I can understand the argument that you can’t out-Reform Reform but surely it’s about persuading the voters who are Labour minded but are currently voting Reform to come back? You don’t need to out Reform to do that, just respond to their concerns. Focus groups from Luke Tryl have said voters will be willing to come back if Labour deliver.
I’m struggling to see how this move - if successful, I accept a big if - won’t do that. You can call it as cynical or as pathetic as you like but if migration comes down Labour have a record to speak to. Perhaps it won’t come down by enough but what exactly is enough to these voters? I confess I don’t know.
I think what it does show is that Labour is not going to sit around for four years and give up. They have time on their side.
On the economy, how is it looking? My own sense is it’s not as bad as people say but I am in a London bubble.
Well, I agree that this is a positioning tactic from Labour that they probably had to make, in light of the threats they face. They need to at least do something to try to neutralise the issue. The jury is out on if they’ll manage it or if it simply drives people to the people who’ll be even “tougher” - Reform - but I see the logic of the move. It definitely could work.
You will spare me a slight moment of amusement though to see Starmer coming out with the type of rhetoric which would for decades have been condemned by the left as being irresponsible, dog whistle and unacceptable political language. Talking of “islands of strangers” would have stirred up some quarters into absolute apoplexy. It is quite amusing to read commentary now trying to explain that the Labour Party are right to address concerns etc when for a very long time the public were told by some that the concerns were illegitimate.
I’m happy to concede that on immigration whilst I didn’t agree with some of the more fruity rhetoric, I also did not understand the strength of feeling that many do legitimately feel. I got it wrong.
I do think though that is a difference in the migration we’ve had post Brexit and before. The negativity towards mostly Christian immigrants from Poland baffled me.
I understand that viewpoint, though I think that the ground was laid in the mid noughties for the issues we see coming to light now. The problem was that policy makers were by and large successful at casting concerns about immigration as being somehow wrong or beyond the pale, and that rhetoric has continued for a very long time, and caused a significant running sore with western electorates (this isn’t just a British condition). The failure of politicians of all parties to confront these difficult truths, and discuss them maturely with voters, has led to people reaching out for those that offer an alternative - and hence to the rise of populist politics and policies like Brexit.
Politicians have been talking about immigration for at least the last two decades. The idea that it’s been a taboo subject is silly.
Having the wrong opinion on immigration is the big taboo. You only need to look at what people have said when others suggest that having too much immigration might be a bad thing.
Lots of people over the last few weeks have expressed a range of opinions on immigration here on PB, including many saying immigration should be lower. That view has not been treated as taboo.
However, some people who think immigration should be lower are also racists, and get called racist.
The newly elected Pope spoke out about the war for the first time - he accused Russia of an imperialist invasion of Ukraine, calling its actions crimes against humanity.
"This is a real imperialist invasion, where Russia wants to conquer territory for reasons of strength and its own superiority... Crimes against humanity are being committed in Ukraine," Pope Leo XIV said in an interview with the Peruvian publication Semanario Expresión. Ukraine Now https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1921456221082599497
Pope Leo is the best thing that's happened to Americans in some time. Easily to generalise them as a bunch of MAGA loons; he dispels that image.
“ PM must apologise for 'island of strangers' comment, refugee charity says Refugee charity Care4Calais has accused the prime minister of "fanning the fire of the far-right" by using language like "an island of strangers" to discuss immigration. Care4Calais CEO, Steve Smith, said in a statement: "This is dangerous language for any prime minister to use. Has Starmer forgotten last year's far-right riots? "Shameful language like this will only inflame the fire of the far-right and risks further race riots that endanger survivors of horrors such as war, torture and modern slavery. Starmer must apologise."
Not even a year in and they have completely lost their way - doomed now like their predecessors and Reform too are doomed, aggressive language, clear unambiguous promise - no policy that can match such vibes. Reform, Labour, Conservative all living in a fantasy world.
In fact, the Conservative government 2019-2024 are beginning to come across very well in comparison, choosing not to destroy the UK economy turning UK in a third world country, by mindlessly, cluelessly switching off immigration as though there are zero consequences of doing so.
I can't believe that the ILR change to ten years will be retrospective. I think that it was stupidly cruel of Starmer to not clarify this in his speech
Everyone who has started the ILR process in the last five years must be terribly worried
People don't vote based on official government statistics. They vote based on their lived experience.
Their lived experience right now is of watching a continuous & increasing stream of boats crossing the Channel, with the boat arrivals then being put up in hotels.
The vast majority of people in the country don't have any lived experience of people crossing the Channel in small boats. They don't see them crossing or landing. They don't encounter them in their day-to-day life.
Rather, their experience of boat crossings is vicarious: it's from the media and social media. Those coming over in boats are convenient scapegoats for whatever they are unhappy about.
Official government statistics will be reported in the media and have some penetration on social media, so they can have some impact.
Especially not in Durham lol
The small boats are an economic positive for East Kent. Lots of well-paid jobs in Border Force that wouldn't otherwise exist.
There is a certain logic there in thinking about East Kent.
Build a couple of dams, reflood the Wantsum Channel, and make the Isle of Thanet our answer to Guantanamo - it's about the same size.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
I consider myself to be woke but none of that is inaccurate is it?
We seem to have lost sight of the imprecation to speak softly but carry a big stick. Isn’t one of the reasons political trust is so low that successive governments have spoken ever more loudly while carrying a very small stick? Not just on this topic but most notably on tax and spend and public services.
Getting back to "talk softly, but everyone knows there is a big stick in the cupboard" is clearly a very desirable thing to do. Unfortunately, the path there isn't a straight line. I can't help but think of it in teacher terms- if a class has got out of control over months (it happens), the only way back to normality is to over-correct to start with. Only once you have control in practice and (much harder) in theory, is it safe to loosen up.
The Boriswave was a thing- even if a third of a million a year net is OK and necessary, numbers went up way beyond that for a while. I don't know if the @Malmesbury numbers are pointing to a major scandal, but they certainly point to something rather rum having gone on. Given the mess in everything else the government touched, it wouldn't be surprising if the same was true for immigration. So it probably does have to be big stick for a while. The catch is that we don't seem to have a stick, and they are awfully expensive.
I can't believe that the IRL change to ten years will be retrospective. I think that it was stupidly cruel of Starmer to not clarify this in his speech
Everyone who has started the IRL process in the last five years must be terribly worried
Precedence (set by Blair's Labour) is that it will be retrospective.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
I consider myself to be woke but none of that is inaccurate is it?
Basically, you are proving that your 'beliefs' are worthless. You believe in your colour of rosette. If Sir Keir had come up with a differentiation strategy post-locals that involved speaking extra warmly about the benefits of migration, and turning on the racism and biggotry of Reform, you would be expressing absolutely none of these 'concerns about migration' that you've apparently always had, and you'd be putting the boot into anyone expressing such concerns.
People don't vote based on official government statistics. They vote based on their lived experience.
Their lived experience right now is of watching a continuous & increasing stream of boats crossing the Channel, with the boat arrivals then being put up in hotels.
The vast majority of people in the country don't have any lived experience of people crossing the Channel in small boats. They don't see them crossing or landing. They don't encounter them in their day-to-day life.
Rather, their experience of boat crossings is vicarious: it's from the media and social media. Those coming over in boats are convenient scapegoats for whatever they are unhappy about.
Official government statistics will be reported in the media and have some penetration on social media, so they can have some impact.
Especially not in Durham lol
The small boats are an economic positive for East Kent. Lots of well-paid jobs in Border Force that wouldn't otherwise exist.
There is a certain logic there in thinking about East Kent.
Build a couple of dams, reflood the Wantsum Channel, and make the Isle of Thanet our answer to Guantanamo - it's about the same size.
The newly elected Pope spoke out about the war for the first time - he accused Russia of an imperialist invasion of Ukraine, calling its actions crimes against humanity.
"This is a real imperialist invasion, where Russia wants to conquer territory for reasons of strength and its own superiority... Crimes against humanity are being committed in Ukraine," Pope Leo XIV said in an interview with the Peruvian publication Semanario Expresión. Ukraine Now https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1921456221082599497
Pope Leo is the best thing that's happened to Americans in some time. Easily to generalise them as a bunch of MAGA loons; he dispels that image.
MAGA seems to be getting quite cross about a "Marxist", "Woke", "Progressive" Pope. Presumably in due course they will deport him to Peru, when he visits home.
Doubtless it was all organised by Soros.
I'm going back to a theme I've been on since last year - we now have someone to do for the USA what John-Paul II did for Poland.
I can understand the argument that you can’t out-Reform Reform but surely it’s about persuading the voters who are Labour minded but are currently voting Reform to come back? You don’t need to out Reform to do that, just respond to their concerns. Focus groups from Luke Tryl have said voters will be willing to come back if Labour deliver.
I’m struggling to see how this move - if successful, I accept a big if - won’t do that. You can call it as cynical or as pathetic as you like but if migration comes down Labour have a record to speak to. Perhaps it won’t come down by enough but what exactly is enough to these voters? I confess I don’t know.
I think what it does show is that Labour is not going to sit around for four years and give up. They have time on their side.
On the economy, how is it looking? My own sense is it’s not as bad as people say but I am in a London bubble.
Well, I agree that this is a positioning tactic from Labour that they probably had to make, in light of the threats they face. They need to at least do something to try to neutralise the issue. The jury is out on if they’ll manage it or if it simply drives people to the people who’ll be even “tougher” - Reform - but I see the logic of the move. It definitely could work.
You will spare me a slight moment of amusement though to see Starmer coming out with the type of rhetoric which would for decades have been condemned by the left as being irresponsible, dog whistle and unacceptable political language. Talking of “islands of strangers” would have stirred up some quarters into absolute apoplexy. It is quite amusing to read commentary now trying to explain that the Labour Party are right to address concerns etc when for a very long time the public were told by some that the concerns were illegitimate.
I’m happy to concede that on immigration whilst I didn’t agree with some of the more fruity rhetoric, I also did not understand the strength of feeling that many do legitimately feel. I got it wrong.
I do think though that is a difference in the migration we’ve had post Brexit and before. The negativity towards mostly Christian immigrants from Poland baffled me.
I understand that viewpoint, though I think that the ground was laid in the mid noughties for the issues we see coming to light now. The problem was that policy makers were by and large successful at casting concerns about immigration as being somehow wrong or beyond the pale, and that rhetoric has continued for a very long time, and caused a significant running sore with western electorates (this isn’t just a British condition). The failure of politicians of all parties to confront these difficult truths, and discuss them maturely with voters, has led to people reaching out for those that offer an alternative - and hence to the rise of populist politics and policies like Brexit.
Politicians have been talking about immigration for at least the last two decades. The idea that it’s been a taboo subject is silly.
Having the wrong opinion on immigration is the big taboo. You only need to look at what people have said when others suggest that having too much immigration might be a bad thing.
Lots of people over the last few weeks have expressed a range of opinions on immigration here on PB, including many saying immigration should be lower. That view has not been treated as taboo.
However, some people who think immigration should be lower are also racists, and get called racist.
Crib sheet.
Saying that immigration is too high and you'd like to see lower migration - not racist.
Saying the numbers of non-white people are too high and you'd like to see more white babies - racist.
People don't vote based on official government statistics. They vote based on their lived experience.
Their lived experience right now is of watching a continuous & increasing stream of boats crossing the Channel, with the boat arrivals then being put up in hotels.
The vast majority of people in the country don't have any lived experience of people crossing the Channel in small boats. They don't see them crossing or landing. They don't encounter them in their day-to-day life.
Rather, their experience of boat crossings is vicarious: it's from the media and social media. Those coming over in boats are convenient scapegoats for whatever they are unhappy about.
Official government statistics will be reported in the media and have some penetration on social media, so they can have some impact.
Especially not in Durham lol
The small boats are an economic positive for East Kent. Lots of well-paid jobs in Border Force that wouldn't otherwise exist.
There is a certain logic there in thinking about East Kent.
Build a couple of dams, reflood the Wantsum Channel, and make the Isle of Thanet our answer to Guantanamo - it's about the same size.
I can understand the argument that you can’t out-Reform Reform but surely it’s about persuading the voters who are Labour minded but are currently voting Reform to come back? You don’t need to out Reform to do that, just respond to their concerns. Focus groups from Luke Tryl have said voters will be willing to come back if Labour deliver.
I’m struggling to see how this move - if successful, I accept a big if - won’t do that. You can call it as cynical or as pathetic as you like but if migration comes down Labour have a record to speak to. Perhaps it won’t come down by enough but what exactly is enough to these voters? I confess I don’t know.
I think what it does show is that Labour is not going to sit around for four years and give up. They have time on their side.
On the economy, how is it looking? My own sense is it’s not as bad as people say but I am in a London bubble.
Well, I agree that this is a positioning tactic from Labour that they probably had to make, in light of the threats they face. They need to at least do something to try to neutralise the issue. The jury is out on if they’ll manage it or if it simply drives people to the people who’ll be even “tougher” - Reform - but I see the logic of the move. It definitely could work.
You will spare me a slight moment of amusement though to see Starmer coming out with the type of rhetoric which would for decades have been condemned by the left as being irresponsible, dog whistle and unacceptable political language. Talking of “islands of strangers” would have stirred up some quarters into absolute apoplexy. It is quite amusing to read commentary now trying to explain that the Labour Party are right to address concerns etc when for a very long time the public were told by some that the concerns were illegitimate.
I’m happy to concede that on immigration whilst I didn’t agree with some of the more fruity rhetoric, I also did not understand the strength of feeling that many do legitimately feel. I got it wrong.
I do think though that is a difference in the migration we’ve had post Brexit and before. The negativity towards mostly Christian immigrants from Poland baffled me.
I understand that viewpoint, though I think that the ground was laid in the mid noughties for the issues we see coming to light now. The problem was that policy makers were by and large successful at casting concerns about immigration as being somehow wrong or beyond the pale, and that rhetoric has continued for a very long time, and caused a significant running sore with western electorates (this isn’t just a British condition). The failure of politicians of all parties to confront these difficult truths, and discuss them maturely with voters, has led to people reaching out for those that offer an alternative - and hence to the rise of populist politics and policies like Brexit.
Politicians have been talking about immigration for at least the last two decades. The idea that it’s been a taboo subject is silly.
Last two decades? Bollocks. Where have you been? Ever heard of history books?
Starmer could have made this mornings anti foreigner - taking jobs and homes - rant at ANY point in UK and English history, and would have been WRONG then as well as now for such views - as history has clearly proved!
The leaflets reform pushed through letter boxes in recent local elections were written in the SIXTEENTH century.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
I consider myself to be woke but none of that is inaccurate is it?
Basically, you are proving that your 'beliefs' are worthless. You believe in your colour of rosette. If Sir Keir had come up with a differentiation strategy post-locals that involved speaking extra warmly about the benefits of migration, and turning on the racism and biggotry of Reform, you would be expressing absolutely none of these 'concerns about migration' that you've apparently always had, and you'd be putting the boot into anyone expressing such concerns.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
I consider myself to be woke but none of that is inaccurate is it?
We seem to have lost sight of the imprecation to speak softly but carry a big stick. Isn’t one of the reasons political trust is so low that successive governments have spoken ever more loudly while carrying a very small stick? Not just on this topic but most notably on tax and spend and public services.
Getting back to "talk softly, but everyone knows there is a big stick in the cupboard" is clearly a very desirable thing to do. Unfortunately, the path there isn't a straight line. I can't help but think of it in teacher terms- if a class has got out of control over months (it happens), the only way back to normality is to over-correct to start with. Only once you have control in practice and (much harder) in theory, is it safe to loosen up.
The Boriswave was a thing- even if a third of a million a year net is OK and necessary, numbers went up way beyond that for a while. I don't know if the @Malmesbury numbers are pointing to a major scandal, but they certainly point to something rather rum having gone on. Given the mess in everything else the government touched, it wouldn't be surprising if the same was true for immigration. So it probably does have to be big stick for a while. The catch is that we don't seem to have a stick, and they are awfully expensive.
- Care homes employ 750K - Care as a whole 1.6 million. - 88% of care is provided by UK origin people. - So we have 192,000 first gen. immigrant workers. Make it 200K.
"The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas to main applicants increased from 31,800 in 2021 to 145,823 in 2023. The rise was primarily due to an increase in South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi) and Sub-Saharan African (Zimbabwean, Ghanaian, and Nigerian) nationals coming to work as care workers. However, the number of care workers and home carers issued visas have fallen since the latter part of 2023. The fall towards the end of 2023 is likely due to more scrutiny applied by the Home Office to employers in the health and social care sector, and compliance activity taken against employers of migrant workers, as well as the recent policy measures affecting care workers introduced in Spring 2024. The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas issued to migrant workers in a Caring Personal Service occupation fell by 91% to 9,539 in the latest year."
"It took Arun George half a working life to scrape together £15,000 ($19,460) in savings, which he used to secure a care worker job for his wife in the UK."
5 figures per visa/job is not uncommon in these stories. It is illegal to sell visas, but the penalty has been, until now, little more than removing the right of the company to offer the jobs abroad.
Sell 100 visas.....
And the best bit for last - when the job is created/sold, it will come up in the jobs statistics as a job unfilled. A vacancy. And since it is never actually filled - since it doesn't exist - it will stay in the job stats for a while.
The newly elected Pope spoke out about the war for the first time - he accused Russia of an imperialist invasion of Ukraine, calling its actions crimes against humanity.
"This is a real imperialist invasion, where Russia wants to conquer territory for reasons of strength and its own superiority... Crimes against humanity are being committed in Ukraine," Pope Leo XIV said in an interview with the Peruvian publication Semanario Expresión. Ukraine Now https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1921456221082599497
Pope Leo is the best thing that's happened to Americans in some time. Easily to generalise them as a bunch of MAGA loons; he dispels that image.
MAGA seems to be getting quite cross about a "Marxist", "Woke", "Progressive" Pope. Presumably in due course they will deport him to Peru, when he visits home.
Doubtless it was all organised by Soros.
I'm going back to a theme I've been on since last year - we now have someone to do for the USA what John-Paul II did for Poland.
It's actually refreshing to hear an American speaking in Spanish/Italian/Latin, more than anything.
"Keir Starmer admitted mass immigration risks making Britain an 'island of strangers' today as he scrambles to blunt the threat from Reform.
The PM deployed the 'take back control' Brexit slogan at a press conference in Downing Street as he pledged to end the 'betrayal' of reliance on cheap foreign labour.
Sir Keir accused the Tories of overseeing an explosion in numbers while in power, saying the system seemed 'designed to permit abuse' and was 'contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart'."
I think Starmer's strategy is what's known as giving your enemy possession of the battlefield.
That’s the madness of it to me. The more the focus is on immigration the more Farage can sit back and let Starmer do his marketing for him. But then I appreciate ignoring the issue is also tricky.
Labour needs to find its political strong point and get media focus on it as much as possible. Historically it’s always been the NHS. Waiting lists do seem to be creeping down. Why not blitz everyone with that. And Streeting hasn’t yet done himself major brand damage like Reeves has. (Admittedly nor has Cooper, but she risks losing Labour some more votes to the Greens and Lib Dems if she keeps upping the rhetoric)
Alternatively, ignoring the immigration issues destines Labour to a large defeat to Reform in 2029, an outcome I'd do pretty much anything to avoid. I think the days when Labour can win an election on the NHS are gone.
For sure , if immigration not cut big time and boats completely they are stuffed and Nigel will have to sort it out. It is festering just like the crazy trans/LGBT thing and at some point people will have had enough, rightly or wrongly. When people cannot get houses , medical treatment , etc and peopel can waltz in on an RN taxi , straight to 4* hotel , issued with all the comforts of life, houses being built/issued to them , then at some point it will backfire. The great unwashed will take the hump big time.
No asylum seekers are in 4* hotels. That’s a lie that’s been repeated far too often.
They are not issued with all the comforts of life. You would not want to try to live on the money they are given.
To try and be accurate - in some cases they closed down 4* hotel, and shutdown most of the facilities. Then used it into a migrant hostel.
Most migrant hotels are less ranked hotels - the one that had @SeanT steaming the other day was a business/travel hotel on the edge of a business park. A nice(ish) Travel Lodge equivalent.
Are there any Trump international hotels and resorts that have some capacity?
The newly elected Pope spoke out about the war for the first time - he accused Russia of an imperialist invasion of Ukraine, calling its actions crimes against humanity.
"This is a real imperialist invasion, where Russia wants to conquer territory for reasons of strength and its own superiority... Crimes against humanity are being committed in Ukraine," Pope Leo XIV said in an interview with the Peruvian publication Semanario Expresión. Ukraine Now https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1921456221082599497
Pope Leo is the best thing that's happened to Americans in some time. Easily to generalise them as a bunch of MAGA loons; he dispels that image.
MAGA seems to be getting quite cross about a "Marxist", "Woke", "Progressive" Pope. Presumably in due course they will deport him to Peru, when he visits home.
Doubtless it was all organised by Soros.
I'm going back to a theme I've been on since last year - we now have someone to do for the USA what John-Paul II did for Poland.
I can understand the argument that you can’t out-Reform Reform but surely it’s about persuading the voters who are Labour minded but are currently voting Reform to come back? You don’t need to out Reform to do that, just respond to their concerns. Focus groups from Luke Tryl have said voters will be willing to come back if Labour deliver.
I’m struggling to see how this move - if successful, I accept a big if - won’t do that. You can call it as cynical or as pathetic as you like but if migration comes down Labour have a record to speak to. Perhaps it won’t come down by enough but what exactly is enough to these voters? I confess I don’t know.
I think what it does show is that Labour is not going to sit around for four years and give up. They have time on their side.
On the economy, how is it looking? My own sense is it’s not as bad as people say but I am in a London bubble.
Well, I agree that this is a positioning tactic from Labour that they probably had to make, in light of the threats they face. They need to at least do something to try to neutralise the issue. The jury is out on if they’ll manage it or if it simply drives people to the people who’ll be even “tougher” - Reform - but I see the logic of the move. It definitely could work.
You will spare me a slight moment of amusement though to see Starmer coming out with the type of rhetoric which would for decades have been condemned by the left as being irresponsible, dog whistle and unacceptable political language. Talking of “islands of strangers” would have stirred up some quarters into absolute apoplexy. It is quite amusing to read commentary now trying to explain that the Labour Party are right to address concerns etc when for a very long time the public were told by some that the concerns were illegitimate.
I’m happy to concede that on immigration whilst I didn’t agree with some of the more fruity rhetoric, I also did not understand the strength of feeling that many do legitimately feel. I got it wrong.
I do think though that is a difference in the migration we’ve had post Brexit and before. The negativity towards mostly Christian immigrants from Poland baffled me.
I understand that viewpoint, though I think that the ground was laid in the mid noughties for the issues we see coming to light now. The problem was that policy makers were by and large successful at casting concerns about immigration as being somehow wrong or beyond the pale, and that rhetoric has continued for a very long time, and caused a significant running sore with western electorates (this isn’t just a British condition). The failure of politicians of all parties to confront these difficult truths, and discuss them maturely with voters, has led to people reaching out for those that offer an alternative - and hence to the rise of populist politics and policies like Brexit.
Politicians have been talking about immigration for at least the last two decades. The idea that it’s been a taboo subject is silly.
Having the wrong opinion on immigration is the big taboo. You only need to look at what people have said when others suggest that having too much immigration might be a bad thing.
Lots of people over the last few weeks have expressed a range of opinions on immigration here on PB, including many saying immigration should be lower. That view has not been treated as taboo.
However, some people who think immigration should be lower are also racists, and get called racist.
There's a difference between having immigration as a concern and banging on incessantly about too many immigrants and blaming all our ills on that. The latter sentiment is likely to have racist origins, the former not so much if at all.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
City the size of Birmingham is an analogy I have been using for years and years on here. It's an easy way to take 1 million in population/immigrants and translate it to something people can visualise. Someone in government finally got it? Hurrah!
Politicians over the last 30 years couldn't have done a worse job of managing these topics. People who work in care homes need to be paid more, but there's no way taxes can be raised even further, and most people paying the fees are already struggling to pay them. What a mess.
The newly elected Pope spoke out about the war for the first time - he accused Russia of an imperialist invasion of Ukraine, calling its actions crimes against humanity.
"This is a real imperialist invasion, where Russia wants to conquer territory for reasons of strength and its own superiority... Crimes against humanity are being committed in Ukraine," Pope Leo XIV said in an interview with the Peruvian publication Semanario Expresión. Ukraine Now https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1921456221082599497
Pope Leo is the best thing that's happened to Americans in some time. Easily to generalise them as a bunch of MAGA loons; he dispels that image.
MAGA seems to be getting quite cross about a "Marxist", "Woke", "Progressive" Pope. Presumably in due course they will deport him to Peru, when he visits home.
Doubtless it was all organised by Soros.
I'm going back to a theme I've been on since last year - we now have someone to do for the USA what John-Paul II did for Poland.
It's actually refreshing to hear an American speaking in Spanish/Italian/Latin, more than anything.
And I bet you they find that deeply irritating.
In his first speech, it was interesting that he did not use English. I'm not sure if that counts as Urbe et Orbe.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
I consider myself to be woke but none of that is inaccurate is it?
Bit of a chasm between that language and this though.
Don’t really care whether Starmer’s just saying any old shit to curry favour with the Reform-curious or he’s been on a ‘journey’, he can girfuh either way.
People don't vote based on official government statistics. They vote based on their lived experience.
Their lived experience right now is of watching a continuous & increasing stream of boats crossing the Channel, with the boat arrivals then being put up in hotels.
The vast majority of people in the country don't have any lived experience of people crossing the Channel in small boats. They don't see them crossing or landing. They don't encounter them in their day-to-day life.
Rather, their experience of boat crossings is vicarious: it's from the media and social media. Those coming over in boats are convenient scapegoats for whatever they are unhappy about.
Official government statistics will be reported in the media and have some penetration on social media, so they can have some impact.
Especially not in Durham lol
The small boats are an economic positive for East Kent. Lots of well-paid jobs in Border Force that wouldn't otherwise exist.
There is a certain logic there in thinking about East Kent.
Build a couple of dams, reflood the Wantsum Channel, and make the Isle of Thanet our answer to Guantanamo - it's about the same size.
MITA - Make an Island of Thanet Again.
Think bigger.
Rebuild Doggerland.
No dogging here, thank you
It would be in the middle of the North Sea. Among the wind farms.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
I consider myself to be woke but none of that is inaccurate is it?
Bit of a chasm between that language and this though.
Don’t really care whether Starmer’s just saying any old shit to curry favour with the Reform-curious or he’s been on a ‘journey’, he can girfuh either way.
Politician gonna politician. I think Keir is a bit of a whopper but that doesn’t change anything really
I can understand the argument that you can’t out-Reform Reform but surely it’s about persuading the voters who are Labour minded but are currently voting Reform to come back? You don’t need to out Reform to do that, just respond to their concerns. Focus groups from Luke Tryl have said voters will be willing to come back if Labour deliver.
I’m struggling to see how this move - if successful, I accept a big if - won’t do that. You can call it as cynical or as pathetic as you like but if migration comes down Labour have a record to speak to. Perhaps it won’t come down by enough but what exactly is enough to these voters? I confess I don’t know.
I think what it does show is that Labour is not going to sit around for four years and give up. They have time on their side.
On the economy, how is it looking? My own sense is it’s not as bad as people say but I am in a London bubble.
Well, I agree that this is a positioning tactic from Labour that they probably had to make, in light of the threats they face. They need to at least do something to try to neutralise the issue. The jury is out on if they’ll manage it or if it simply drives people to the people who’ll be even “tougher” - Reform - but I see the logic of the move. It definitely could work.
You will spare me a slight moment of amusement though to see Starmer coming out with the type of rhetoric which would for decades have been condemned by the left as being irresponsible, dog whistle and unacceptable political language. Talking of “islands of strangers” would have stirred up some quarters into absolute apoplexy. It is quite amusing to read commentary now trying to explain that the Labour Party are right to address concerns etc when for a very long time the public were told by some that the concerns were illegitimate.
I’m happy to concede that on immigration whilst I didn’t agree with some of the more fruity rhetoric, I also did not understand the strength of feeling that many do legitimately feel. I got it wrong.
I do think though that is a difference in the migration we’ve had post Brexit and before. The negativity towards mostly Christian immigrants from Poland baffled me.
I understand that viewpoint, though I think that the ground was laid in the mid noughties for the issues we see coming to light now. The problem was that policy makers were by and large successful at casting concerns about immigration as being somehow wrong or beyond the pale, and that rhetoric has continued for a very long time, and caused a significant running sore with western electorates (this isn’t just a British condition). The failure of politicians of all parties to confront these difficult truths, and discuss them maturely with voters, has led to people reaching out for those that offer an alternative - and hence to the rise of populist politics and policies like Brexit.
Politicians have been talking about immigration for at least the last two decades. The idea that it’s been a taboo subject is silly.
Do you think that voters have felt that their concerns have been listened to?
There was a referendum and everything to address the concerns of the ‘where are they all flocking from’ peepul. That those immigrants would be replaced by ones from outside the EU was pretty obvious, indeed Brexiteers were forever saying that that proved they weren’t racists.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
I consider myself to be woke but none of that is inaccurate is it?
Bit of a chasm between that language and this though.
Don’t really care whether Starmer’s just saying any old shit to curry favour with the Reform-curious or he’s been on a ‘journey’, he can girfuh either way.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
I consider myself to be woke but none of that is inaccurate is it?
Bit of a chasm between that language and this though.
Don’t really care whether Starmer’s just saying any old shit to curry favour with the Reform-curious or he’s been on a ‘journey’, he can girfuh either way.
Labour- the party of miserable racists! Is that really a winning strategy?
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
I consider myself to be woke but none of that is inaccurate is it?
Bit of a chasm between that language and this though.
Don’t really care whether Starmer’s just saying any old shit to curry favour with the Reform-curious or he’s been on a ‘journey’, he can girfuh either way.
I think beforehand he was saying any old shit to curry favour with his activist base.
I don't see what in those quotes above is in anyway inaccurate. If anything, it's still quite understated. He doesn't, for example, talk about the massive costs of accommodating boat people, or the criminality.
I can't believe that the ILR change to ten years will be retrospective. I think that it was stupidly cruel of Starmer to not clarify this in his speech
Everyone who has started the ILR process in the last five years must be terribly worried
Edit - ILR got "corrected" to IRL!
It needs to be to prevent the Boriswave and their dependents from getting citizenship and becoming a huge burden on the state and bring another onwards chain of 1-2m migrants worth of family reunions.
It's a tough but fair measure given the situation. Those visas should not be renewed after they expire and the people be made to go back to their home countries.
I can understand the argument that you can’t out-Reform Reform but surely it’s about persuading the voters who are Labour minded but are currently voting Reform to come back? You don’t need to out Reform to do that, just respond to their concerns. Focus groups from Luke Tryl have said voters will be willing to come back if Labour deliver.
I’m struggling to see how this move - if successful, I accept a big if - won’t do that. You can call it as cynical or as pathetic as you like but if migration comes down Labour have a record to speak to. Perhaps it won’t come down by enough but what exactly is enough to these voters? I confess I don’t know.
I think what it does show is that Labour is not going to sit around for four years and give up. They have time on their side.
On the economy, how is it looking? My own sense is it’s not as bad as people say but I am in a London bubble.
Well, I agree that this is a positioning tactic from Labour that they probably had to make, in light of the threats they face. They need to at least do something to try to neutralise the issue. The jury is out on if they’ll manage it or if it simply drives people to the people who’ll be even “tougher” - Reform - but I see the logic of the move. It definitely could work.
You will spare me a slight moment of amusement though to see Starmer coming out with the type of rhetoric which would for decades have been condemned by the left as being irresponsible, dog whistle and unacceptable political language. Talking of “islands of strangers” would have stirred up some quarters into absolute apoplexy. It is quite amusing to read commentary now trying to explain that the Labour Party are right to address concerns etc when for a very long time the public were told by some that the concerns were illegitimate.
I’m happy to concede that on immigration whilst I didn’t agree with some of the more fruity rhetoric, I also did not understand the strength of feeling that many do legitimately feel. I got it wrong.
I do think though that is a difference in the migration we’ve had post Brexit and before. The negativity towards mostly Christian immigrants from Poland baffled me.
It's almost like those of us who have been saying it's a economic issue were telling the truth, and the people who said we were just a bunch of massive racists were liars.
Immigration drives down wages, especially at the bottom end of the jobs market. It increases pressure on housing, on services.
That's the biggest problem with immigration, that's why the public consistently vote for less of it every time they're asked.
Now, there are also cultural issues with some kinds of migrants - a lot of people aren't particularly keen on importing lots of people from low trust societies, or large numbers of misogynistic young men. That's not racism either - it's simply sane pragmatism if you want to maintain a high trust egalitarian society. But that wasn't the issue with the Poles - it was purely economic.
I can't believe that the ILR change to ten years will be retrospective. I think that it was stupidly cruel of Starmer to not clarify this in his speech
Everyone who has started the ILR process in the last five years must be terribly worried
Edit - ILR got "corrected" to IRL!
It needs to be to prevent the Boriswave and their dependents from getting citizenship and becoming a huge burden on the state and bring another onwards chain of 1-2m migrants worth of family reunions.
It's a tough but fair measure given the situation. Those visas should not be renewed after they expire and the people be made to go back to their home countries.
Any immigrant is going to be at the whim of the host state until they achieve citizenship/ILTR. It’s just the nature of the beast and part of the risk of emigrating. Fairness doesn’t really have anything to do with it.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
It tells me Labour are serious about winning the next election. Getting immigration down and halting illegal immigration/asylum seeking is the only path for them to win and I think they've realised it, for now it's all talk though if they delivery on this agenda I'd make Labour favourites to win in 2029 and the Tories to be turned to dust by Reform.
I can't believe that the ILR change to ten years will be retrospective. I think that it was stupidly cruel of Starmer to not clarify this in his speech
Everyone who has started the ILR process in the last five years must be terribly worried
Edit - ILR got "corrected" to IRL!
It needs to be to prevent the Boriswave and their dependents from getting citizenship and becoming a huge burden on the state and bring another onwards chain of 1-2m migrants worth of family reunions.
It's a tough but fair measure given the situation. Those visas should not be renewed after they expire and the people be made to go back to their home countries.
Why not make the period proportionate to the amount of tax you have paid
Politicians over the last 30 years couldn't have done a worse job of managing these topics. People who work in care homes need to be paid more, but there's no way taxes can be raised even further, and most people paying the fees are already struggling to pay them. What a mess.
Care needs to be sorted. My suggestions are: Remove the private sector from care. National government should fund it and local government should run it. In the absence of compulsory insurance, an additional tax levied on pensioners to pay for it. NI being paid by pensioners would work. Pay rates to reflect the often unpleasant aspects of the job, i.e. higher than minimum wage.
I can't believe that the ILR change to ten years will be retrospective. I think that it was stupidly cruel of Starmer to not clarify this in his speech
Everyone who has started the ILR process in the last five years must be terribly worried
Edit - ILR got "corrected" to IRL!
It needs to be to prevent the Boriswave and their dependents from getting citizenship and becoming a huge burden on the state and bring another onwards chain of 1-2m migrants worth of family reunions.
It's a tough but fair measure given the situation. Those visas should not be renewed after they expire and the people be made to go back to their home countries.
Any immigrant is going to be at the whim of the host state until they achieve citizenship/ILTR. It’s just the nature of the beast and part of the risk of emigrating. Fairness doesn’t really have anything to do with it.
Exactly, it's the nature of immigration. Another stupid thing Boris and Patel did was to even allow unskilled visas a pathway to citizenship, they should only ever have been temporary and non-renewable with no right to bring dependents. Student visas similarly should not have had such an easy path to citizenship until Rishi pushed up the skilled worker visa threshold to £39k.
People don't vote based on official government statistics. They vote based on their lived experience.
Their lived experience right now is of watching a continuous & increasing stream of boats crossing the Channel, with the boat arrivals then being put up in hotels.
The vast majority of people in the country don't have any lived experience of people crossing the Channel in small boats. They don't see them crossing or landing. They don't encounter them in their day-to-day life.
Rather, their experience of boat crossings is vicarious: it's from the media and social media. Those coming over in boats are convenient scapegoats for whatever they are unhappy about.
Official government statistics will be reported in the media and have some penetration on social media, so they can have some impact.
Especially not in Durham lol
The small boats are an economic positive for East Kent. Lots of well-paid jobs in Border Force that wouldn't otherwise exist.
There is a certain logic there in thinking about East Kent.
Build a couple of dams, reflood the Wantsum Channel, and make the Isle of Thanet our answer to Guantanamo - it's about the same size.
MITA - Make an Island of Thanet Again.
Think bigger.
Rebuild Doggerland.
No dogging here, thank you
It would be in the middle of the North Sea. Among the wind farms.
Who will be the first party to include a manifesto commitment to breach Doggerland’s sea wall once it’s full of immigrants? Reform, Labour or Conservative?
Politicians over the last 30 years couldn't have done a worse job of managing these topics. People who work in care homes need to be paid more, but there's no way taxes can be raised even further, and most people paying the fees are already struggling to pay them. What a mess.
Care needs to be sorted. My suggestions are: Remove the private sector from care. National government should fund it and local government should run it. In the absence of compulsory insurance, an additional tax levied on pensioners to pay for it. NI being paid by pensioners would work. Pay rates to reflect the often unpleasant aspects of the job, i.e. higher than minimum wage.
Compulsory insurance starting at age 50 would do it and NI on pension income, align the NI threshold with the state pension if it ever goes higher than what it is currently so that people who live on the state pension only don't get hit by it.
Made it over the last big hill. I can now see Perpignan and the sea..
About eleven miles to go
My guess about the distance you've done. If I have underestimated, please correct me. It's a lot of climbing - Everest plus VAT. 340 miles and 40,000 ft elevation.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
It tells me Labour are serious about winning the next election. Getting immigration down and halting illegal immigration/asylum seeking is the only path for them to win and I think they've realised it, for now it's all talk though if they delivery on this agenda I'd make Labour favourites to win in 2029 and the Tories to be turned to dust by Reform.
If Labour out-Reform Reform, they may be in prime position to win the next election, but it will create a gap for a Cameroon-style party.
I can't believe that the ILR change to ten years will be retrospective. I think that it was stupidly cruel of Starmer to not clarify this in his speech
Everyone who has started the ILR process in the last five years must be terribly worried
Edit - ILR got "corrected" to IRL!
It needs to be to prevent the Boriswave and their dependents from getting citizenship and becoming a huge burden on the state and bring another onwards chain of 1-2m migrants worth of family reunions.
It's a tough but fair measure given the situation. Those visas should not be renewed after they expire and the people be made to go back to their home countries.
Any immigrant is going to be at the whim of the host state until they achieve citizenship/ILTR. It’s just the nature of the beast and part of the risk of emigrating. Fairness doesn’t really have anything to do with it.
Exactly, it's the nature of immigration. Another stupid thing Boris and Patel did was to even allow unskilled visas a pathway to citizenship, they should only ever have been temporary and non-renewable with no right to bring dependents. Student visas similarly should not have had such an easy path to citizenship until Rishi pushed up the skilled worker visa threshold to £39k.
That's true, but if we want to attract the very best you want to provide them with some certainty. Perhaps make it conditional on 5 years solid employment on £50k+?
I can't believe that the ILR change to ten years will be retrospective. I think that it was stupidly cruel of Starmer to not clarify this in his speech
Everyone who has started the ILR process in the last five years must be terribly worried
Edit - ILR got "corrected" to IRL!
It needs to be to prevent the Boriswave and their dependents from getting citizenship and becoming a huge burden on the state and bring another onwards chain of 1-2m migrants worth of family reunions.
It's a tough but fair measure given the situation. Those visas should not be renewed after they expire and the people be made to go back to their home countries.
Any immigrant is going to be at the whim of the host state until they achieve citizenship/ILTR. It’s just the nature of the beast and part of the risk of emigrating. Fairness doesn’t really have anything to do with it.
Exactly, it's the nature of immigration. Another stupid thing Boris and Patel did was to even allow unskilled visas a pathway to citizenship, they should only ever have been temporary and non-renewable with no right to bring dependents. Student visas similarly should not have had such an easy path to citizenship until Rishi pushed up the skilled worker visa threshold to £39k.
That's true, but if we want to attract the very best you want to provide them with some certainty. Perhaps make it conditional on 5 years solid employment on £50k+?
I read yesterday that it would depend on tax contribution so perhaps there is a sliding scale which will track to income?
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
It tells me Labour are serious about winning the next election. Getting immigration down and halting illegal immigration/asylum seeking is the only path for them to win and I think they've realised it, for now it's all talk though if they delivery on this agenda I'd make Labour favourites to win in 2029 and the Tories to be turned to dust by Reform.
If Labour out-Reform Reform, they may be in prime position to win the next election, but it will create a gap for a Cameroon-style party.
No I don't think it does, the market for those voters is quite small, the lefty types put off by this will move to the greens not the Tories. Fundamentally the British public has decisively moved against unlimited immigration, I don't think there's many votes for a party that pledges it in 2029.
The newly elected Pope spoke out about the war for the first time - he accused Russia of an imperialist invasion of Ukraine, calling its actions crimes against humanity.
"This is a real imperialist invasion, where Russia wants to conquer territory for reasons of strength and its own superiority... Crimes against humanity are being committed in Ukraine," Pope Leo XIV said in an interview with the Peruvian publication Semanario Expresión. Ukraine Now https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1921456221082599497
Pope Leo is the best thing that's happened to Americans in some time. Easily to generalise them as a bunch of MAGA loons; he dispels that image.
MAGA seems to be getting quite cross about a "Marxist", "Woke", "Progressive" Pope. Presumably in due course they will deport him to Peru, when he visits home.
Doubtless it was all organised by Soros.
I'm going back to a theme I've been on since last year - we now have someone to do for the USA what John-Paul II did for Poland.
Politicians over the last 30 years couldn't have done a worse job of managing these topics. People who work in care homes need to be paid more, but there's no way taxes can be raised even further, and most people paying the fees are already struggling to pay them. What a mess.
Care needs to be sorted. My suggestions are: Remove the private sector from care. National government should fund it and local government should run it. In the absence of compulsory insurance, an additional tax levied on pensioners to pay for it. NI being paid by pensioners would work. Pay rates to reflect the often unpleasant aspects of the job, i.e. higher than minimum wage.
What problem exactly does nationalisation solve? The problem appears to be a combination of increasing demand, and a reluctance all round for people to pay for it.
Personally I think it's really simple to fix, and all it needs is a voluntary insurance model.
System stays pretty much as it is today, so you pay for everything until your assets drop below a threshold, then the government steps in.
But, you have the option, probably at retirement (maybe tied to the same time as the pension lump sum) to insure any amount you fancy against care costs. I'd expect premiums to be around 20% of the sum insured. You'd need an index linking mechanism, but that's simple enough.
For every £1 insured, the threshold at which you are counted as having been wiped out is raised by £1, and instead the insurance co hands over the money.
So you can gamble if you want, and risk your kids inheritance being wiped out by care homes fees. Or you can insure if you want, and have a guaranteed amount safe from being raided to pass on. Your call, but no take-back's either way.
This doesn't even require the government to do much - merely legislate to permit you to keep more of your money back from care costs if appropriate insurance is in place.
Politicians over the last 30 years couldn't have done a worse job of managing these topics. People who work in care homes need to be paid more, but there's no way taxes can be raised even further, and most people paying the fees are already struggling to pay them. What a mess.
Care needs to be sorted. My suggestions are: Remove the private sector from care. National government should fund it and local government should run it. In the absence of compulsory insurance, an additional tax levied on pensioners to pay for it. NI being paid by pensioners would work. Pay rates to reflect the often unpleasant aspects of the job, i.e. higher than minimum wage.
Compulsory insurance starting at age 50 would do it and NI on pension income, align the NI threshold with the state pension if it ever goes higher than what it is currently so that people who live on the state pension only don't get hit by it.
The question then is why isn't there a private market for such a scheme? From what I can see online, the uncapping of care costs ended that market because the premium was enormous.
My back-of-envelope gets me to about £1,000 per year from age 50.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
It tells me Labour are serious about winning the next election. Getting immigration down and halting illegal immigration/asylum seeking is the only path for them to win and I think they've realised it, for now it's all talk though if they delivery on this agenda I'd make Labour favourites to win in 2029 and the Tories to be turned to dust by Reform.
If Labour out-Reform Reform, they may be in prime position to win the next election, but it will create a gap for a Cameroon-style party.
No I don't think it does, the market for those voters is quite small, the lefty types put off by this will move to the greens not the Tories. Fundamentally the British public has decisively moved against unlimited immigration, I don't think there's many votes for a party that pledges it in 2029.
I don't mean lefty types. There are lots of people who want immigration to be dealt with, but are still put off by the rhetoric.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
It tells me Labour are serious about winning the next election. Getting immigration down and halting illegal immigration/asylum seeking is the only path for them to win and I think they've realised it, for now it's all talk though if they delivery on this agenda I'd make Labour favourites to win in 2029 and the Tories to be turned to dust by Reform.
If Labour out-Reform Reform, they may be in prime position to win the next election, but it will create a gap for a Cameroon-style party.
No I don't think it does, the market for those voters is quite small, the lefty types put off by this will move to the greens not the Tories. Fundamentally the British public has decisively moved against unlimited immigration, I don't think there's many votes for a party that pledges it in 2029.
I don't mean lefty types. There are lots of people who want immigration to be dealt with, but are still put off by the rhetoric.
I don't think there are. I've been in the Tory party on and off for 15 years or so and even the one nation types are fed up with immigration being so high. People who were reliable voters for Dave, voted remain etc... are now much closer to Nige than they are to Boris on immigration. The constant media reports on court rulings has really changed people's minds on it IMO. The Tory party, in theory, is about working hard and getting on in life, people see those court case results and it really makes them seem like our hospitality is being taken advantage of, it's been, IMO, the most radicalising of the immigration stories for the party. One of the reasons Kemi has jumped on the anti-ECHR bandwagon is because I think the party has realised this, but probably 3 years too late.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
It tells me Labour are serious about winning the next election. Getting immigration down and halting illegal immigration/asylum seeking is the only path for them to win and I think they've realised it, for now it's all talk though if they delivery on this agenda I'd make Labour favourites to win in 2029 and the Tories to be turned to dust by Reform.
If Labour out-Reform Reform, they may be in prime position to win the next election, but it will create a gap for a Cameroon-style party.
No I don't think it does, the market for those voters is quite small, the lefty types put off by this will move to the greens not the Tories. Fundamentally the British public has decisively moved against unlimited immigration, I don't think there's many votes for a party that pledges it in 2029.
I don't mean lefty types. There are lots of people who want immigration to be dealt with, but are still put off by the rhetoric.
I don't think there are. I've been in the Tory party on and off for 15 years or so and even the one nation types are fed up with immigration being so high. People who were reliable voters for Dave, voted remain etc... are now much closer to Nige than they are to Boris on immigration. The constant media reports on court rulings has really changed people's minds on it IMO. The Tory party, in theory, is about working hard and getting on in life, people see those court case results and it really makes them seem like our hospitality is being taken advantage of, it's been, IMO, the most radicalising of the immigration stories for the party. One of the reasons Kemi has jumped on the anti-ECHR bandwagon is because I think the party has realised this, but probably 3 years too late.
I'm talking about a hypothetical scenario in three years' time where Labour have successfully brought immigration down more than they're promising now. The issue won't have gone away, but it will have lost a bit of salience and some people will be put off by politicians 'banging on' about immigration, even if they personally would be happy with not letting anyone in.
I think Labour has probably played a very smart move today. If they deliver they will feel the benefits.
Big if of course. But I always said here that they had a long time to figure out what wasn’t working.
They’ve picked a battle they will never win. They will never be seen as “tougher on borders” than Reform. It’s like the Tories trying to be the party of the NHS.
There are other battles it’s a bit easier to win against Reform.
Politicians over the last 30 years couldn't have done a worse job of managing these topics. People who work in care homes need to be paid more, but there's no way taxes can be raised even further, and most people paying the fees are already struggling to pay them. What a mess.
Care needs to be sorted. My suggestions are: Remove the private sector from care. National government should fund it and local government should run it. In the absence of compulsory insurance, an additional tax levied on pensioners to pay for it. NI being paid by pensioners would work. Pay rates to reflect the often unpleasant aspects of the job, i.e. higher than minimum wage.
Compulsory insurance starting at age 50 would do it and NI on pension income, align the NI threshold with the state pension if it ever goes higher than what it is currently so that people who live on the state pension only don't get hit by it.
I agree, but by the time your sensible suggestion hits today's politics, you'll be starving pensioners.
Farage saying Starmer is making promises he can’t keep . But unfortunately for Farage in terms of legal migration it will work .
Its all in the eyes of the beholder
This is a white paper so has some way to go to be legislated upon and Starmer needs results
Also Starmer has not addressed the boat crisis in this white paper
And finally why vote Starmer when you can get the real deal in one Nigel Farage
(Note - I will not vote for Farage or Reform but polls indicate many will)
Because Reform is a one trick pony.
Reform is not a one trick pony. It is far deeper than that. It is now the main opposition. It's polling over 30% and, currently, in poll position to form the next majority government.
Starmer is very well advised to turn his guns directly on it and cut the legs from under it so, in four years time, he can present himself as the moderate credible government that gets things done.
Reform has 5 MPs. They are in no way the main opposition. It's like saying that the SDP were the main opposition in the early 80s or the Liberal Party were the main opposition following the Orpington by election of 1962. Opinion poll leads fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the op’ning day.
Chortle.
Its true. The Opposition are the Tories, not Reform. I thought you were still a Tory anyway?
Ask EICIPM about the value of midterm poll leads. Or Farage who led the polls in 2019. Or Corbyn who also led the polls in 2019.
The problem is, it's not just opinion poll leads.
Suppose the local elections of 2026/27 are as brutal for Labour and the Conservatives as the ones we've just have. You could easily see Labour and Reform on 50-60 councils apiece, and the Conservatives down to about 10, in which case, voters will conclude the Conservatives are irrelevant. That's fatal under FPTP.
That's the dog that should be barking, but isn't at the moment.
For all the misery the Starmer government is experiencing (some poor judgement, lots of being passed the baby just before the poonami), they are still in second place, and the Conservatives are doing worse than at the General Election. That is not normal.
Someone has to be in second place. Labour second place with about 22% is not the same as second place with 35%.
If you look at possible trajectories, LD and Green are curving gradually upwards. All it takes for the LDs to be in serious contention for second place is a three step move, each plausible:
1) Some more Tories say they will vote LD
2) Some more progressive Labourites do the same
3) A few Greens decide the realistic way ahead in most seats is to support LD for now
Once in contention, further movement, as Reform shows, has its own momentum.
I think Labour has probably played a very smart move today. If they deliver they will feel the benefits.
Big if of course. But I always said here that they had a long time to figure out what wasn’t working.
They’ve picked a battle they will never win. They will never be seen as “tougher on borders” than Reform. It’s like the Tories trying to be the party of the NHS.
There are other battles it’s a bit easier to win against Reform.
I think Labour has probably played a very smart move today. If they deliver they will feel the benefits.
Big if of course. But I always said here that they had a long time to figure out what wasn’t working.
They’ve picked a battle they will never win. They will never be seen as “tougher on borders” than Reform. It’s like the Tories trying to be the party of the NHS.
There are other battles it’s a bit easier to win against Reform.
You're still talking about it in terms of optics rather than delivery.
If they don't get tough on immigration then they have no way of defeating Reform. Their only chance is to actually deal with it and hope it reduces the salience of the issue.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
It tells me Labour are serious about winning the next election. Getting immigration down and halting illegal immigration/asylum seeking is the only path for them to win and I think they've realised it, for now it's all talk though if they delivery on this agenda I'd make Labour favourites to win in 2029 and the Tories to be turned to dust by Reform.
If Labour out-Reform Reform, they may be in prime position to win the next election, but it will create a gap for a Cameroon-style party.
No I don't think it does, the market for those voters is quite small, the lefty types put off by this will move to the greens not the Tories. Fundamentally the British public has decisively moved against unlimited immigration, I don't think there's many votes for a party that pledges it in 2029.
I don't mean lefty types. There are lots of people who want immigration to be dealt with, but are still put off by the rhetoric.
I don't think there are. I've been in the Tory party on and off for 15 years or so and even the one nation types are fed up with immigration being so high. People who were reliable voters for Dave, voted remain etc... are now much closer to Nige than they are to Boris on immigration. The constant media reports on court rulings has really changed people's minds on it IMO. The Tory party, in theory, is about working hard and getting on in life, people see those court case results and it really makes them seem like our hospitality is being taken advantage of, it's been, IMO, the most radicalising of the immigration stories for the party. One of the reasons Kemi has jumped on the anti-ECHR bandwagon is because I think the party has realised this, but probably 3 years too late.
When times are hard, there is not much sympathy for those who are taking the piss.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
It tells me Labour are serious about winning the next election. Getting immigration down and halting illegal immigration/asylum seeking is the only path for them to win and I think they've realised it, for now it's all talk though if they delivery on this agenda I'd make Labour favourites to win in 2029 and the Tories to be turned to dust by Reform.
If Labour out-Reform Reform, they may be in prime position to win the next election, but it will create a gap for a Cameroon-style party.
No I don't think it does, the market for those voters is quite small, the lefty types put off by this will move to the greens not the Tories. Fundamentally the British public has decisively moved against unlimited immigration, I don't think there's many votes for a party that pledges it in 2029.
I don't mean lefty types. There are lots of people who want immigration to be dealt with, but are still put off by the rhetoric.
I don't think there are. I've been in the Tory party on and off for 15 years or so and even the one nation types are fed up with immigration being so high. People who were reliable voters for Dave, voted remain etc... are now much closer to Nige than they are to Boris on immigration. The constant media reports on court rulings has really changed people's minds on it IMO. The Tory party, in theory, is about working hard and getting on in life, people see those court case results and it really makes them seem like our hospitality is being taken advantage of, it's been, IMO, the most radicalising of the immigration stories for the party. One of the reasons Kemi has jumped on the anti-ECHR bandwagon is because I think the party has realised this, but probably 3 years too late.
I'm talking about a hypothetical scenario in three years' time where Labour have successfully brought immigration down more than they're promising now. The issue won't have gone away, but it will have lost a bit of salience and some people will be put off by politicians 'banging on' about immigration, even if they personally would be happy with not letting anyone in.
There is a point there. Salience rises and falls partly based on media coverage but also partly based on the rate of change in net migration. It seems quite a volatile metric too.
The reason I don’t see salience falling this time is the basic visual impact of small boats, regardless of levels of legal immigration. They can effectively remove the “migrants in hotels” issue by clearing the backlog, but not the “migrants arriving on the beach”.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
It tells me Labour are serious about winning the next election. Getting immigration down and halting illegal immigration/asylum seeking is the only path for them to win and I think they've realised it, for now it's all talk though if they delivery on this agenda I'd make Labour favourites to win in 2029 and the Tories to be turned to dust by Reform.
If Labour out-Reform Reform, they may be in prime position to win the next election, but it will create a gap for a Cameroon-style party.
No I don't think it does, the market for those voters is quite small, the lefty types put off by this will move to the greens not the Tories. Fundamentally the British public has decisively moved against unlimited immigration, I don't think there's many votes for a party that pledges it in 2029.
I don't mean lefty types. There are lots of people who want immigration to be dealt with, but are still put off by the rhetoric.
I really have no idea why you have this odd nostalgia for the the essay crisis PM.
I think Labour has probably played a very smart move today. If they deliver they will feel the benefits.
Big if of course. But I always said here that they had a long time to figure out what wasn’t working.
They’ve picked a battle they will never win. They will never be seen as “tougher on borders” than Reform. It’s like the Tories trying to be the party of the NHS.
There are other battles it’s a bit easier to win against Reform.
You're still talking about it in terms of optics rather than delivery.
If they don't get tough on immigration then they have no way of defeating Reform. Their only chance is to actually deal with it and hope it reduces the salience of the issue.
The optics is actually my big annoyance. They can get tough without trash talking.
I’m one of those for whom rhetoric is not an irrelevance - on some topics it is critically important, and can make the difference between a harmonious and an unhappy society.
"Keir Starmer admitted mass immigration risks making Britain an 'island of strangers' today as he scrambles to blunt the threat from Reform.
The PM deployed the 'take back control' Brexit slogan at a press conference in Downing Street as he pledged to end the 'betrayal' of reliance on cheap foreign labour.
Sir Keir accused the Tories of overseeing an explosion in numbers while in power, saying the system seemed 'designed to permit abuse' and was 'contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart'."
I think Starmer's strategy is what's known as giving your enemy possession of the battlefield.
That’s the madness of it to me. The more the focus is on immigration the more Farage can sit back and let Starmer do his marketing for him. But then I appreciate ignoring the issue is also tricky.
Labour needs to find its political strong point and get media focus on it as much as possible. Historically it’s always been the NHS. Waiting lists do seem to be creeping down. Why not blitz everyone with that. And Streeting hasn’t yet done himself major brand damage like Reeves has. (Admittedly nor has Cooper, but she risks losing Labour some more votes to the Greens and Lib Dems if she keeps upping the rhetoric)
Alternatively, ignoring the immigration issues destines Labour to a large defeat to Reform in 2029, an outcome I'd do pretty much anything to avoid. I think the days when Labour can win an election on the NHS are gone.
For sure , if immigration not cut big time and boats completely they are stuffed and Nigel will have to sort it out. It is festering just like the crazy trans/LGBT thing and at some point people will have had enough, rightly or wrongly. When people cannot get houses , medical treatment , etc and peopel can waltz in on an RN taxi , straight to 4* hotel , issued with all the comforts of life, houses being built/issued to them , then at some point it will backfire. The great unwashed will take the hump big time.
No asylum seekers are in 4* hotels. That’s a lie that’s been repeated far too often.
They are not issued with all the comforts of life. You would not want to try to live on the money they are given.
They are a million times better off than they were, hotel stay , all meals , private medical , busses into town , spending money etc and local people are on the streets, cannot get a doctor etc , get out of your bubble.
"Keir Starmer admitted mass immigration risks making Britain an 'island of strangers' today as he scrambles to blunt the threat from Reform.
The PM deployed the 'take back control' Brexit slogan at a press conference in Downing Street as he pledged to end the 'betrayal' of reliance on cheap foreign labour.
Sir Keir accused the Tories of overseeing an explosion in numbers while in power, saying the system seemed 'designed to permit abuse' and was 'contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart'."
I think Starmer's strategy is what's known as giving your enemy possession of the battlefield.
That’s the madness of it to me. The more the focus is on immigration the more Farage can sit back and let Starmer do his marketing for him. But then I appreciate ignoring the issue is also tricky.
Labour needs to find its political strong point and get media focus on it as much as possible. Historically it’s always been the NHS. Waiting lists do seem to be creeping down. Why not blitz everyone with that. And Streeting hasn’t yet done himself major brand damage like Reeves has. (Admittedly nor has Cooper, but she risks losing Labour some more votes to the Greens and Lib Dems if she keeps upping the rhetoric)
Alternatively, ignoring the immigration issues destines Labour to a large defeat to Reform in 2029, an outcome I'd do pretty much anything to avoid. I think the days when Labour can win an election on the NHS are gone.
For sure , if immigration not cut big time and boats completely they are stuffed and Nigel will have to sort it out. It is festering just like the crazy trans/LGBT thing and at some point people will have had enough, rightly or wrongly. When people cannot get houses , medical treatment , etc and peopel can waltz in on an RN taxi , straight to 4* hotel , issued with all the comforts of life, houses being built/issued to them , then at some point it will backfire. The great unwashed will take the hump big time.
No asylum seekers are in 4* hotels. That’s a lie that’s been repeated far too often.
They are not issued with all the comforts of life. You would not want to try to live on the money they are given.
To try and be accurate - in some cases they closed down 4* hotel, and shutdown most of the facilities. Then used it into a migrant hostel.
Most migrant hotels are less ranked hotels - the one that had @SeanT steaming the other day was a business/travel hotel on the edge of a business park. A nice(ish) Travel Lodge equivalent.
They are doing a lot better than local homeless people for sure, nice hotel , 3 meals , private GP visits, etc, some clowns live on another planet.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
It tells me Labour are serious about winning the next election. Getting immigration down and halting illegal immigration/asylum seeking is the only path for them to win and I think they've realised it, for now it's all talk though if they delivery on this agenda I'd make Labour favourites to win in 2029 and the Tories to be turned to dust by Reform.
If Labour out-Reform Reform, they may be in prime position to win the next election, but it will create a gap for a Cameroon-style party.
No I don't think it does, the market for those voters is quite small, the lefty types put off by this will move to the greens not the Tories. Fundamentally the British public has decisively moved against unlimited immigration, I don't think there's many votes for a party that pledges it in 2029.
I don't mean lefty types. There are lots of people who want immigration to be dealt with, but are still put off by the rhetoric.
I don't think there are. I've been in the Tory party on and off for 15 years or so and even the one nation types are fed up with immigration being so high. People who were reliable voters for Dave, voted remain etc... are now much closer to Nige than they are to Boris on immigration. The constant media reports on court rulings has really changed people's minds on it IMO. The Tory party, in theory, is about working hard and getting on in life, people see those court case results and it really makes them seem like our hospitality is being taken advantage of, it's been, IMO, the most radicalising of the immigration stories for the party. One of the reasons Kemi has jumped on the anti-ECHR bandwagon is because I think the party has realised this, but probably 3 years too late.
I'm talking about a hypothetical scenario in three years' time where Labour have successfully brought immigration down more than they're promising now. The issue won't have gone away, but it will have lost a bit of salience and some people will be put off by politicians 'banging on' about immigration, even if they personally would be happy with not letting anyone in.
There is a point there. Salience rises and falls partly based on media coverage but also partly based on the rate of change in net migration. It seems quite a volatile metric too.
The reason I don’t see salience falling this time is the basic visual impact of small boats, regardless of levels of legal immigration. They can effectively remove the “migrants in hotels” issue by clearing the backlog, but not the “migrants arriving on the beach”.
You can't remove the issue simply by clearing the backlog if that means accepting the majority because it just shifts the problem to "migrants in HMOs". A serious number of deportations are needed.
I can understand the argument that you can’t out-Reform Reform but surely it’s about persuading the voters who are Labour minded but are currently voting Reform to come back? You don’t need to out Reform to do that, just respond to their concerns. Focus groups from Luke Tryl have said voters will be willing to come back if Labour deliver.
I’m struggling to see how this move - if successful, I accept a big if - won’t do that. You can call it as cynical or as pathetic as you like but if migration comes down Labour have a record to speak to. Perhaps it won’t come down by enough but what exactly is enough to these voters? I confess I don’t know.
I think what it does show is that Labour is not going to sit around for four years and give up. They have time on their side.
On the economy, how is it looking? My own sense is it’s not as bad as people say but I am in a London bubble.
Well, I agree that this is a positioning tactic from Labour that they probably had to make, in light of the threats they face. They need to at least do something to try to neutralise the issue. The jury is out on if they’ll manage it or if it simply drives people to the people who’ll be even “tougher” - Reform - but I see the logic of the move. It definitely could work.
You will spare me a slight moment of amusement though to see Starmer coming out with the type of rhetoric which would for decades have been condemned by the left as being irresponsible, dog whistle and unacceptable political language. Talking of “islands of strangers” would have stirred up some quarters into absolute apoplexy. It is quite amusing to read commentary now trying to explain that the Labour Party are right to address concerns etc when for a very long time the public were told by some that the concerns were illegitimate.
I’m happy to concede that on immigration whilst I didn’t agree with some of the more fruity rhetoric, I also did not understand the strength of feeling that many do legitimately feel. I got it wrong.
I do think though that is a difference in the migration we’ve had post Brexit and before. The negativity towards mostly Christian immigrants from Poland baffled me.
It's almost like those of us who have been saying it's a economic issue were telling the truth, and the people who said we were just a bunch of massive racists were liars.
Immigration drives down wages, especially at the bottom end of the jobs market. It increases pressure on housing, on services.
That's the biggest problem with immigration, that's why the public consistently vote for less of it every time they're asked.
Now, there are also cultural issues with some kinds of migrants - a lot of people aren't particularly keen on importing lots of people from low trust societies, or large numbers of misogynistic young men. That's not racism either - it's simply sane pragmatism if you want to maintain a high trust egalitarian society. But that wasn't the issue with the Poles - it was purely economic.
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
It tells me Labour are serious about winning the next election. Getting immigration down and halting illegal immigration/asylum seeking is the only path for them to win and I think they've realised it, for now it's all talk though if they delivery on this agenda I'd make Labour favourites to win in 2029 and the Tories to be turned to dust by Reform.
Still nothing from Labour on stopping the boats and if immigration comes down in the next few months it will be mainly due to Sunak and Cleverly requiring higher wages for visas and ending the right of dependents to come here.
Not Starmer and Cooper requiring a degree rather than A levels for a skilled worker visa now, scrapping care home visas will also exacerbate the care worker shortage
"Earlier this year, Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the Prison Officers Association (POA), raised concerns over the recruitment of foreign staff. He told the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee that some overseas recruits turned up on their first day assuming they would be given accommodation along with their job. One, he said, was commuting 70 miles from Huddersfield to Nottingham for work, but then decided it was cheaper to sleep in his car outside the prison. At another jail, according to Fairhurst, foreign-recruited staff had set up a camp in a wooded area opposite the prison where they were working after discovering that there was no accommodation provided with the job.
Fairhurst told the peers: “We have got problems with people who turn up at the gates with cases in tow, and with their families, saying to the staff: ‘Where is the accommodation?’. Some end up sleeping rough in local woods and open spaces”.
Tom Wheatley, president of the Prison Governors Association (PGA), has said that the surge in applications from west Africa appears to have been fuelled by word of mouth and also online messaging. “It’s turned into an approach that has been promoted online by the expat Nigerian community,” he said. “This has led to some issues about language and communication in some jails.”"
I don’t understand why people consider it a bad thing that Labour are tackling Reform on immigration. At the end of the day you can be as woke as you like but immigration is still a concern. You can try to convince the population that we have a “moral duty” to accept all these people but you’re not going to win. It’s a much better left wing position to make sure that those we do accept and treated well and chosen wisely and appropriately.
It’s also a much better left wing position to improve the economy so we can better look after and support those already here.
Frankly I trust Labour much more than Reform to do this without ripping up our rights and the economy in the process.
It could be done at policy level without the totally unnecessary dogwhistle language and nastiness, which is classic home office and just encourages others to ramp up the rhetoric further.
What language are you referring to?
“Nation of strangers” “City the size of Birmingham” “That’s not control, it’s chaos” “An immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse”
All in this morning’s speech, and all calculated to paint a picture of an invasion and a system out of control. They heighten people’s fears rather than reassuring them.
And Cooper invited journalists in to film migrants being forcibly deported back in February. Again, all part of the theatre of immigration policy. Not quite up there with Trump and his El Salvador prisons I grant you, but unnecessary and in my view self defeating.
It tells me Labour are serious about winning the next election. Getting immigration down and halting illegal immigration/asylum seeking is the only path for them to win and I think they've realised it, for now it's all talk though if they delivery on this agenda I'd make Labour favourites to win in 2029 and the Tories to be turned to dust by Reform.
If Labour out-Reform Reform, they may be in prime position to win the next election, but it will create a gap for a Cameroon-style party.
No I don't think it does, the market for those voters is quite small, the lefty types put off by this will move to the greens not the Tories. Fundamentally the British public has decisively moved against unlimited immigration, I don't think there's many votes for a party that pledges it in 2029.
I don't mean lefty types. There are lots of people who want immigration to be dealt with, but are still put off by the rhetoric.
I don't think there are. I've been in the Tory party on and off for 15 years or so and even the one nation types are fed up with immigration being so high. People who were reliable voters for Dave, voted remain etc... are now much closer to Nige than they are to Boris on immigration. The constant media reports on court rulings has really changed people's minds on it IMO. The Tory party, in theory, is about working hard and getting on in life, people see those court case results and it really makes them seem like our hospitality is being taken advantage of, it's been, IMO, the most radicalising of the immigration stories for the party. One of the reasons Kemi has jumped on the anti-ECHR bandwagon is because I think the party has realised this, but probably 3 years too late.
I'm talking about a hypothetical scenario in three years' time where Labour have successfully brought immigration down more than they're promising now. The issue won't have gone away, but it will have lost a bit of salience and some people will be put off by politicians 'banging on' about immigration, even if they personally would be happy with not letting anyone in.
There is a point there. Salience rises and falls partly based on media coverage but also partly based on the rate of change in net migration. It seems quite a volatile metric too.
The reason I don’t see salience falling this time is the basic visual impact of small boats, regardless of levels of legal immigration. They can effectively remove the “migrants in hotels” issue by clearing the backlog, but not the “migrants arriving on the beach”.
Salience reflects reality but also the favoured narrative of those who are driving the flow of information and disinformation. There is plenty of money that wants to see a more pro-Russia government that will privatize the NHS, and these people will keep pumping out stories about immigrants living a life of luxury whatever is actually happening in terms of numbers. So I'd be skeptical that this will help change the narrative.
The standard midwit opinion on this is that "You can't out-Reform Reform" (or "out-Farage Farage".) Like most midwit opinions, it sounds superficially clever, but it misses the point. When Wetherspoons offer a grill platter, they're not trying to "out-steakhouse the steakhouse".
The standard midwit opinion on this is that "You can't out-Reform Reform" (or "out-Farage Farage".) Like most midwit opinions, it sounds superficially clever, but it misses the point. When Wetherspoons offer a grill platter, they're not trying to "out-steakhouse the steakhouse".
Uses the term “midwit”. Probably makes references to IQ somewhere.
I think Labour has probably played a very smart move today. If they deliver they will feel the benefits.
Big if of course. But I always said here that they had a long time to figure out what wasn’t working.
Whilst I think that's true, it illustrates the problem not the solution. I criticise Starmer for having no Theory of the World: no idea in his head on how the world works and how to change it to get to a desirable state. This explains why he zips from thing to thing - "Smash The Gangs!" "Go For Growth!" "Close The Borders!".
This is both bad and good.
He behaves like an Autocrat: he listens to the public and changes his policies moment-to-moment to retain power. To be honest, it might work. But it does lay him open to charges of cowardice and not having an inner core, as he cannot defend his actions other than "they're popular". I assume this is why Labour are bad in the polls.
Good morning everyone. I'm not sure, quoting Mr Pulpstar, that it is such a good morning, in spite of the warm and very pleasant sunshine.
Why, one asks do so many people want to come here? Several reasons, I suggest. First of all, we speak English and those trying to come here regard it as a lingua franca, even if they don't speak it too well themselves. Some knowledge of English is much more widespread than German or Spanish, or even French. Secondly, this country has for many, many years had the reputation of being a safe haven for the oppressed. Not as much as the US, of course, your huddled masses yearning to be free, but the Atlantic is wide and not easily crossed. Thirdly, many of those have relatives here. Fourth, because we are a once upon a time Imperial Power we have for a long time given the impression that we always do the right thing. I know that's not true, but that's the impression we have given.
Now we're saying sorry and all that but none of the above are a good enough reason to come here, no matter how much you're suffering in your home, and whether or not our imperial power once upon a time extended control over your home country.
I was perhaps being a smidgen tongue in cheek about SKS' announcement, and Ukr/Russia is far from over but the US/China and India/Pakistan coming to acquiescence certainly IS good news. How long does the whole "imperial" argument last ? It's 78 years since India achieved independence as an example !
Still 30% US tariffs on Chinese imports and 10% Chinese tariffs on US imports even despite today's deal
The standard midwit opinion on this is that "You can't out-Reform Reform" (or "out-Farage Farage".) Like most midwit opinions, it sounds superficially clever, but it misses the point. When Wetherspoons offer a grill platter, they're not trying to "out-steakhouse the steakhouse".
The standard midwit opinion on this is that "You can't out-Reform Reform" (or "out-Farage Farage".) Like most midwit opinions, it sounds superficially clever, but it misses the point. When Wetherspoons offer a grill platter, they're not trying to "out-steakhouse the steakhouse".
From Mr Tufton of Tufton not yet MP.
The IEA were among the chief architects of the Boriswave.
From the same author: "It is perfectly possible to liberalise our immigration system without antagonising the public".
Politicians over the last 30 years couldn't have done a worse job of managing these topics. People who work in care homes need to be paid more, but there's no way taxes can be raised even further, and most people paying the fees are already struggling to pay them. What a mess.
Care needs to be sorted. My suggestions are: Remove the private sector from care. National government should fund it and local government should run it. In the absence of compulsory insurance, an additional tax levied on pensioners to pay for it. NI being paid by pensioners would work. Pay rates to reflect the often unpleasant aspects of the job, i.e. higher than minimum wage.
Compulsory insurance starting at age 50 would do it and NI on pension income, align the NI threshold with the state pension if it ever goes higher than what it is currently so that people who live on the state pension only don't get hit by it.
The question then is why isn't there a private market for such a scheme? From what I can see online, the uncapping of care costs ended that market because the premium was enormous.
My back-of-envelope gets me to about £1,000 per year from age 50.
Because there's no way in the current system to insure your current assets, but then that value is used up to fall back on the state.
Currently your insurance has to be for the whole of your care cost, otherwise your assets get wiped anyway, so unless you've lots of assets it's prohibitively expensive for the value of the assets protected.
The standard midwit opinion on this is that "You can't out-Reform Reform" (or "out-Farage Farage".) Like most midwit opinions, it sounds superficially clever, but it misses the point. When Wetherspoons offer a grill platter, they're not trying to "out-steakhouse the steakhouse".
From Mr Tufton of Tufton not yet MP.
The IEA were among the chief architects of the Boriswave.
From the same author: "It is perfectly possible to liberalise our immigration system without antagonising the public".
Politicians over the last 30 years couldn't have done a worse job of managing these topics. People who work in care homes need to be paid more, but there's no way taxes can be raised even further, and most people paying the fees are already struggling to pay them. What a mess.
Care needs to be sorted. My suggestions are: Remove the private sector from care. National government should fund it and local government should run it. In the absence of compulsory insurance, an additional tax levied on pensioners to pay for it. NI being paid by pensioners would work. Pay rates to reflect the often unpleasant aspects of the job, i.e. higher than minimum wage.
Compulsory insurance starting at age 50 would do it and NI on pension income, align the NI threshold with the state pension if it ever goes higher than what it is currently so that people who live on the state pension only don't get hit by it.
The question then is why isn't there a private market for such a scheme? From what I can see online, the uncapping of care costs ended that market because the premium was enormous.
My back-of-envelope gets me to about £1,000 per year from age 50.
Because there's no way in the current system to insure your current assets, but then that value is used up to fall back on the state.
Currently your insurance has to be for the whole of your care cost, otherwise your assets get wiped anyway, so unless you've lots of assets it's prohibitively expensive for the value of the assets protected.
Japan seems to have managed with insurance for social care effectively.
I think Labour has probably played a very smart move today. If they deliver they will feel the benefits.
Big if of course. But I always said here that they had a long time to figure out what wasn’t working.
They’ve picked a battle they will never win. They will never be seen as “tougher on borders” than Reform. It’s like the Tories trying to be the party of the NHS.
There are other battles it’s a bit easier to win against Reform.
That is a very silly attitude.
How much time and effort did Cameron put in to reassure voters the NHS was safe in his hands. Often using his own, difficult, family circumstances to do so.
If he had not done so, it's unlikely he'd have won one, let alone two, elections.
Politicians over the last 30 years couldn't have done a worse job of managing these topics. People who work in care homes need to be paid more, but there's no way taxes can be raised even further, and most people paying the fees are already struggling to pay them. What a mess.
Care needs to be sorted. My suggestions are: Remove the private sector from care. National government should fund it and local government should run it. In the absence of compulsory insurance, an additional tax levied on pensioners to pay for it. NI being paid by pensioners would work. Pay rates to reflect the often unpleasant aspects of the job, i.e. higher than minimum wage.
Compulsory insurance starting at age 50 would do it and NI on pension income, align the NI threshold with the state pension if it ever goes higher than what it is currently so that people who live on the state pension only don't get hit by it.
The question then is why isn't there a private market for such a scheme? From what I can see online, the uncapping of care costs ended that market because the premium was enormous.
My back-of-envelope gets me to about £1,000 per year from age 50.
Because there's no way in the current system to insure your current assets, but then that value is used up to fall back on the state.
Currently your insurance has to be for the whole of your care cost, otherwise your assets get wiped anyway, so unless you've lots of assets it's prohibitively expensive for the value of the assets protected.
Japan seems to have managed with insurance for social care effectively.
Comments
However, some people who think immigration should be lower are also racists, and get called racist.
Refugee charity Care4Calais has accused the prime minister of "fanning the fire of the far-right" by using language like "an island of strangers" to discuss immigration.
Care4Calais CEO, Steve Smith, said in a statement: "This is dangerous language for any prime minister to use. Has Starmer forgotten last year's far-right riots?
"Shameful language like this will only inflame the fire of the far-right and risks further race riots that endanger survivors of horrors such as war, torture and modern slavery. Starmer must apologise."
Not even a year in and they have completely lost their way - doomed now like their predecessors and Reform too are doomed, aggressive language, clear unambiguous promise - no policy that can match such vibes. Reform, Labour, Conservative all living in a fantasy world.
In fact, the Conservative government 2019-2024 are beginning to come across very well in comparison, choosing not to destroy the UK economy turning UK in a third world country, by mindlessly, cluelessly switching off immigration as though there are zero consequences of doing so.
Everyone who has started the ILR process in the last five years must be terribly worried
Edit - ILR got "corrected" to IRL!
Build a couple of dams, reflood the Wantsum Channel, and make the Isle of Thanet our answer to Guantanamo - it's about the same size.
MITA - Make an Island of Thanet Again.
The Boriswave was a thing- even if a third of a million a year net is OK and necessary, numbers went up way beyond that for a while. I don't know if the @Malmesbury numbers are pointing to a major scandal, but they certainly point to something rather rum having gone on. Given the mess in everything else the government touched, it wouldn't be surprising if the same was true for immigration. So it probably does have to be big stick for a while. The catch is that we don't seem to have a stick, and they are awfully expensive.
You have the principles of a windsock.
Rebuild Doggerland.
Doubtless it was all organised by Soros.
I'm going back to a theme I've been on since last year - we now have someone to do for the USA what John-Paul II did for Poland.
Saying that immigration is too high and you'd like to see lower migration - not racist.
Saying the numbers of non-white people are too high and you'd like to see more white babies - racist.
Starmer could have made this mornings anti foreigner - taking jobs and homes - rant at ANY point in UK and English history, and would have been WRONG then as well as now for such views - as history has clearly proved!
The leaflets reform pushed through letter boxes in recent local elections were written in the SIXTEENTH century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_May_Day
- Care as a whole 1.6 million.
- 88% of care is provided by UK origin people.
- So we have 192,000 first gen. immigrant workers. Make it 200K.
"The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas to main applicants increased from 31,800 in 2021 to 145,823 in 2023. The rise was primarily due to an increase in South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi) and Sub-Saharan African (Zimbabwean, Ghanaian, and Nigerian) nationals coming to work as care workers. However, the number of care workers and home carers issued visas have fallen since the latter part of 2023. The fall towards the end of 2023 is likely due to more scrutiny applied by the Home Office to employers in the health and social care sector, and compliance activity taken against employers of migrant workers, as well as the recent policy measures affecting care workers introduced in Spring 2024. The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas issued to migrant workers in a Caring Personal Service occupation fell by 91% to 9,539 in the latest year."
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2024/why-do-people-come-to-the-uk-work
To close the loop - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3d8ll1l590o
"It took Arun George half a working life to scrape together £15,000 ($19,460) in savings, which he used to secure a care worker job for his wife in the UK."
5 figures per visa/job is not uncommon in these stories. It is illegal to sell visas, but the penalty has been, until now, little more than removing the right of the company to offer the jobs abroad.
Sell 100 visas.....
And the best bit for last - when the job is created/sold, it will come up in the jobs statistics as a job unfilled. A vacancy. And since it is never actually filled - since it doesn't exist - it will stay in the job stats for a while.
And I bet you they find that deeply irritating.
https://x.com/saulstaniforth/status/1921799830688403709?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Don’t really care whether Starmer’s just saying any old shit to curry favour with the Reform-curious or he’s been on a ‘journey’, he can girfuh either way.
Among the wind farms.
"UK Prime Minister
@10DowningStreet
We're ending Britain's open borders experiment."
https://x.com/10DowningStreet/status/1921894529671545117
I don't see what in those quotes above is in anyway inaccurate. If anything, it's still quite understated. He doesn't, for example, talk about the massive costs of accommodating boat people, or the criminality.
It's a tough but fair measure given the situation. Those visas should not be renewed after they expire and the people be made to go back to their home countries.
Immigration drives down wages, especially at the bottom end of the jobs market. It increases pressure on housing, on services.
That's the biggest problem with immigration, that's why the public consistently vote for less of it every time they're asked.
Now, there are also cultural issues with some kinds of migrants - a lot of people aren't particularly keen on importing lots of people from low trust societies, or large numbers of misogynistic young men. That's not racism either - it's simply sane pragmatism if you want to maintain a high trust egalitarian society. But that wasn't the issue with the Poles - it was purely economic.
Remove the private sector from care. National government should fund it and local government should run it.
In the absence of compulsory insurance, an additional tax levied on pensioners to pay for it. NI being paid by pensioners would work.
Pay rates to reflect the often unpleasant aspects of the job, i.e. higher than minimum wage.
Nate Silver on why the betting on the new Pope was bad.
Personally I think it's really simple to fix, and all it needs is a voluntary insurance model.
System stays pretty much as it is today, so you pay for everything until your assets drop below a threshold, then the government steps in.
But, you have the option, probably at retirement (maybe tied to the same time as the pension lump sum) to insure any amount you fancy against care costs. I'd expect premiums to be around 20% of the sum insured. You'd need an index linking mechanism, but that's simple enough.
For every £1 insured, the threshold at which you are counted as having been wiped out is raised by £1, and instead the insurance co hands over the money.
So you can gamble if you want, and risk your kids inheritance being wiped out by care homes fees. Or you can insure if you want, and have a guaranteed amount safe from being raided to pass on. Your call, but no take-back's either way.
This doesn't even require the government to do much - merely legislate to permit you to keep more of your money back from care costs if appropriate insurance is in place.
My back-of-envelope gets me to about £1,000 per year from age 50.
Big if of course. But I always said here that they had a long time to figure out what wasn’t working.
There are other battles it’s a bit easier to win against Reform.
You'll have definitely betrayed someone too.
If you look at possible trajectories, LD and Green are curving gradually upwards. All it takes for the LDs to be in serious contention for second place is a three step move, each plausible:
1) Some more Tories say they will vote LD
2) Some more progressive Labourites do the same
3) A few Greens decide the realistic way ahead in most seats is to support LD for now
Once in contention, further movement, as Reform shows, has its own momentum.
If they don't get tough on immigration then they have no way of defeating Reform. Their only chance is to actually deal with it and hope it reduces the salience of the issue.
The reason I don’t see salience falling this time is the basic visual impact of small boats, regardless of levels of legal immigration. They can effectively remove the “migrants in hotels” issue by clearing the backlog, but not the “migrants arriving on the beach”.
I’m one of those for whom rhetoric is not an irrelevance - on some topics it is critically important, and can make the difference between a harmonious and an unhappy society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyYqJolXE_E
Not Starmer and Cooper requiring a degree rather than A levels for a skilled worker visa now, scrapping care home visas will also exacerbate the care worker shortage
We're now hiring from abroad for prison officers.
"Earlier this year, Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the Prison Officers Association (POA), raised concerns over the recruitment of foreign staff. He told the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee that some overseas recruits turned up on their first day assuming they would be given accommodation along with their job. One, he said, was commuting 70 miles from Huddersfield to Nottingham for work, but then decided it was cheaper to sleep in his car outside the prison. At another jail, according to Fairhurst, foreign-recruited staff had set up a camp in a wooded area opposite the prison where they were working after discovering that there was no accommodation provided with the job.
Fairhurst told the peers: “We have got problems with people who turn up at the gates with cases in tow, and with their families, saying to the staff: ‘Where is the accommodation?’. Some end up sleeping rough in local woods and open spaces”.
Tom Wheatley, president of the Prison Governors Association (PGA), has said that the surge in applications from west Africa appears to have been fuelled by word of mouth and also online messaging. “It’s turned into an approach that has been promoted online by the expat Nigerian community,” he said. “This has led to some issues about language and communication in some jails.”"
https://x.com/k_niemietz/status/1921883901842092369
The standard midwit opinion on this is that "You can't out-Reform Reform" (or "out-Farage Farage".)
Like most midwit opinions, it sounds superficially clever, but it misses the point.
When Wetherspoons offer a grill platter, they're not trying to "out-steakhouse the steakhouse".
This is both bad and good.
He behaves like an Autocrat: he listens to the public and changes his policies moment-to-moment to retain power. To be honest, it might work. But it does lay him open to charges of cowardice and not having an inner core, as he cannot defend his actions other than "they're popular". I assume this is why Labour are bad in the polls.
See also: https://x.com/saulstaniforth/status/1921799830688403709?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
From the same author: "It is perfectly possible to liberalise our immigration system without antagonising the public".
https://iea.org.uk/it-is-perfectly-possible-to-liberalise-our-immigration-system-without-antagonising-the-public/
Currently your insurance has to be for the whole of your care cost, otherwise your assets get wiped anyway, so unless you've lots of assets it's prohibitively expensive for the value of the assets protected.
@iandunt.bsky.social
Starmer's anti-immigrant speech today wasn't just a moral and political embarrassment. It was also an intellectual embarrassment.
inews.co.uk/opinion/star..."
https://bsky.app/profile/iandunt.bsky.social/post/3loy47ibsuk2f
'That’s Starmer’s problem. Insincerity! What does this man actually believe in—other than trying to keep power for its own sake?'
Nigel Farage says 'nothing is going to change' on mass migration under a Starmer government, despite Labour’s new immigration white paper.
https://x.com/gbnews/status/1921900665296535787?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
https://x.com/conservatives/status/1921868527289377077?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Here of course it is residential care which really hits assets, at home care still means your home is not liable to fund it
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1484411/#:~:text=By the introduction of a,both home-based and institutional.
If immigration drops that’s all that really matters. I’m not sure this is much of an issue.
How much time and effort did Cameron put in to reassure voters the NHS was safe in his hands. Often using his own, difficult, family circumstances to do so.
If he had not done so, it's unlikely he'd have won one, let alone two, elections.