's not of people on student visas overstaying, is it?
I think it's perfectly natural for a "labour" party to be against immigration. The minimum wage was a control against it in some respects, because it prevented the flooding of our labour market with low-wage workers. Now that we are out of the EU, I guess you could make the argument that we don't need it anymore as long as there are restrictions on inwards migration/salary controls.
And the bigoted thing is tiresome. The trouble is that some of those who are most against immigration are bigots, dominate the discussion about it and don't like being called out.
Yes, it is natural that a party called Labour should want to protect British workers from the effects of mass migration, but as we all know, Labour isn't that sort of party, if it ever was, and has long since given itself over to representing global corporate interests against the people it has used as voting fodder.
Like your surprise post the other day that 'we must subsidise industrial energy because it's too expensive', this is a dog's dinner of excuses, 'twas ever thus's, and half-hearted acknowledgements, because you've realised politics is massively swinging away from the deeply damaging and anti-human policies that you and others have espoused.
It is inadequate and tissue thin, but it is an improvement at least on 'we just need someone with charisma who can put a positive spin on this' that has been the general PB-leftie vibe since the election.
I don't see why this version of Labour under Starmer can't be different. Why are you getting so upset about them moving to this position?
(*industrial electricity, not energy. I think we should make it relatively more attractive than gas/petrol because it's much better for the environment and we will have a plentiful domestic electricity supply in the future. I think it's mad we tax to it such an extent. )
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
It's about as authentic as a Sunak tweet. No-one seriously believes Starmer talks or thinks like this - so it's only going to reinforce perceptions of him, further alienating both Reform-leaners and LD/Green/SNP/Plaid-leaners. And for Labour there are far more of the latter than the former. The lesson to learn from Nigel Farage is not about being tough on immigration, it’s about not allowing your political opponents to set the agenda. Sunak never learned this lesson. Starmer hasn't either.
Um, yes and no. 1) Labour still needs to try and keep it's Reform-curious voters on board. Delivering on what it's good at such as public services, the NHS etc. I agree is the best way to do so, but it still needs to allay their concerns on migration to some degree (even if they can't outbid Farage in this area). 2) Some non-Lab progressive voters can be squeezed if Labour are in a two-horse race with Farage... particularly in Lab-Ref marginals. 3) There are 2019 Tory voters who sat on their hands last time, who might come and vote for Farage next time. Even if Labour can't win these voters, they are still going to want them to stay home then piss them off so much they decide to turn out for Farage.
There will always be people who prioritise immigration as an issue above all others. They will never, ever vote Labour. For the rest, the way to win their support is to deal with the issues that immigrants are usually blamed for causing - low pay, high crime, poor public services and a lack of housing supply. What is being announced this week will make next to no difference to any of these.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
FOM was and is very fluid. In many southern and eastern European countries, for example, economies have developed and the need to go elsewhere to find decent paying work has substantially reduced. We would not be getting close to as many Poles coming to the UK now as we did prior to Brexit. We'd still be sending our non-productive pensioners to the sunny south though.
We might not get as many skilled workers but we'd still be attractive for the unskilled.
We would be even more attractive for demographics discriminated against in Eastern Europe with the political shifts taking place there.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
His problem there will be that the voters he is trying to con with his phoney concern don't think the low hundreds of thousands is sensible
I doubt it is phoney. I hold a similar view and it is genuine, the numbers are too high recently especially without house building.
And the people who thought the low hundreds of thousands were a problem are the very same people who put someone in charge who brought in close to a million instead, just perhaps their judgment isn't all that good......
That's a nice attempt a smart arse pay off, but I think you should know better than that.
Basically voting for Boris was the only way anyone who wanted what they thought in 2016 would be the straightforward process of voting Leave being recognised. It's to the shame of people like Starmer that they tried so hard to ignore the democratic vote they promised to implement.
The only reason people like Starmer even have power right now because Boris and the ERG wing of the Tories took Leave voters for fools.
I would put it the other way round. The leave voters were fools for believing Boris and the ERG.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
That's a narrative which makes no differentiation between net migration of (for example) 160k p/a and 750k p/a. Which is clearly bullshit.
There's a good case to be made for limiting migration to manageable levels - and a serious debate about what that number might be.
Your account isn't that - it's just "immigration is unacceptable".
Not at all, I think there is an acceptable level. I’m referring to an article in Friday’s edition of The Times which says that Morgan McSweeney is of the opinion that the economic forecasts on mass immigration that guided centre & centre left politics so far this century could well have been complete nonsense, which would mean the decimated working class communities who voted leave and are voting Reform were right all along, and the think tanks that thought their concerns racist were wrong
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
His problem there will be that the voters he is trying to con with his phoney concern don't think the low hundreds of thousands is sensible
I doubt it is phoney. I hold a similar view and it is genuine, the numbers are too high recently especially without house building.
And the people who thought the low hundreds of thousands were a problem are the very same people who put someone in charge who brought in close to a million instead, just perhaps their judgment isn't all that good......
That's a nice attempt a smart arse pay off, but I think you should know better than that.
Basically voting for Boris was the only way anyone who wanted what they thought in 2016 would be the straightforward process of voting Leave being recognised. It's to the shame of people like Starmer that they tried so hard to ignore the democratic vote they promised to implement.
The only reason people like Starmer even have power right now because Boris and the ERG wing of the Tories took Leave voters for fools.
I would put it the other way round. The leave voters were fools for believing Boris and the ERG.
At the 2019 GE, Leave voters had a choice between voting Tory, & having their Leave vote implemented, or voting for anyone else and tossing a coin about the referendum result being overturned. So it wasn't a case of being made fools of; Boris did implement the Leave vote, and that's why we voted for him. He didn't do as expected on immigration, but at least we have the ability to do something about it now.
The basic failure in comprehension it takes not to distinguish between the returning the right of the UK Government to set its own immigration policy, and the implementation of a low immigration policy, and why the former is a necessary precursor for, but not a guarantee of, the latter, is quite extraordinary. If I believed that people really didn't understand it (as opposed to irritatingly debating in bad faith), I'd believe I was talking to people who couldn't tie their shoelaces.
It's an absolute disgrace, Labour trying to win back voters that they have lost to Reform. How dare they!
For the record, there's lots of us on the left who think:
a) legal migration has been far too high over the last 5 years, and b) the asylum system is a shambles, and it's ludicrous that asylum seekers have to be housed in hotels and other unsuitable accommodation - it needs sorting.
Maybe, but let’s not pretend the general language of the left in the past decade or so has in any way majored on this - often the opposite. There is a reason why people don’t feel Labour are in tune with their concerns on this. Now they may be able to recover some good standing, but they start from a position of distrust, and the jury is still out.
More than a decade. There was a view on the Left that immigation was to "rub the Right's nose in diversity." Andrew Neather in 2000:
"I wrote the landmark speech given by then immigration minister Barbara Roche in September 2000, calling for a loosening of controls... That speech was based largely on a report by the Performance and Innovation Unit", continued Neather. "The PIU's reports were legendarily tedious within Whitehall but their big immigration report was surrounded by an unusual air of both anticipation and secrecy... Eventually published in January 2001, [it] focused heavily on the labour market case."
"But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural", he went on to write. "I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended - even if this wasn't its main purpose - to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date. That seemed to me to be a manoeuvre too far. Ministers were very nervous about the whole thing."
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
FOM was and is very fluid. In many southern and eastern European countries, for example, economies have developed and the need to go elsewhere to find decent paying work has substantially reduced. We would not be getting close to as many Poles coming to the UK now as we did prior to Brexit. We'd still be sending our non-productive pensioners to the sunny south though.
Is there research on the economic impact of sending non-productive pensioners south? Their pensions are spent in another country, their health bills (if over 65) were I believe billed back to the UK. Maybe we're not on the hook for care homes? But some do come back at the end when they get ill.
It's an absolute disgrace, Labour trying to win back voters that they have lost to Reform. How dare they!
For the record, there's lots of us on the left who think:
a) legal migration has been far too high over the last 5 years, and b) the asylum system is a shambles, and it's ludicrous that asylum seekers have to be housed in hotels and other unsuitable accommodation - it needs sorting.
Maybe, but let’s not pretend the general language of the left in the past decade or so has in any way majored on this - often the opposite. There is a reason why people don’t feel Labour are in tune with their concerns on this. Now they may be able to recover some good standing, but they start from a position of distrust, and the jury is still out.
More than a decade. There was a view on the Left that immigation was to "rub the Right's nose in diversity."
To the activists, rubbing the right's nose in diversity seemed like a win-win proposition: you get to wind up your opponents and you massage the demographics of the electorate in your favour, rendering their complaints impotent.
They didn't count on two things: the resentment of their own core vote and the fact that migrants can think for themselves.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
His problem there will be that the voters he is trying to con with his phoney concern don't think the low hundreds of thousands is sensible
I doubt it is phoney. I hold a similar view and it is genuine, the numbers are too high recently especially without house building.
And the people who thought the low hundreds of thousands were a problem are the very same people who put someone in charge who brought in close to a million instead, just perhaps their judgment isn't all that good......
That's a nice attempt a smart arse pay off, but I think you should know better than that.
Basically voting for Boris was the only way anyone who wanted what they thought in 2016 would be the straightforward process of voting Leave being recognised. It's to the shame of people like Starmer that they tried so hard to ignore the democratic vote they promised to implement.
The only reason people like Starmer even have power right now because Boris and the ERG wing of the Tories took Leave voters for fools.
I would put it the other way round. The leave voters were fools for believing Boris and the ERG.
At the 2019 GE, Leave voters had a choice between voting Tory, & having their Leave vote implemented, or voting for anyone else and tossing a coin about the referendum result being overturned. So it wasn't a case of being made fools of; Boris did implement the Leave vote, and that's why we voted for him. He didn't do as expected on immigration, but at least we have the ability to do something about it now.
The basic failure in comprehension it takes not to distinguish between the returning the right of the UK Government to set its own immigration policy, and the implementation of a low immigration policy, and why the former is a necessary precursor for, but not a guarantee of, the latter, is quite extraordinary. If I believed that people really didn't understand it (as opposed to irritatingly debating in bad faith), I'd believe I was talking to people who couldn't tie their shoelaces.
Mail on Sunday not having Sir Keir’s pretend concern about the effects of the mass immigration he & Labour supported but are trying to disown
Labour have tried to face both ways on this for some time now. But in a new White Paper they plan to embrace a ‘crackdown’ ostensibly intended to deport immigrants who commit any crime, and to somehow overcome the ‘Human Rights’ provisions which make deportation so hard and which Labour themselves wrote into British law.
We are also promised less complacency about the questionable economic benefits of mass immigration, which is seriously straining our health, welfare and school systems.
These moves are designed to create helpful headlines. But should we take any of it seriously?
While they thought they were safe from voter anger, Labour energetically pursued an open borders policy.
Now they are scared of electoral oblivion, they try to ape Nigel Farage. How they used to jeer and sneer at those who warned that their policy was foolish and unrealistic, such as the fact-based campaigning body Migration Watch.
Anyone who suggested that the levels of migration were impractically high was dismissed as some sort of bigot.
Well, now Home Office experts are admitting what Migration Watch said many years ago, that net migration has reached such levels that it is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Edinburgh to the population of the UK each year. Who are the bigots now?
There is some (deliberate) conflation here between asylum seekers/small boats/illegal migration, and legal immigration. Just look at the photo that they use - that's not of people on student visas overstaying, is it?
I think it's perfectly natural for a "labour" party to be against immigration. The minimum wage was a control against it in some respects, because it prevented the flooding of our labour market with low-wage workers. Now that we are out of the EU, I guess you could make the argument that we don't need it anymore as long as there are restrictions on inwards migration/salary controls.
And the bigoted thing is tiresome. The trouble is that some of those who are most against immigration are bigots, dominate the discussion about it and don't like being called out.
Yes, it is natural that a party called Labour should want to protect British workers from the effects of mass migration, but as we all know, Labour isn't that sort of party, if it ever was, and has long since given itself over to representing global corporate interests against the people it has used as voting fodder.
Like your surprise post the other day that 'we must subsidise industrial energy because it's too expensive', this is a dog's dinner of excuses, 'twas ever thus's, and half-hearted acknowledgements, because you've realised politics is massively swinging away from the deeply damaging and anti-human policies that you and others have espoused.
It is inadequate and tissue thin, but it is an improvement at least on 'we just need someone with charisma who can put a positive spin on this' that has been the general PB-leftie vibe since the election.
I don't see why this version of Labour under Starmer can't be different. Why are you getting so upset about them moving to this position?
(*industrial electricity, not energy. I think we should make it relatively more attractive than gas/petrol because it's much better for the environment and we will have a plentiful domestic electricity supply in the future. I think it's mad we tax to it such an extent. )
I am not upset, and for the record, though I disagree with you on nearly everything, I read your posts with interest.
I am actually quite pleased. I don't think the latest volte face will prevent the Government from losing the next election, but it will start processes that I believe are important, and as a consequence, it will make things less challenging for the next Government.
I am also not political in the tribal sense. If Labour put in place all the solutions I believe in and do so competently, I am all in favour and could even vote for them. I don't think they will, but let's see.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
It's about as authentic as a Sunak tweet. No-one seriously believes Starmer talks or thinks like this - so it's only going to reinforce perceptions of him, further alienating both Reform-leaners and LD/Green/SNP/Plaid-leaners. And for Labour there are far more of the latter than the former. The lesson to learn from Nigel Farage is not about being tough on immigration, it’s about not allowing your political opponents to set the agenda. Sunak never learned this lesson. Starmer hasn't either.
That’s true to an extent, but opposition parties have the luxury of ignoring what they don’t want to talk about, whereas governing parties have to govern, so they have to have a visible position on everything.
It's an absolute disgrace, Labour trying to win back voters that they have lost to Reform. How dare they!
For the record, there's lots of us on the left who think:
a) legal migration has been far too high over the last 5 years, and b) the asylum system is a shambles, and it's ludicrous that asylum seekers have to be housed in hotels and other unsuitable accommodation - it needs sorting.
Trouble is, the corollary of (b) might be even worse politically, if HMG moves asylum seekers out of hotels and into Angela Rayner's newly-built homes.
There were about 40,000 in hotels at the start of the year, so it would take maybe 10,000 or less houses to replace that - so just over half a percent of all the new houses Labour have committed to build.
Of course it would only be part that might have a chance of moving into new housing stock, and even then it would be a lot less visible than a hotel being closed.
If the place are seen as a failure in those circumstances, then not sure Labour have any hope.
Comments
I would have never have read Hannah Arendt (autocorrected as Aren't) if I hadn't been to Uni, ooh, and A H Halsey.
With a dog or cat you don’t get to create an ecosystem too.
Not sure what the polling crossbreaks for fishpond owners would be. Tory, at a guess.
Does he regret the Irish workers coming over to dig the canals and railway cuttings?
If I was forced to explain why, I think it’s because they are still far too much the “all things to all people” party. The NIMBY opportunism puts me off, and given the state of the country I would respect them far more if they told some uncomfortable truths. To Davey’s credit he does come across very authentically on the care question. I would need to see a lot more of things like that, if I were to consider lending them a vote.
But, I can't consciously remember much.
Dog owner or not?
Nice one.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/10/retired-police-officer-arrested-over-thought-crime-tweet/
As usual, money talks.
That said, the US de minimis was a weird anomaly and removing it one of the few sensible moves by the Trump admin.
Ten species singing away (or cawing) in the garden this morning.
The swifts are back.
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
There is no way this wouldn't be an issue regardless of the asylum situation, although that has made it worse.
I have yet to see the wren it reports, but I recognise the song.
Everything else checks out.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
And the people who thought the low hundreds of thousands were a problem are the very same people who put someone in charge who brought in close to a million instead, just perhaps their judgment isn't all that good......
The blue-tit chicks we watch on our TV seem to be doing well. And there seem to be a few more insects about.
"Why aren’t they paying tax?
On the basis of the discussions we had with some of the local parties, we believe the most common reason is simply: they don’t understand that they should be filing and (in most cases) paying corporation tax."
It is happening here as well, perhaps in a slightly different form. We've been discussing student loans but of course we are sending half the population to university on the promise of good jobs when they graduate but for most, either there are no jobs or there are no good jobs.
It is the same story. People are following the rules, or what they were told were the rules to get ahead, but it's not working because politicians lied, or well-meaning politicians were too stupid to realise they were lying.
Another mystery. Most countries that import workers tend to do so at the bottom of the pay scale, leaving the top jobs for the locals. The UK political consensus seems to be heading the other way. It's possible that we're right and they're wrong, but it's strikingly odd.
Yes, Trump lies every time he opens his mouth, but that was one thing that was quite predictable.
I feel sorry for him, but he wasn't duped.
For the record, there's lots of us on the left who think:
a) legal migration has been far too high over the last 5 years, and
b) the asylum system is a shambles, and it's ludicrous that asylum seekers have to be housed in hotels and other unsuitable accommodation - it needs sorting.
Logically looking at vacancy rates, demographics, clearly we need people to work in care. The rest we could probably fudge without immigration at a cost, especially if we settle for a more limited health service.
Then what we should want is the high value, high tax generating type of immigration on top.
The right only talk about what we want and not what we need.
Basically voting for Boris was the only way anyone who wanted what they thought in 2016 would be the straightforward process of voting Leave being recognised. It's to the shame of people like Starmer that they tried so hard to ignore the democratic vote they promised to implement.
Is having hundreds of thousands circling in and then out a few years later better for communities than having hundreds of thousands staying and becoming part of that community ?
Of course who the individual immigrants are is also a factor.
For example English speaking Nigerian Christians have a better chance of integrating well than many other groups, including some from the EU.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
Let’s start in 2003. That was the year the Home Office published its official report, authored by the UCL economist Christian Dustmann (of whom more later) estimating that only 5,000-13,000 additional migrants a year would come to Britain when the eastern bloc acceded to the EU in 2004. By 2007, 750,000 had arrived.
...
Since at least 2002, we’ve been told by officialdom that more immigration always brings economic benefits. Among the most influential papers supposedly proving this were: a 2005 Home Office study claiming migrants had little impact on native jobs and wages; a 2010 study published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies finding that migrants from the eastern bloc were large net contributors to the exchequer; and a 2014 update arguing the same in more detail. What all of these studies have in common is their lead author: Christian Dustmann. The very same Dustmann whose hopelessly flawed model was used to justify opening the gates in 2004.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/immigration-is-not-the-boon-they-claimed-it-was-gwmdjvqr7
Like your surprise post the other day that 'we must subsidise industrial energy because it's too expensive', this is a dog's dinner of excuses, 'twas ever thus's, and half-hearted acknowledgements, because you've realised politics is massively swinging away from the deeply damaging and anti-human policies that you and others have espoused.
It is inadequate and tissue thin, but it is an improvement at least on 'we just need someone with charisma who can put a positive spin on this' that has been the general PB-leftie vibe since the election.
1) Labour still needs to try and keep it's Reform-curious voters on board. Delivering on what it's good at such as public services, the NHS etc. I agree is the best way to do so, but it still needs to allay their concerns on migration to some degree (even if they can't outbid Farage in this area).
2) Some non-Lab progressive voters can be squeezed if Labour are in a two-horse race with Farage... particularly in Lab-Ref marginals.
3) There are 2019 Tory voters who sat on their hands last time, who might come and vote for Farage next time. Even if Labour can't win these voters, they are still going to want them to stay home then piss them off so much they decide to turn out for Farage.
Labour in the 21st century is the party of the public sector, ethnic minorities, especially Muslims and students as their core vote (albeit with some leakage now even of those groups to the Greens and Independents since Starmer became their leader).
Reform have now replaced Labour as the main party of the white working class
Which is clearly bullshit.
There's a good case to be made for limiting migration to manageable levels - and a serious debate about what that number might be.
Your account isn't that - it's just "immigration is unacceptable".
(*industrial electricity, not energy. I think we should make it relatively more attractive than gas/petrol because it's much better for the environment and we will have a plentiful domestic electricity supply in the future. I think it's mad we tax to it such an extent. )
We would be even more attractive for demographics discriminated against in Eastern Europe with the political shifts taking place there.
"I wrote the landmark speech given by then immigration minister Barbara Roche in September 2000, calling for a loosening of controls... That speech was based largely on a report by the Performance and Innovation Unit", continued Neather. "The PIU's reports were legendarily tedious within Whitehall but their big immigration report was surrounded by an unusual air of both anticipation and secrecy... Eventually published in January 2001, [it] focused heavily on the labour market case."
"But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural", he went on to write. "I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended - even if this wasn't its main purpose - to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date. That seemed to me to be a manoeuvre too far. Ministers were very nervous about the whole thing."
They didn't count on two things: the resentment of their own core vote and the fact that migrants can think for themselves.
I am actually quite pleased. I don't think the latest volte face will prevent the Government from losing the next election, but it will start processes that I believe are important, and as a consequence, it will make things less challenging for the next Government.
I am also not political in the tribal sense. If Labour put in place all the solutions I believe in and do so competently, I am all in favour and could even vote for them. I don't think they will, but let's see.
UK care homes face ban on overseas recruitment under migration plans
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/may/11/uk-to-time-limit-visas-for-roles-below-graduate-level-under-new-migration-plan
Of course it would only be part that might have a chance of moving into new housing stock, and even then it would be a lot less visible than a hotel being closed.
If the place are seen as a failure in those circumstances, then not sure Labour have any hope.