I'm not sure of the significance of this. Whilst services for accepted refugees run for decades by charitable organisations are still suspended, Trump has started running refugee flights from South Africa for 'Afrikaner victims of anti-white racism'.
The Episcopal Church (mainline, liberal / inclusive in its views) has pulled the plug on its cooperation:
In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church, the denomination announced on Monday that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Trump's administration. ... The request, Rowe said, crossed a moral line for the Episcopal Church, which is part of the global Anglican Communion, which boasts among its leaders the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a celebrated and vocal opponent of apartheid in South Africa. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/12/g-s1-65988/episcopal-church-white-afrikaners-ends-partnership-u-s-government
Trump will posture. It may be more to him if the Conservative Evangelical denominations follow suit.
I don't think Trump will be bothered if the Churches refuse to cooperate. Some groups are continuing to cooperate.
I think a lot of the arrivals might also have some resources to resettle themselves in the USA & wouldn't need to rely as much on charitable support as South American asylum seekers.
It's playing into white supremacist talking points. The whole idea of a supposed genocide of white people in South Africa is beloved of those who spout Great Replacement Theory nonsense.
Genocide is nonsense, but white South Africans absolutely are getting discriminated against and having lands and assets seized without compensation.
Now some argue that's justified because of the wrongs of apartheid. Others say two wrongs don't make a right.
But either way, it is legitimate to be concerned by people getting discriminated against or their assets and land seized without compensation. It is not unreasonable for those facing that to seek refuge elsewhere, just as others elsewhere do.
The hypocrisy here is that Trump opposes all non-white refugees and doesn't give a shit about refugees otherwise. That's what makes it blatant hypocrisy and racism.
"The US has criticised domestic South African policy, accusing the government of seizing land from white farmers without any compensation.
"In January President Ramaphosa signed a controversial law allowing the government to seize privately owned land without compensation in certain circumstances, when it is deemed "equitable and in the public interest".
"But the government says no land has yet been seized under the act."
'yet'
'OK I've passed a law saying I can take your assets without compensation, but I've not done so yet, so why are you seeking refuge before I can take your assets?'
I'm not saying some people might not have legitimate concerns. I was just responding to your claim that people are (present tense) "having lands and assets seized without compensation". Is that true?
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
What proportion of the Boriswave are minimum wage workers? Very few, I would have thought.
Yes, people get pensions. That's true whether they are immigrants or born in the UK. Given, by and large, the country's finances break even, it's clearly not the case that pension accruals turn everyone into net burdens.
Given the UK's finances are in deficit, it's clearly not the case that everyone is a net beneficiary.
Some are beneficiaries, some are burdens. That's why we should seek high-skilled, high-wage migrants that grow our skill base and our GDP per capita, not rely upon minimum wage unskilled people to "fill vacancies" they never fill, because lump of labour is a fallacy.
Sure. So, how many of the Boriswave were "minimum wage unskilled people"? Not many. If you have some numbers, please share.
I don't.
We should treat people as individuals, not classes.
We should be looking to attract and keep the high skilled individuals, and not the minimum wage ones. Its not all or nothing.
I'm not sure of the significance of this. Whilst services for accepted refugees run for decades by charitable organisations are still suspended, Trump has started running refugee flights from South Africa for 'Afrikaner victims of anti-white racism'.
The Episcopal Church (mainline, liberal / inclusive in its views) has pulled the plug on its cooperation:
In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church, the denomination announced on Monday that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Trump's administration. ... The request, Rowe said, crossed a moral line for the Episcopal Church, which is part of the global Anglican Communion, which boasts among its leaders the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a celebrated and vocal opponent of apartheid in South Africa. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/12/g-s1-65988/episcopal-church-white-afrikaners-ends-partnership-u-s-government
Trump will posture. It may be more to him if the Conservative Evangelical denominations follow suit.
With my reading of American politics and their funny sensitivities on race (so lots of caveats apply) that will be popular with a good chunk of his base.
It’s a particular nasty dog whistle
“Look what those horrible black people will do if they are in a majority. The Democrats like black people - they even elected Hussein Obama. I’m one of you, I’ll protect you. Follow me! And leave your wallets at the door.”
I wonder if one word that’s made its way into the political lexicon is supercharging this trend: the “Boriswave”. It’s all over threads here. Seems to have stuck. Or is it just a bubble term?
I'm 95% sure that if I used the term 'Boriswave' to my well-inforned but extra-bubbular wife she would have no idea what I was on about.
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
What proportion of the Boriswave are minimum wage workers? Very few, I would have thought.
Yes, people get pensions. That's true whether they are immigrants or born in the UK. Given, by and large, the country's finances break even, it's clearly not the case that pension accruals turn everyone into net burdens.
I'm not sure a minimum wage worker has necessarily a negative tax contribution. It's much more complicated than just looking at their personal direct taxes (IT/NICs). You've got the profit they generate for their company, their spending, their economic activity stimulating other businesses etc etc
If the UK was running a budget surplus on the backs of people working minimum wage you might have a point, though it would then be worth asking why we're in a situation like that.
Considering we have a £75 billion budget deficit, a deficit that averages over £1000 per capita, then yes it seems safe to say that minimum wage is net negative. Especially since you can't just magic wand away pension liability accruals or other costs as if they don't exist.
Sure, but that minimum wage worker is likely to have a much lower cost to the state than average, being younger, in work, healthier etc. it's a tricky question but a bit like contributions to GDP per capita, it's difficult to apportion those costs and benefits accurately.
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
How do you even measure net contribution accurately? A healthcare assistant in the NHS might take more out in tax than they pay in, for example, but they’re still performing a vital service for the nation that cannot be measured in revenue terms. Their contribution also may enable others to get out of hospital quicker and make more money for the country. How is that contribution measured?
Likewise a minimum wage worker in a care home frees up family members to continue working full time. How do you measure that contribution?
This quickly becomes absurd. Farmers are massive net beneficiaries of the state via subsidies, yet all those on high salaries in London depend on them for food. Wages are a very poor indicator of how someone contributes to the economy and tax revenues.
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
What proportion of the Boriswave are minimum wage workers? Very few, I would have thought.
Yes, people get pensions. That's true whether they are immigrants or born in the UK. Given, by and large, the country's finances break even, it's clearly not the case that pension accruals turn everyone into net burdens.
I'm not sure a minimum wage worker has necessarily a negative tax contribution. It's much more complicated than just looking at their personal direct taxes (IT/NICs). You've got the profit they generate for their company, their spending, their economic activity stimulating other businesses etc etc
If the UK was running a budget surplus on the backs of people working minimum wage you might have a point, though it would then be worth asking why we're in a situation like that.
Considering we have a £75 billion budget deficit, a deficit that averages over £1000 per capita, then yes it seems safe to say that minimum wage is net negative. Especially since you can't just magic wand away pension liability accruals or other costs as if they don't exist.
Sure, but that minimum wage worker is likely to have a much lower cost to the state than average, being younger, in work, healthier etc. it's a tricky question but a bit like contributions to GDP per capita, it's difficult to apportion those costs and benefits accurately.
If you're being accurate then being younger doesn't lower your costs when you include accruals - and ILR is about granting future rights like pensions, not just current right to work.
Spending all money like there's no tomorrow with a failure to account for accruals is a fast-track to bankruptcy.
We have clearly crossed paths. I came down from Oxford yesterday, and was stuck on the M40 for TWO HOURS due to a lorry overturning near Stokenchurch.
I am somewhere on the Sussex-Kent border. Hardly know how to describe where. Not far from Bodiam Castle.
Near Robertsbridge then? A good friend lives around there. Nice empty spot. Worth popping in on Tillingham wine estate, Oastbrook or Oxney Organic. You are almost certainly in Cranbrook ward, one of very few Tory held seats left.
Reform were second and an independent third. LD fourth. My guess, those indies (Tunbridge Wells Alliance) are probably going back Tory not Reform at the next GE.
I don’t think Reform will have gone away by the next GE but I do think they are peaking a bit too early in the Parliament.
They’ve given their opponents maximum time to respond and then show progress. If you’re Labour are you going to give up and go home for four years?
Ultimately the people that have deserted Labour now will decide in 2029 if they want Labour again or not. Who would the Green and Lib Dem voters prefer?
We may have said this before, but kindly show your working to explain that Reform is peaking.
People said that they were peaking at 10% in the polls, 12% in the polls, 18% in the polls, 23% in the polls, 26% in the polls... They are now at 32%.
I didn't think they would get this far, but I see nothing particularly magical about 32% that means they can't go higher, particularly as the Tories remain in freefall, and Starmer is continuing to flounder.
Last week I was expecting them to hit 35 by year end, now I suspect it could be 40. Of course they can, and very likely will, go higher, there is a big chunk of still Conservative voters who enthusiastically voted for Boris and May, Farage isn't offering anything that different to those two. (Yes Boris drove immigration up but it wasn't what many voters thought he was offering and immigration may well increase under Farage too, a disinterest in the details of governing creates a loss of control rather than taking it back.)
I think 40% is possible, but could be a stretch. It depends on the percentage of people who are rusted-on Conservatives who will never vote for any other party.
Find Out Now has Cons 16%, Reform 33%, Lab 20%.
Possibly, they might get 1% from Labour & then it's a question of how low the Tories can go. Maybe to 12% ? So, Reform peak is 38%.
I think one interesting question is how the Reform voting coalition has changed its mix recently, even from the 2024 election to the Locals.
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
How do you even measure net contribution accurately? A healthcare assistant in the NHS might take more out in tax than they pay in, for example, but they’re still performing a vital service for the nation that cannot be measured in revenue terms. Their contribution also may enable others to get out of hospital quicker and make more money for the country. How is that contribution measured?
Likewise a minimum wage worker in a care home frees up family members to continue working full time. How do you measure that contribution?
I'd like to see how many of the "net contributors" would keep up their contribution without the benefit of the workers earning less in the same companies. Even companies where the majority are on a high wage, will often be providing services which require lots of average workers elsewhere to make their business profitable.
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
How do you even measure net contribution accurately? A healthcare assistant in the NHS might take more out in tax than they pay in, for example, but they’re still performing a vital service for the nation that cannot be measured in revenue terms. Their contribution also may enable others to get out of hospital quicker and make more money for the country. How is that contribution measured?
Likewise a minimum wage worker in a care home frees up family members to continue working full time. How do you measure that contribution?
This quickly becomes absurd. Farmers are massive net beneficiaries of the state via subsidies, yet all those on high salaries in London depend on them for food. Wages are a very poor indicator of how someone contributes to the economy and tax revenues.
My point exactly. Focus on wages and tax revenue only take us to the “cost of everything value of nothing” outcome
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
Yes, he probably could have stolen the glory for getting the numbers down without saying anything yesterday. It’s just so odd to come out with stuff like that yesterday which goes against everything he said in the past and seems to have, quite predictably, annoyed the centre & left while not impressing the right
I'm not sure of the significance of this. Whilst services for accepted refugees run for decades by charitable organisations are still suspended, Trump has started running refugee flights from South Africa for 'Afrikaner victims of anti-white racism'.
The Episcopal Church (mainline, liberal / inclusive in its views) has pulled the plug on its cooperation:
In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church, the denomination announced on Monday that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Trump's administration. ... The request, Rowe said, crossed a moral line for the Episcopal Church, which is part of the global Anglican Communion, which boasts among its leaders the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a celebrated and vocal opponent of apartheid in South Africa. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/12/g-s1-65988/episcopal-church-white-afrikaners-ends-partnership-u-s-government
Trump will posture. It may be more to him if the Conservative Evangelical denominations follow suit.
I don't think Trump will be bothered if the Churches refuse to cooperate. Some groups are continuing to cooperate.
I think a lot of the arrivals might also have some resources to resettle themselves in the USA & wouldn't need to rely as much on charitable support as South American asylum seekers.
It's playing into white supremacist talking points. The whole idea of a supposed genocide of white people in South Africa is beloved of those who spout Great Replacement Theory nonsense.
On this Trump is right, the South African Government can now seize white farmers farms without compensation and where that is a threat only right the US takes them if they wish to move.
As an Anglican the Episcopal church's stance is pathetic, they may as well be the church wing of liberal Democrats now
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
I'd tend to agree with that.
While asylum is a somewhat different manner of issue, since it involves fundamental principles, I prefer to look at immigration through a pragmatic lens. There's a huge practical difference between 200k pa and 600k pa, which often isn't acknowledged by those who are strongly in favour, or strongly against immigration.
Starmer is a very poor orator, but calling his "strangers" comment Powellite is absurd hyperbole, IMO.
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
I don't know how we build housing for 240,000 per year.
I'd suggest mostly with bricks. Glass for the windows. Hope that helps.
Super weird phrase, though, innit. Has animated the internet.
Citizens of nowhere Island of strangers.
Takes some workshopping for someone as precise and fearful and cautious as SKS to roll that out.
He must really be frit although with everyone from John McDonnell to Michael Rosen crying outrage I'm not 100% sure the constituency. Would never have happened with Mandy on the scene. Which I suppose is a lament for the likes of Tone and Dave.
It’s just basic multiculturalism vs melting pot though. We were debating that on here 5+ years ago
Okay having pondered it for some time I think this is a master stroke from SKS and Lab.
There are plenty of Reform-curious voters out there as we have recently seen. Given that they are a nota party (no one presumably voted reform on account of their policies on private-public partnerships in the NHS) one of the main bugbears was and is immigration.
There was too much of it. The numbers were bonkers. As we all know, aggregate GDP might be improved, but per capita not so much (actually marginally worse) with high immigration. There is of course the value chain argument (pushing "indigenous" people further up it) but people don't care about that. They hear about hundreds of thousands of people, millions perhaps, and worry about that poor old maid cycling to holy communion. Because they worry the church might have become a Cafe Nero, or a mosque.
The speech will have reassured plenty of Reform voters that the major parties of government are listening.
Look on it as analagous to Brexit. UKIP agitated to the point whereby their numbers made Dave offer a referendum.
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
A couple of points from your link:-
Young people in line for good degrees from good Russell Group universities, who have for years obediently jumped through every hoop provided, are working in bars, going travelling, or despondently...
It’s the betrayal that hurts. We drilled it into them that if they worked hard at school and made it into university then the world could be their oyster...
This is essentially the point I was making the other day in relation to Americans and increasingly Britons who have, to the best of their beliefs and abilities, played by the rules only to find the game is rigged against them.
An important but separate point that @Leon might have made, or anyone in relation to WFH as well as AI is this:-
And all the time, AI is stealthily creeping up on the entry-level jobs they’re chasing. The tasks companies tend to give to young, green trainees – the routine grunt work they can’t easily mess up, which can be swiftly checked by someone more senior – are most vulnerable to automation precisely because they’re routine. Baby lawyers learn the ropes by drawing up endless contracts, but AI can do that in seconds. It’s probably capable of many things young journalists start out by doing too, like turning a simple press release into a story (or more depressingly, scraping clickbait content off rival websites). But if companies automate away the bottom rung of the ladder, how do you reach the next rung up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/13/young-people-degrees-labour-market-ai
These stories are v personal to me.
Since, I somehow managed to use my brain and general diligence to escape a reasonably impoverished childhood and reach a pretty decent station in life.
It’s been the case for some time, in my view, in the UK at least, that even the smartest working class kids can longer realistically aspire to a middle class life, largely because of the vast gulf between those with property and those without.
Hence GenZ’s bizarre interest in “manifesting” and other hoo-doo.
Interesting. Two points:
The issue of people from ordinary backgrounds aspiring to a middle class life depends on a couple of factors. First it rather depends on what counts as a 'middle class life'; secondly there is geography. As a Londoner who hasn't lived there for 40 years, I have no idea how this can work in London; in all sorts of bits of the the north it can work because the gulf is smaller, I see the rise from 'working class kid' to middle class displayed in front of me all the time.
Secondly, whatever AI does there is still going to be a jobs market. The western world is a job creation scheme, and this isn't ending. There is still an infinity of opportunities around.
What is useless and damaging for nearly everyone is a sense of entitlement.
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
What proportion of the Boriswave are minimum wage workers? Very few, I would have thought.
Yes, people get pensions. That's true whether they are immigrants or born in the UK. Given, by and large, the country's finances break even, it's clearly not the case that pension accruals turn everyone into net burdens.
I'm not sure a minimum wage worker has necessarily a negative tax contribution. It's much more complicated than just looking at their personal direct taxes (IT/NICs). You've got the profit they generate for their company, their spending, their economic activity stimulating other businesses etc etc
If the UK was running a budget surplus on the backs of people working minimum wage you might have a point, though it would then be worth asking why we're in a situation like that.
Considering we have a £75 billion budget deficit, a deficit that averages over £1000 per capita, then yes it seems safe to say that minimum wage is net negative. Especially since you can't just magic wand away pension liability accruals or other costs as if they don't exist.
Sure, but that minimum wage worker is likely to have a much lower cost to the state than average, being younger, in work, healthier etc. it's a tricky question but a bit like contributions to GDP per capita, it's difficult to apportion those costs and benefits accurately.
And Boriswave migrants aren't, by and large, minimum wage workers. A high proportion came on student visas: many of those will leave, and those who don't will generally not leave because they have secured highly-skilled jobs. The largest category of work visas was Tier 2, skilled work visas. The second largest category are Tier 5 temporary workers, but they mostly leave again.
There are various reasons why one might or might not be concerned about the size of the Boriswave, but I don't understand why Bart is talking about minimum wage workers.
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
I agree with @Nigelb. Personally I am very comfortable with immigration as it was when we were in the EU. But I think it’s too high now and the UK keep voting for it to be lowered so I can only argue against it so long.
People feel very real anxieties about it. Not something I’ve experienced myself but I was wrong to dismiss them in the past.
However, I do still maintain that the immigration we had from the EU was much better in terms of likelihood to leave and integrate than what we’ve had since.
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
What proportion of the Boriswave are minimum wage workers? Very few, I would have thought.
Yes, people get pensions. That's true whether they are immigrants or born in the UK. Given, by and large, the country's finances break even, it's clearly not the case that pension accruals turn everyone into net burdens.
I'm not sure a minimum wage worker has necessarily a negative tax contribution. It's much more complicated than just looking at their personal direct taxes (IT/NICs). You've got the profit they generate for their company, their spending, their economic activity stimulating other businesses etc etc
If the UK was running a budget surplus on the backs of people working minimum wage you might have a point, though it would then be worth asking why we're in a situation like that.
Considering we have a £75 billion budget deficit, a deficit that averages over £1000 per capita, then yes it seems safe to say that minimum wage is net negative. Especially since you can't just magic wand away pension liability accruals or other costs as if they don't exist.
Sure, but that minimum wage worker is likely to have a much lower cost to the state than average, being younger, in work, healthier etc. it's a tricky question but a bit like contributions to GDP per capita, it's difficult to apportion those costs and benefits accurately.
If you're being accurate then being younger doesn't lower your costs when you include accruals - and ILR is about granting future rights like pensions, not just current right to work.
Spending all money like there's no tomorrow with a failure to account for accruals is a fast-track to bankruptcy.
If someone is younger, they spend more time in work paying taxes for those future pensions.
I'm not sure of the significance of this. Whilst services for accepted refugees run for decades by charitable organisations are still suspended, Trump has started running refugee flights from South Africa for 'Afrikaner victims of anti-white racism'.
The Episcopal Church (mainline, liberal / inclusive in its views) has pulled the plug on its cooperation:
In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church, the denomination announced on Monday that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Trump's administration. ... The request, Rowe said, crossed a moral line for the Episcopal Church, which is part of the global Anglican Communion, which boasts among its leaders the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a celebrated and vocal opponent of apartheid in South Africa. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/12/g-s1-65988/episcopal-church-white-afrikaners-ends-partnership-u-s-government
Trump will posture. It may be more to him if the Conservative Evangelical denominations follow suit.
I don't think Trump will be bothered if the Churches refuse to cooperate. Some groups are continuing to cooperate.
I think a lot of the arrivals might also have some resources to resettle themselves in the USA & wouldn't need to rely as much on charitable support as South American asylum seekers.
It's playing into white supremacist talking points. The whole idea of a supposed genocide of white people in South Africa is beloved of those who spout Great Replacement Theory nonsense.
There is an extraordinarily high murder rate in SA. But white people are many times less likely to be victims than are black people. The suggestion of 'genocide', even as hyperbole, is offensive nonsense.
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
I don't like any of them. Burnham (whom I despise) might make the cut, and save for the odd gaff I quite like Darren Jones. And you can keep your Wes Streetings. He is almost Badenoch level annoying. And of course Starmer has sidelined any women of substance.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
I posted a few links about this yesterday.
The figures were from the OBR.
They will simply contribute far less than they take out. That’s untenable but Labour had trailed they were going to increase ILR to ten years but Cooper backtracked on this in the HOC and it is now understood to,remain at 5 years.
Super weird phrase, though, innit. Has animated the internet.
Citizens of nowhere Island of strangers.
Takes some workshopping for someone as precise and fearful and cautious as SKS to roll that out.
He must really be frit although with everyone from John McDonnell to Michael Rosen crying outrage I'm not 100% sure the constituency. Would never have happened with Mandy on the scene. Which I suppose is a lament for the likes of Tone and Dave.
It is an odd phrase.
I think it's probably intended to express a difference between levels of immigration which more readily allow integration and those which don't. What those numbers might be is open for debate. And are just as much determined by what provision we make for doing so.
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
I don't like any of them. Burnham (whom I despise) might make the cut, and save for the odd gaff I quite like Darren Jones. And you can keep your Wes Streetings. He is almost Badenoch level annoying. And of course Starmer has sidelined any women of substance.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
Boris v Burnham would be the best way to put Farage back in his box at the next GE
Super weird phrase, though, innit. Has animated the internet.
Citizens of nowhere Island of strangers.
Takes some workshopping for someone as precise and fearful and cautious as SKS to roll that out.
He must really be frit although with everyone from John McDonnell to Michael Rosen crying outrage I'm not 100% sure the constituency. Would never have happened with Mandy on the scene. Which I suppose is a lament for the likes of Tone and Dave.
It is an odd phrase.
I think it's probably intended to express a difference between levels of immigration which more readily allow integration and those which don't. What those numbers might be is open for debate. And are just as much determined by what provision we make for doing so.
Starmer was asked a couple of years ago if immigration was too high
His immediate response - "I don't believe in numbers"
Super weird phrase, though, innit. Has animated the internet.
Citizens of nowhere Island of strangers.
Takes some workshopping for someone as precise and fearful and cautious as SKS to roll that out.
He must really be frit although with everyone from John McDonnell to Michael Rosen crying outrage I'm not 100% sure the constituency. Would never have happened with Mandy on the scene. Which I suppose is a lament for the likes of Tone and Dave.
It’s just basic multiculturalism vs melting pot though. We were debating that on here 5+ years ago
Trevor Phillips said we were ‘sleepwalking into segregation’ twenty years ago. It’s a bit late to catch on now
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
You have to understand the distance between public facing policies and what politicians believe privately.
For example, Hillary Clinton and Obama were AOK with gay marriage since the beginnings of their political careers. It was just that to be electable, they had to say the opposite. So it is considered very bad form to bring up their previous anti-gay marriage speeches, among Democrats. "They had to say that, in public..."
In progressive culture, the idea of *limiting* rights for an oppressed and/or minority group is an anathema. Really, really icky. Migrants generally fall into the "oppressed and/or minority" - so talk of limiting immigration is talk of limiting rights. Not nice.
But surely, you say, the progressive types can understand that this is something Starmer "has to say"? The difference is that he is actually proposing *policy* - not vague "I wouldn't support...." (see the Hillary and Obama speeches on gay marriage.
For example, the shutdown of care home companies issuing their own visas has pretty much happened already.
Super weird phrase, though, innit. Has animated the internet.
Citizens of nowhere Island of strangers.
Takes some workshopping for someone as precise and fearful and cautious as SKS to roll that out.
He must really be frit although with everyone from John McDonnell to Michael Rosen crying outrage I'm not 100% sure the constituency. Would never have happened with Mandy on the scene. Which I suppose is a lament for the likes of Tone and Dave.
It is an odd phrase.
I think it's probably intended to express a difference between levels of immigration which more readily allow integration and those which don't. What those numbers might be is open for debate. And are just as much determined by what provision we make for doing so.
I quite like it, actually. Pithily expresses some of what I consider the problem with immigration. Though only part of the problem. The fact that it annoys some people just shows how far down the rabbithole of any-implicit-criticism-of-immigration-is-beyond-the-pale many have gone.
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
Just seen this on Simon Shows You Maps - an illustration that Europeans are just as batshit crazy as Americans*. Probably also a proxy for 'do you trust government' and possibly for 'is this a high-trust society'. I wonder what the equivalent figures would have been 10, 20, 40 years ago?
*actually not really a comparison of course - because American figures aren't shown. But still.
Trust in government (for which this is one possible proxy) is a fascinating area. Look at the Scandi countries here. When a government is trusted (and this is not so much a particular party as the system) it is far easier for governments to take decisions that prioritise long term benefits even if there is shorter term pain.
ETA: An alternative take is that the Turks - and others in that general direction - have much greater belief in the competence of their governments: that they not only have the expertise to develop a cure for cancer, but also have the capacity to keep it secret! The Scandis are like, "What, those fuckwits? No way!"
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
Or possibly a less than brilliant piece of journalism actually. The author fails to give an account of some obvious questions: If there are gazillions of brilliant, motivated, non entitled and multi skilled graduates of top UK universities who can't find a job, why are so many coming from overseas? Why is there such a shortage of applicants in some graduate professional fields?
Which Rishi started to reverse and ironically Starmer may benefit from now, if immigration starts to fall it will be due to Sunak and Cleverly tightening visa wage requirements and restricting dependents ability to come in more than Starmer's swapping A levels with degrees
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
Only 79,000 Brits chose to leave the country last year. That is pretty remarkable and should make people rethink the Britain is a shithole meme many are comfortable with. For all our many faults we get more right than we get wrong.
Okay having pondered it for some time I think this is a master stroke from SKS and Lab.
There are plenty of Reform-curious voters out there as we have recently seen. Given that they are a nota party (no one presumably voted reform on account of their policies on private-public partnerships in the NHS) one of the main bugbears was and is immigration.
There was too much of it. The numbers were bonkers. As we all know, aggregate GDP might be improved, but per capita not so much (actually marginally worse) with high immigration. There is of course the value chain argument (pushing "indigenous" people further up it) but people don't care about that. They hear about hundreds of thousands of people, millions perhaps, and worry about that poor old maid cycling to holy communion. Because they worry the church might have become a Cafe Nero, or a mosque.
The speech will have reassured plenty of Reform voters that the major parties of government are listening.
Look on it as analagous to Brexit. UKIP agitated to the point whereby their numbers made Dave offer a referendum.
A good move for Lab and SKS imo.
I doubt the speech will make even a single person change their vote from Reform to Labour.
Listening to Starmer drone on about numbers will never be even 10% as impactful as the visceral experience of watching migrants board boats at Calais & arrive at Dover.
Starmer has to stop the boats & empty the hotels. These are impacts of migration that people can see with their own eyes. No amount of quoting migration numbers will overcome voters' disquiet about the boats.
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
I posted a few links about this yesterday.
The figures were from the OBR.
They will simply contribute far less than they take out. That’s untenable but Labour had trailed they were going to increase ILR to ten years but Cooper backtracked on this in the HOC and it is now understood to,remain at 5 years.
Could you link to the OBR paper where they state that? I've read their piece from March 2024 and it certainly does not make that claim. The focus is on GDP and GDP per capita.
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
A couple of points from your link:-
Young people in line for good degrees from good Russell Group universities, who have for years obediently jumped through every hoop provided, are working in bars, going travelling, or despondently...
It’s the betrayal that hurts. We drilled it into them that if they worked hard at school and made it into university then the world could be their oyster...
This is essentially the point I was making the other day in relation to Americans and increasingly Britons who have, to the best of their beliefs and abilities, played by the rules in order to advance, only to find the game is rigged against them.
An important but separate point that @Leon might have made, or anyone in relation to WFH as well as AI is this:-
And all the time, AI is stealthily creeping up on the entry-level jobs they’re chasing. The tasks companies tend to give to young, green trainees – the routine grunt work they can’t easily mess up, which can be swiftly checked by someone more senior – are most vulnerable to automation precisely because they’re routine. Baby lawyers learn the ropes by drawing up endless contracts, but AI can do that in seconds. It’s probably capable of many things young journalists start out by doing too, like turning a simple press release into a story (or more depressingly, scraping clickbait content off rival websites). But if companies automate away the bottom rung of the ladder, how do you reach the next rung up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/13/young-people-degrees-labour-market-ai
If that continues populist parties of left and right will continue to gain support, even from graduates.
A UBI funded by a robot tax also would become inevitable
Just seen this on Simon Shows You Maps - an illustration that Europeans are just as batshit crazy as Americans*. Probably also a proxy for 'do you trust government' and possibly for 'is this a high-trust society'. I wonder what the equivalent figures would have been 10, 20, 40 years ago?
*actually not really a comparison of course - because American figures aren't shown. But still.
Is that one of the opt in polls which generate responses which are highly unrepresentative of the population as a whole ?
To provide a little context, Ley won the vote 29-25 and if those numbers are confusing, it's worth remembering the Australian Liberal Party leadership caucus (no votes for the party members by the way) consists of the Liberal MPs and Liberal Senators. There are 33 Liberal MPs - 18 Liberals and 15 Liberal Nationals from Queensland and 25 Liberal and Liberal National Senators.
While the whole of the 150 seat House of Representatives was up for re-election, only just over half (40) of the 76 Senate seats were decided on May 3rd.
The complexity of the Australian system, however, means the new Senators don't take their seats until July 1st so Senators who are leaving at the end of next month were able to vote in the leadership election and three backed Ley to give her a four vote margin.
The truth is Ley's margin within the caucus is paper thin but so was Tony Abbott's in 2009 and he went on to win in 2013 but of course lost in 2016.
It's fair to say the Coalition is still in shock after their worst election result ever - just 41 seats though they lead in three of the four yet to declare so could end up with 44 but they will face a Labor Government bench with 94 MPs.
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
Only 79,000 Brits chose to leave the country last year. That is pretty remarkable and should make people rethink the Britain is a shithole meme many are comfortable with. For all our many faults we get more right than we get wrong.
"Brain drain" was not wholly inaccurate in the sixties/seventies.
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
I posted a few links about this yesterday.
The figures were from the OBR.
They will simply contribute far less than they take out. That’s untenable but Labour had trailed they were going to increase ILR to ten years but Cooper backtracked on this in the HOC and it is now understood to,remain at 5 years.
Thanks for that link. It plays fast and loose with its argument, it seems to me. It has low-wage migrants being a net burden, but they’re not all migrants by any means. It seems to jump between different definitions of low wage in a misleading way. It ignores that some of those coming over to the lowest pay were on Tier 5 and left again.
To provide a little context, Ley won the vote 29-25 and if those numbers are confusing, it's worth remembering the Australian Liberal Party leadership caucus (no votes for the party members by the way) consists of the Liberal MPs and Liberal Senators. There are 33 Liberal MPs - 18 Liberals and 15 Liberal Nationals from Queensland and 25 Liberal and Liberal National Senators.
While the whole of the 150 seat House of Representatives was up for re-election, only just over half (40) of the 76 Senate seats were decided on May 3rd.
The complexity of the Australian system, however, means the new Senators don't take their seats until July 1st so Senators who are leaving at the end of next month were able to vote in the leadership election and three backed Ley to give her a four vote margin.
The truth is Ley's margin within the caucus is paper thin but so was Tony Abbott's in 2009 and he went on to win in 2013 but of course lost in 2016.
It's fair to say the Coalition is still in shock after their worst election result ever - just 41 seats though they lead in three of the four yet to declare so could end up with 44 but they will face a Labor Government bench with 94 MPs.
Nonetheless it is the first time a representative of the moderate wing of the Liberals, the equivalent of our One Nation Tories, has won the party leadership since Malcolm Turnbull in 2015. Morrison was from the centre right faction and Dutton the hard right faction, as was Angus Taylor, Ley's opponent.
It is a big ideological change for the Liberals and also the Coalition, it would be like the Tories have just elected Tugendhat over Jenrick.
The question will be whether the Liberals can win back centrist pro climate change action Teal Independents in particular as well as swing voters without losing hard right voters to One Nation (though Australia's 2PP preferred system makes the latter less of a worry if they still get their preferences)
On Labour/Reform, it depends if the voters that are currently voting Reform want Labour to change and listen or if they’re lost for good. This isn’t aimed at the never Labour voters.
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
A couple of points from your link:-
Young people in line for good degrees from good Russell Group universities, who have for years obediently jumped through every hoop provided, are working in bars, going travelling, or despondently...
It’s the betrayal that hurts. We drilled it into them that if they worked hard at school and made it into university then the world could be their oyster...
This is essentially the point I was making the other day in relation to Americans and increasingly Britons who have, to the best of their beliefs and abilities, played by the rules in order to advance, only to find the game is rigged against them.
An important but separate point that @Leon might have made, or anyone in relation to WFH as well as AI is this:-
And all the time, AI is stealthily creeping up on the entry-level jobs they’re chasing. The tasks companies tend to give to young, green trainees – the routine grunt work they can’t easily mess up, which can be swiftly checked by someone more senior – are most vulnerable to automation precisely because they’re routine. Baby lawyers learn the ropes by drawing up endless contracts, but AI can do that in seconds. It’s probably capable of many things young journalists start out by doing too, like turning a simple press release into a story (or more depressingly, scraping clickbait content off rival websites). But if companies automate away the bottom rung of the ladder, how do you reach the next rung up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/13/young-people-degrees-labour-market-ai
If that continues populist parties of left and right will continue to gain support, even from graduates.
A UBI funded by a robot tax also would become inevitable
One of our most pressing economic problems is productivity per worker. A robot tax would compound the problem, making automation more expensive and encouraging further over-dependency on low skilled labour.
The successful North European countries show the way. Education, education, education, and way more business investment.
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
Only 79,000 Brits chose to leave the country last year. That is pretty remarkable and should make people rethink the Britain is a shithole meme many are comfortable with. For all our many faults we get more right than we get wrong.
"Brain drain" was not wholly inaccurate in the sixties/seventies.
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
I don't like any of them. Burnham (whom I despise) might make the cut, and save for the odd gaff I quite like Darren Jones. And you can keep your Wes Streetings. He is almost Badenoch level annoying. And of course Starmer has sidelined any women of substance.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
Boris v Burnham would be the best way to put Farage back in his box at the next GE
You have an obsession with Boris, who with the Boriswave single handedly destroyed any narrative that the conservatives are serious on immigration and then comes along Truss who in a few short weeks destroyed the conservatives reputation on the economy
Whatever the conservative problems are Boris Johnson is not the answer
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
Only 79,000 Brits chose to leave the country last year. That is pretty remarkable and should make people rethink the Britain is a shithole meme many are comfortable with. For all our many faults we get more right than we get wrong.
"Brain drain" was not wholly inaccurate in the sixties/seventies.
There’s a once in a generation opportunity to do some brain draining of the USA if Trump’s team keep up their fight against the Ivy League. Not sure this squares up that well with Starmer’s rhetoric yesterday though. I suspect Canada will be the biggest beneficiary.
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
I don't like any of them. Burnham (whom I despise) might make the cut, and save for the odd gaff I quite like Darren Jones. And you can keep your Wes Streetings. He is almost Badenoch level annoying. And of course Starmer has sidelined any women of substance.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
Boris v Burnham would be the best way to put Farage back in his box at the next GE
You have an obsession with Boris, who with the Boriswave single handedly destroyed any narrative that the conservatives are serious on immigration and then comes along Truss who in a few short weeks destroyed the conservatives reputation on the economy
Whatever the conservative problems are Boris Johnson is not the answer
Yet as I said MiC had a poll last week that had only a Boris led party leading Reform and Labour again
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
A couple of points from your link:-
Young people in line for good degrees from good Russell Group universities, who have for years obediently jumped through every hoop provided, are working in bars, going travelling, or despondently...
It’s the betrayal that hurts. We drilled it into them that if they worked hard at school and made it into university then the world could be their oyster...
This is essentially the point I was making the other day in relation to Americans and increasingly Britons who have, to the best of their beliefs and abilities, played by the rules in order to advance, only to find the game is rigged against them.
An important but separate point that @Leon might have made, or anyone in relation to WFH as well as AI is this:-
And all the time, AI is stealthily creeping up on the entry-level jobs they’re chasing. The tasks companies tend to give to young, green trainees – the routine grunt work they can’t easily mess up, which can be swiftly checked by someone more senior – are most vulnerable to automation precisely because they’re routine. Baby lawyers learn the ropes by drawing up endless contracts, but AI can do that in seconds. It’s probably capable of many things young journalists start out by doing too, like turning a simple press release into a story (or more depressingly, scraping clickbait content off rival websites). But if companies automate away the bottom rung of the ladder, how do you reach the next rung up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/13/young-people-degrees-labour-market-ai
If that continues populist parties of left and right will continue to gain support, even from graduates.
A UBI funded by a robot tax also would become inevitable
One of our most pressing economic problems is productivity per worker. A robot tax would compound the problem, making automation more expensive and encouraging further over-dependency on low skilled labour.
The successful North European countries show the way. Education, education, education, and way more business investment.
Productivity per worker is irrelevant if automation means no jobs left for workers to do.
If corporations continue to automate jobs, even skilled ones, a robot tax is inevitable, not least to fund the massively expanding welfare bill.
Education also doesn't make much difference if even graduates find graduate jobs automated
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
Only 79,000 Brits chose to leave the country last year. That is pretty remarkable and should make people rethink the Britain is a shithole meme many are comfortable with. For all our many faults we get more right than we get wrong.
"Brain drain" was not wholly inaccurate in the sixties/seventies.
Indeed - net migration was negative
Economic / demographic question: my generation (X) saw a shortage of births and net emigration, so it’s one of the smallest cohorts in our population pyramid. Whereas the boomers - clue’s in the name - were one of the largest.
When most boomers have met their maker, does our pensions, health and care system get a few years of relief as a smaller group of elderly pass through it? And likewise does our housing market open up as those big properties owned since the 80s come back on to the market?
Someone somewhere will have done the maths. I should have asked Paul yesterday.
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
I don't like any of them. Burnham (whom I despise) might make the cut, and save for the odd gaff I quite like Darren Jones. And you can keep your Wes Streetings. He is almost Badenoch level annoying. And of course Starmer has sidelined any women of substance.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
Boris v Burnham would be the best way to put Farage back in his box at the next GE
You have an obsession with Boris, who with the Boriswave single handedly destroyed any narrative that the conservatives are serious on immigration and then comes along Truss who in a few short weeks destroyed the conservatives reputation on the economy
Whatever the conservative problems are Boris Johnson is not the answer
Yet as I said MiC had a poll last week that had only a Boris led party leading Reform and Labour again
Sometimes you need to question your devotion to polls you like and read the room
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
The Powell speech was a warning to do something before what has happened, happened. It was made in order to stop the UK becoming an ‘Island of strangers’, or ‘sleepwalking into segregation’.
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
A couple of points from your link:-
Young people in line for good degrees from good Russell Group universities, who have for years obediently jumped through every hoop provided, are working in bars, going travelling, or despondently...
It’s the betrayal that hurts. We drilled it into them that if they worked hard at school and made it into university then the world could be their oyster...
This is essentially the point I was making the other day in relation to Americans and increasingly Britons who have, to the best of their beliefs and abilities, played by the rules in order to advance, only to find the game is rigged against them.
An important but separate point that @Leon might have made, or anyone in relation to WFH as well as AI is this:-
And all the time, AI is stealthily creeping up on the entry-level jobs they’re chasing. The tasks companies tend to give to young, green trainees – the routine grunt work they can’t easily mess up, which can be swiftly checked by someone more senior – are most vulnerable to automation precisely because they’re routine. Baby lawyers learn the ropes by drawing up endless contracts, but AI can do that in seconds. It’s probably capable of many things young journalists start out by doing too, like turning a simple press release into a story (or more depressingly, scraping clickbait content off rival websites). But if companies automate away the bottom rung of the ladder, how do you reach the next rung up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/13/young-people-degrees-labour-market-ai
If that continues populist parties of left and right will continue to gain support, even from graduates.
A UBI funded by a robot tax also would become inevitable
One of our most pressing economic problems is productivity per worker. A robot tax would compound the problem, making automation more expensive and encouraging further over-dependency on low skilled labour.
The successful North European countries show the way. Education, education, education, and way more business investment.
Productivity per worker is irrelevant if automation means no jobs left for workers to do.
If corporations continue to automate jobs, even skilled ones, a robot tax is inevitable, not least to fund the massively expanding welfare bill.
Education also doesn't make much difference if even graduates find graduate jobs automated
That’s been the argument with every advancement in technology since the spinning jenny. And every time the long term impact is a huge advancement in global prosperity.
One thing’s for sure, if we don’t invest in education then the outcomes will be a hell of a lot worse.
To provide a little context, Ley won the vote 29-25 and if those numbers are confusing, it's worth remembering the Australian Liberal Party leadership caucus (no votes for the party members by the way) consists of the Liberal MPs and Liberal Senators. There are 33 Liberal MPs - 18 Liberals and 15 Liberal Nationals from Queensland and 25 Liberal and Liberal National Senators.
While the whole of the 150 seat House of Representatives was up for re-election, only just over half (40) of the 76 Senate seats were decided on May 3rd.
The complexity of the Australian system, however, means the new Senators don't take their seats until July 1st so Senators who are leaving at the end of next month were able to vote in the leadership election and three backed Ley to give her a four vote margin.
The truth is Ley's margin within the caucus is paper thin but so was Tony Abbott's in 2009 and he went on to win in 2013 but of course lost in 2016.
It's fair to say the Coalition is still in shock after their worst election result ever - just 41 seats though they lead in three of the four yet to declare so could end up with 44 but they will face a Labor Government bench with 94 MPs.
Nonetheless it is the first time a representative of the moderate wing of the Liberals, the equivalent of our One Nation Tories, has won the party leadership since Malcolm Turnbull in 2015. Morrison was from the centre right faction and Dutton the hard right faction, as was Angus Taylor, Ley's opponent.
It is a big ideological change for the Coalition, it would be like the Tories have just elected Tugendhat over Jenrick.
The question will be whether the Liberals can win back centrist pro climate change action Teal Independents in particular as well as swing voters without losing hard right voters to One Nation (though Australia's 2PP preferred system makes the latter less of a worry if they still get their preferences)
That's a valid point but history also shows us Australian parties are very prone to leadership challenges or "spills" as they call them. It will be interesting to see how much time Ley is given to rebuild the LNP in opposition - the scale of the defeat was unprecedented, the nearest parallel was Hawke's third win in the mid 80s though back then the duopoly was much stronger (Labor got 45% and the LNP 46% as I recall).
Polling will be significant over the next 18-24 months - with only a three year gap between elections, Ley hasn't got the time to make an impact that Badenoch "enjoys" over here.
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
What proportion of the Boriswave are minimum wage workers? Very few, I would have thought.
Yes, people get pensions. That's true whether they are immigrants or born in the UK. Given, by and large, the country's finances break even, it's clearly not the case that pension accruals turn everyone into net burdens.
I'm not sure a minimum wage worker has necessarily a negative tax contribution. It's much more complicated than just looking at their personal direct taxes (IT/NICs). You've got the profit they generate for their company, their spending, their economic activity stimulating other businesses etc etc
If the UK was running a budget surplus on the backs of people working minimum wage you might have a point, though it would then be worth asking why we're in a situation like that.
Considering we have a £75 billion budget deficit, a deficit that averages over £1000 per capita, then yes it seems safe to say that minimum wage is net negative. Especially since you can't just magic wand away pension liability accruals or other costs as if they don't exist.
Sure, but that minimum wage worker is likely to have a much lower cost to the state than average, being younger, in work, healthier etc. it's a tricky question but a bit like contributions to GDP per capita, it's difficult to apportion those costs and benefits accurately.
And Boriswave migrants aren't, by and large, minimum wage workers. A high proportion came on student visas: many of those will leave, and those who don't will generally not leave because they have secured highly-skilled jobs. The largest category of work visas was Tier 2, skilled work visas. The second largest category are Tier 5 temporary workers, but they mostly leave again.
There are various reasons why one might or might not be concerned about the size of the Boriswave, but I don't understand why Bart is talking about minimum wage workers.
People who genuinely come to the UK to study do tend to leave afterwards, or stay in & work in economically net positive jobs but I think this misses the considerable abuse of the student visa system by people who had no intention of studying at all. Many people in poorer parts of the world were quite prepared to raise £30k for a visa that would let them into the UK & work, especially if they could disappear into the black economy to raise extra cash. Plus you could (initially) bring your entire family with you, even just for a single year masters. Play the system correctly & you could rinse the benefit system after “graduating” whilst working on the side for Deliveroo etc.
Much of this was reversed quite quickly, but the fact that the government was so naïve about the inevitable abuse of these visa programs was telling.
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
A couple of points from your link:-
Young people in line for good degrees from good Russell Group universities, who have for years obediently jumped through every hoop provided, are working in bars, going travelling, or despondently...
It’s the betrayal that hurts. We drilled it into them that if they worked hard at school and made it into university then the world could be their oyster...
This is essentially the point I was making the other day in relation to Americans and increasingly Britons who have, to the best of their beliefs and abilities, played by the rules in order to advance, only to find the game is rigged against them.
An important but separate point that @Leon might have made, or anyone in relation to WFH as well as AI is this:-
And all the time, AI is stealthily creeping up on the entry-level jobs they’re chasing. The tasks companies tend to give to young, green trainees – the routine grunt work they can’t easily mess up, which can be swiftly checked by someone more senior – are most vulnerable to automation precisely because they’re routine. Baby lawyers learn the ropes by drawing up endless contracts, but AI can do that in seconds. It’s probably capable of many things young journalists start out by doing too, like turning a simple press release into a story (or more depressingly, scraping clickbait content off rival websites). But if companies automate away the bottom rung of the ladder, how do you reach the next rung up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/13/young-people-degrees-labour-market-ai
If that continues populist parties of left and right will continue to gain support, even from graduates.
A UBI funded by a robot tax also would become inevitable
One of our most pressing economic problems is productivity per worker. A robot tax would compound the problem, making automation more expensive and encouraging further over-dependency on low skilled labour.
The successful North European countries show the way. Education, education, education, and way more business investment.
The issue with junior white collar roles being automated out of existence, reminds me of the issue when automation appeared in production lines.
The days of apprentices making all their tools and tool boxes from scratch vanished. And there was the issue of people running CNC mills and lathes needing to start on manual work first to learn the basics.
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
Only 79,000 Brits chose to leave the country last year. That is pretty remarkable and should make people rethink the Britain is a shithole meme many are comfortable with. For all our many faults we get more right than we get wrong.
"Brain drain" was not wholly inaccurate in the sixties/seventies.
There’s a once in a generation opportunity to do some brain draining of the USA if Trump’s team keep up their fight against the Ivy League. Not sure this squares up that well with Starmer’s rhetoric yesterday though. I suspect Canada will be the biggest beneficiary.
American academics are extremely expensive. Not sure any university in the UK has that kind of money at the moment.
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
Only 79,000 Brits chose to leave the country last year. That is pretty remarkable and should make people rethink the Britain is a shithole meme many are comfortable with. For all our many faults we get more right than we get wrong.
"Brain drain" was not wholly inaccurate in the sixties/seventies.
Indeed - net migration was negative
Economic / demographic question: my generation (X) saw a shortage of births and net emigration, so it’s one of the smallest cohorts in our population pyramid. Whereas the boomers - clue’s in the name - were one of the largest.
When most boomers have met their maker, does our pensions, health and care system get a few years of relief as a smaller group of elderly pass through it? And likewise does our housing market open up as those big properties owned since the 80s come back on to the market?
Someone somewhere will have done the maths. I should have asked Paul yesterday.
In Scotland, we will get a spike in costs during the 2030s as the boomers die, reverting to trend from the 2040s. I don't know about housing, but I would guess it gets passed onto the next generation and probably induces a spike in intergenerational inequality more than anything.
The issue is that costs are increasing so much faster than what demographics explain. So it's only a marginal relief in spending.
Okay having pondered it for some time I think this is a master stroke from SKS and Lab.
There are plenty of Reform-curious voters out there as we have recently seen. Given that they are a nota party (no one presumably voted reform on account of their policies on private-public partnerships in the NHS) one of the main bugbears was and is immigration.
There was too much of it. The numbers were bonkers. As we all know, aggregate GDP might be improved, but per capita not so much (actually marginally worse) with high immigration. There is of course the value chain argument (pushing "indigenous" people further up it) but people don't care about that. They hear about hundreds of thousands of people, millions perhaps, and worry about that poor old maid cycling to holy communion. Because they worry the church might have become a Cafe Nero, or a mosque.
The speech will have reassured plenty of Reform voters that the major parties of government are listening.
Look on it as analagous to Brexit. UKIP agitated to the point whereby their numbers made Dave offer a referendum.
A good move for Lab and SKS imo.
I doubt the speech will make even a single person change their vote from Reform to Labour.
Listening to Starmer drone on about numbers will never be even 10% as impactful as the visceral experience of watching migrants board boats at Calais & arrive at Dover.
Starmer has to stop the boats & empty the hotels. These are impacts of migration that people can see with their own eyes. No amount of quoting migration numbers will overcome voters' disquiet about the boats.
Speaking of shitstirrers, old Nige helpfully suggested in Parliament that the 600+ boat people arriving yesterday (all men apparently) may contain a 'couple of Iranian terrorists, who knows'. Light the torches and sharpen the pitchforks..
So from yesterday govts are accepting migration in the tens of thousands is not going to be happening.
We are still looking at around 240,000 net migration a year. Hardly insubstantial.
We are looking at the Boriswave being given ILR after five years with the net burden to the taxpayer that brings.
We are looking at controlling migration, not stopping it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that as there is nothing wrong with those who want unlimited mass inward migration like the handful on here crying about the speech yesterday.
It’s hardly an act worth of the Far right or Enoch Powell. The speech was measured and balanced. From the responses of some you’d think we were deporting people and going for net negative migration.
However what we do need to do is plan and out the jnfrastructure in place to accommodate our new citizens.
Why will the Boriswave be a net burden when given ILR? They're of working age, and the younger end of that. In 5 years time, they will generally be paying plenty of tax and be net contributors to the state.
No-one on PB yesterday called for "unlimited mass inward migration". That's a bit of straw man.
Minimum wage workers are not net tax contributors and your obsession with working age people as if they're all contributors is pure dishonesty. What accruals are you putting down for the fact that people with ILR get pensions?
To claim the taxes from work (not that there is much on minimum wage) but not the liabilities from pension accruals is totally dishonest. Accruals need to be counted any true accounting.
What proportion of the Boriswave are minimum wage workers? Very few, I would have thought.
Yes, people get pensions. That's true whether they are immigrants or born in the UK. Given, by and large, the country's finances break even, it's clearly not the case that pension accruals turn everyone into net burdens.
I'm not sure a minimum wage worker has necessarily a negative tax contribution. It's much more complicated than just looking at their personal direct taxes (IT/NICs). You've got the profit they generate for their company, their spending, their economic activity stimulating other businesses etc etc
If the UK was running a budget surplus on the backs of people working minimum wage you might have a point, though it would then be worth asking why we're in a situation like that.
Considering we have a £75 billion budget deficit, a deficit that averages over £1000 per capita, then yes it seems safe to say that minimum wage is net negative. Especially since you can't just magic wand away pension liability accruals or other costs as if they don't exist.
Sure, but that minimum wage worker is likely to have a much lower cost to the state than average, being younger, in work, healthier etc. it's a tricky question but a bit like contributions to GDP per capita, it's difficult to apportion those costs and benefits accurately.
And Boriswave migrants aren't, by and large, minimum wage workers. A high proportion came on student visas: many of those will leave, and those who don't will generally not leave because they have secured highly-skilled jobs. The largest category of work visas was Tier 2, skilled work visas. The second largest category are Tier 5 temporary workers, but they mostly leave again.
There are various reasons why one might or might not be concerned about the size of the Boriswave, but I don't understand why Bart is talking about minimum wage workers.
People who genuinely come to the UK to study do tend to leave afterwards, or stay in & work in economically net positive jobs but I think this misses the considerable abuse of the student visa system by people who had no intention of studying at all. Many people in poorer parts of the world were quite prepared to raise £30k for a visa that would let them into the UK & work, especially if they could disappear into the black economy to raise extra cash. Plus you could (initially) bring your entire family with you, even just for a single year masters. Play the system correctly & you could rinse the benefit system after “graduating” whilst working on the side for Deliveroo etc.
Much of this was reversed quite quickly, but the fact that the government was so naïve about the inevitable abuse of these visa programs was telling.
This is an issue that those most concerned about immigration need to grapple with. The detail of how you create and apply rules really matters, far more than whether the headlines from the rules on the day they are announced are favourable or not.
By picking Boris as their man to tackle immigration, they picked someone who can tell a brilliant story but is lazy, a poor manager and no interest in the detail. It turned out disastrously for them. Why do they think picking another from the same ilk will work this time?
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
The Powell speech was a warning to do something before what has happened, happened. It was made in order to stop the UK becoming an ‘Island of strangers’, or ‘sleepwalking into segregation’.
At what point did the black man gain the whip hand over the white man?
Okay having pondered it for some time I think this is a master stroke from SKS and Lab.
There are plenty of Reform-curious voters out there as we have recently seen. Given that they are a nota party (no one presumably voted reform on account of their policies on private-public partnerships in the NHS) one of the main bugbears was and is immigration.
There was too much of it. The numbers were bonkers. As we all know, aggregate GDP might be improved, but per capita not so much (actually marginally worse) with high immigration. There is of course the value chain argument (pushing "indigenous" people further up it) but people don't care about that. They hear about hundreds of thousands of people, millions perhaps, and worry about that poor old maid cycling to holy communion. Because they worry the church might have become a Cafe Nero, or a mosque.
The speech will have reassured plenty of Reform voters that the major parties of government are listening.
Look on it as analagous to Brexit. UKIP agitated to the point whereby their numbers made Dave offer a referendum.
A good move for Lab and SKS imo.
I doubt the speech will make even a single person change their vote from Reform to Labour.
Listening to Starmer drone on about numbers will never be even 10% as impactful as the visceral experience of watching migrants board boats at Calais & arrive at Dover.
Starmer has to stop the boats & empty the hotels. These are impacts of migration that people can see with their own eyes. No amount of quoting migration numbers will overcome voters' disquiet about the boats.
Yes, it's about practicalities, not platitudes but politics is always more about the latter than the former.
I've not heard a single coherent workable solution from anyone - including Reform - relating to illegal immigration (not just "the boats") and little realistic thinking about reducing the number of illegal immigrants in the general population (visa overstays).
"Emptying the hotels" will require a much faster and better asylum processing and deportation (where unsuccessful) system. Are we processing cases faster, are we deporting more of those whose applications were unsuccessful?
Legal immigration is numerically the challenge - Starmer knows this - but as I said earlier, the balance between the socio-cultural politics and the economic politics isn't easy.
The ground is also shifting - Starmer's speech yesterday was as much about integration as immigration. It is much easier not to integrate now than it was for those arriving in the 50s and 60s. People like People They Know and inevitably migrants (whether in East Ham or on the Costa del Sol) will gather in communities and try to keep a semblance of where they came from. The truth is as we have all, thanks to technology and other societal changes, become more insular and individual, not exclusively, not wholly but more than was the case.
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
Only 79,000 Brits chose to leave the country last year. That is pretty remarkable and should make people rethink the Britain is a shithole meme many are comfortable with. For all our many faults we get more right than we get wrong.
"Brain drain" was not wholly inaccurate in the sixties/seventies.
There’s a once in a generation opportunity to do some brain draining of the USA if Trump’s team keep up their fight against the Ivy League. Not sure this squares up that well with Starmer’s rhetoric yesterday though. I suspect Canada will be the biggest beneficiary.
American academics are extremely expensive. Not sure any university in the UK has that kind of money at the moment.
Oxford takes Ivy League academics quite frequently. The pay differential is a problem but the fact some still come shows there’s potential there.
But the opportunity is not necessarily to pluck Americans directly from Stanford or Harvard. It’s to take European, Chinese, Indian, Canadian academics and scientists who might otherwise have headed to the US but are either put off or find their route blocked.
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
I don't like any of them. Burnham (whom I despise) might make the cut, and save for the odd gaff I quite like Darren Jones. And you can keep your Wes Streetings. He is almost Badenoch level annoying. And of course Starmer has sidelined any women of substance.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
I have said I see Jenrick and Farage as cheeks of the same arse.
So no.
(I can't beleive anyone who thinks that Jenrick- Braverman is a dream ticket isn't already lost to Reform...)
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
I don't like any of them. Burnham (whom I despise) might make the cut, and save for the odd gaff I quite like Darren Jones. And you can keep your Wes Streetings. He is almost Badenoch level annoying. And of course Starmer has sidelined any women of substance.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
I have said I see Jenrick and Farage as cheeks of the same arse.
So no.
(I can't beleive anyone who thinks that Jenrick- Braverman is a dream ticket isn't already lost to Reform...)
Two Cambridge educated lawyers would lead to a Tory landslide.
The country loves lawyers, see Attlee, Thatcher, Blair, and Starmer as opposition leaders who take their parties from opposition to government.
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
I disagree - the change is to what students expect from University. It should be about the education they receive, not the pay packet that it might lead to. Education is a good thing.
Interesting discussion with a colleague yesterday about whether our students should be considered as adults. In theory. once they turn 18 the answer is yes. In practice so many of them are incredibly immature. My colleague had been speaking to a fairly senior pyscho researcher who says that in reality students are not adults until the mid twenties, in brain maturity.
Its also pretty clear that once again we are seeing a huge change in work coming down the line and we are not ready. The utopias of 1950's sci fi had no one actually working for a living - robots did it all. In that world what do people do? Who pays the bills? What is the point of life?
I think the idea of 4 day weeks is something to explore. Condense the job that is done into four days. AI helps a lot.* Something to try.
Okay having pondered it for some time I think this is a master stroke from SKS and Lab.
There are plenty of Reform-curious voters out there as we have recently seen. Given that they are a nota party (no one presumably voted reform on account of their policies on private-public partnerships in the NHS) one of the main bugbears was and is immigration.
There was too much of it. The numbers were bonkers. As we all know, aggregate GDP might be improved, but per capita not so much (actually marginally worse) with high immigration. There is of course the value chain argument (pushing "indigenous" people further up it) but people don't care about that. They hear about hundreds of thousands of people, millions perhaps, and worry about that poor old maid cycling to holy communion. Because they worry the church might have become a Cafe Nero, or a mosque.
The speech will have reassured plenty of Reform voters that the major parties of government are listening.
Look on it as analagous to Brexit. UKIP agitated to the point whereby their numbers made Dave offer a referendum.
A good move for Lab and SKS imo.
I doubt the speech will make even a single person change their vote from Reform to Labour.
Listening to Starmer drone on about numbers will never be even 10% as impactful as the visceral experience of watching migrants board boats at Calais & arrive at Dover.
Starmer has to stop the boats & empty the hotels. These are impacts of migration that people can see with their own eyes. No amount of quoting migration numbers will overcome voters' disquiet about the boats.
Virtually no one is personally affected by people who arrive by boat.
The boats are, as I have mentioned, an issue of control. Very obviously the government has none over our borders. That is the main point.
Successive governments have wrestled with this and no doubt will continue to wrestle with it.
The few thousand people the boats bring to this country are neither here nor there.
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
I don't like any of them. Burnham (whom I despise) might make the cut, and save for the odd gaff I quite like Darren Jones. And you can keep your Wes Streetings. He is almost Badenoch level annoying. And of course Starmer has sidelined any women of substance.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
I have said I see Jenrick and Farage as cheeks of the same arse.
So no.
(I can't beleive anyone who thinks that Jenrick- Braverman is a dream ticket isn't already lost to Reform...)
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
Only 79,000 Brits chose to leave the country last year. That is pretty remarkable and should make people rethink the Britain is a shithole meme many are comfortable with. For all our many faults we get more right than we get wrong.
"Brain drain" was not wholly inaccurate in the sixties/seventies.
There’s a once in a generation opportunity to do some brain draining of the USA if Trump’s team keep up their fight against the Ivy League. Not sure this squares up that well with Starmer’s rhetoric yesterday though. I suspect Canada will be the biggest beneficiary.
University brain drain to the USA was a bit of a thing in the 60's 70's and 80's.But the reverse was a much bigger an more successful effect for the UK. In many subjects it was not possible to study a PhD in Aus or NZ in the 70s. And of course many of those doctorates stayed in the UK.
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
I don't like any of them. Burnham (whom I despise) might make the cut, and save for the odd gaff I quite like Darren Jones. And you can keep your Wes Streetings. He is almost Badenoch level annoying. And of course Starmer has sidelined any women of substance.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
I have said I see Jenrick and Farage as cheeks of the same arse.
So no.
(I can't beleive anyone who thinks that Jenrick- Braverman is a dream ticket isn't already lost to Reform...)
Two Cambridge educated lawyers would lead to a Tory landslide.
The country loves lawyers, see Attlee, Thatcher, Blair, and Starmer as opposition leaders who take their parties from opposition to government.
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
Only 79,000 Brits chose to leave the country last year. That is pretty remarkable and should make people rethink the Britain is a shithole meme many are comfortable with. For all our many faults we get more right than we get wrong.
"Brain drain" was not wholly inaccurate in the sixties/seventies.
There’s a once in a generation opportunity to do some brain draining of the USA if Trump’s team keep up their fight against the Ivy League. Not sure this squares up that well with Starmer’s rhetoric yesterday though. I suspect Canada will be the biggest beneficiary.
American academics are extremely expensive. Not sure any university in the UK has that kind of money at the moment.
Oxford takes Ivy League academics quite frequently. The pay differential is a problem but the fact some still come shows there’s potential there.
But the opportunity is not necessarily to pluck Americans directly from Stanford or Harvard. It’s to take European, Chinese, Indian, Canadian academics and scientists who might otherwise have headed to the US but are either put off or find their route blocked.
Yes, the only time I heard about actually paying the US rates was in connection to "Private College" - the Oxford scheme to take as many rich overseas students as they could, at not much less than Ivy league prices.
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
A couple of points from your link:-
Young people in line for good degrees from good Russell Group universities, who have for years obediently jumped through every hoop provided, are working in bars, going travelling, or despondently...
It’s the betrayal that hurts. We drilled it into them that if they worked hard at school and made it into university then the world could be their oyster...
This is essentially the point I was making the other day in relation to Americans and increasingly Britons who have, to the best of their beliefs and abilities, played by the rules in order to advance, only to find the game is rigged against them.
An important but separate point that @Leon might have made, or anyone in relation to WFH as well as AI is this:-
And all the time, AI is stealthily creeping up on the entry-level jobs they’re chasing. The tasks companies tend to give to young, green trainees – the routine grunt work they can’t easily mess up, which can be swiftly checked by someone more senior – are most vulnerable to automation precisely because they’re routine. Baby lawyers learn the ropes by drawing up endless contracts, but AI can do that in seconds. It’s probably capable of many things young journalists start out by doing too, like turning a simple press release into a story (or more depressingly, scraping clickbait content off rival websites). But if companies automate away the bottom rung of the ladder, how do you reach the next rung up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/13/young-people-degrees-labour-market-ai
If that continues populist parties of left and right will continue to gain support, even from graduates.
A UBI funded by a robot tax also would become inevitable
One of our most pressing economic problems is productivity per worker. A robot tax would compound the problem, making automation more expensive and encouraging further over-dependency on low skilled labour.
The successful North European countries show the way. Education, education, education, and way more business investment.
Productivity per worker is irrelevant if automation means no jobs left for workers to do.
If corporations continue to automate jobs, even skilled ones, a robot tax is inevitable, not least to fund the massively expanding welfare bill.
Education also doesn't make much difference if even graduates find graduate jobs automated
That’s been the argument with every advancement in technology since the spinning jenny. And every time the long term impact is a huge advancement in global prosperity.
One thing’s for sure, if we don’t invest in education then the outcomes will be a hell of a lot worse.
Well so far the evidence from AI is certainly not a huge advancement in global prosperity, indeed ironically jobs which don't need much education like care home workers or do not need a degree like plumbers and electricians may be more immune to AI
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
I don't like any of them. Burnham (whom I despise) might make the cut, and save for the odd gaff I quite like Darren Jones. And you can keep your Wes Streetings. He is almost Badenoch level annoying. And of course Starmer has sidelined any women of substance.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
I have said I see Jenrick and Farage as cheeks of the same arse.
So no.
(I can't beleive anyone who thinks that Jenrick- Braverman is a dream ticket isn't already lost to Reform...)
Two Cambridge educated lawyers would lead to a Tory landslide.
The country loves lawyers, see Attlee, Thatcher, Blair, and Starmer as opposition leaders who take their parties from opposition to government.
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
A couple of points from your link:-
Young people in line for good degrees from good Russell Group universities, who have for years obediently jumped through every hoop provided, are working in bars, going travelling, or despondently...
It’s the betrayal that hurts. We drilled it into them that if they worked hard at school and made it into university then the world could be their oyster...
This is essentially the point I was making the other day in relation to Americans and increasingly Britons who have, to the best of their beliefs and abilities, played by the rules in order to advance, only to find the game is rigged against them.
An important but separate point that @Leon might have made, or anyone in relation to WFH as well as AI is this:-
And all the time, AI is stealthily creeping up on the entry-level jobs they’re chasing. The tasks companies tend to give to young, green trainees – the routine grunt work they can’t easily mess up, which can be swiftly checked by someone more senior – are most vulnerable to automation precisely because they’re routine. Baby lawyers learn the ropes by drawing up endless contracts, but AI can do that in seconds. It’s probably capable of many things young journalists start out by doing too, like turning a simple press release into a story (or more depressingly, scraping clickbait content off rival websites). But if companies automate away the bottom rung of the ladder, how do you reach the next rung up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/13/young-people-degrees-labour-market-ai
If that continues populist parties of left and right will continue to gain support, even from graduates.
A UBI funded by a robot tax also would become inevitable
One of our most pressing economic problems is productivity per worker. A robot tax would compound the problem, making automation more expensive and encouraging further over-dependency on low skilled labour.
The successful North European countries show the way. Education, education, education, and way more business investment.
Productivity per worker is irrelevant if automation means no jobs left for workers to do.
If corporations continue to automate jobs, even skilled ones, a robot tax is inevitable, not least to fund the massively expanding welfare bill.
Education also doesn't make much difference if even graduates find graduate jobs automated
That’s been the argument with every advancement in technology since the spinning jenny. And every time the long term impact is a huge advancement in global prosperity.
One thing’s for sure, if we don’t invest in education then the outcomes will be a hell of a lot worse.
Well so far the evidence from AI is certainly not a huge advancement in global prosperity, indeed ironically jobs which don't need much education like care home workers or do not need a degree like plumbers and electricians may be more immune to AI
It’s already starting to show a bit in some of my clients’ results. Lower headcount for the same revenue and margin, but higher pay per FTE.
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
The Powell speech was a warning to do something before what has happened, happened. It was made in order to stop the UK becoming an ‘Island of strangers’, or ‘sleepwalking into segregation’.
Starmer's disgusting speech yesterday has one obvious result and that is to emboldened racists. "Island of strangers" and "sleepwalking into segregation". There is not a cigarette paper between this and the white supremacist sentiment demonstrated by Powell in the Birmingham Town Hall speech.
I don't believe, Iike you, that Starmer even believes this rubbiy. However he's said it now and his days should be numbered.
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
I don't like any of them. Burnham (whom I despise) might make the cut, and save for the odd gaff I quite like Darren Jones. And you can keep your Wes Streetings. He is almost Badenoch level annoying. And of course Starmer has sidelined any women of substance.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
I have said I see Jenrick and Farage as cheeks of the same arse.
So no.
(I can't beleive anyone who thinks that Jenrick- Braverman is a dream ticket isn't already lost to Reform...)
Two Cambridge educated lawyers would lead to a Tory landslide.
The country loves lawyers, see Attlee, Thatcher, Blair, and Starmer as opposition leaders who take their parties from opposition to government.
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
A couple of points from your link:-
Young people in line for good degrees from good Russell Group universities, who have for years obediently jumped through every hoop provided, are working in bars, going travelling, or despondently...
It’s the betrayal that hurts. We drilled it into them that if they worked hard at school and made it into university then the world could be their oyster...
This is essentially the point I was making the other day in relation to Americans and increasingly Britons who have, to the best of their beliefs and abilities, played by the rules in order to advance, only to find the game is rigged against them.
An important but separate point that @Leon might have made, or anyone in relation to WFH as well as AI is this:-
And all the time, AI is stealthily creeping up on the entry-level jobs they’re chasing. The tasks companies tend to give to young, green trainees – the routine grunt work they can’t easily mess up, which can be swiftly checked by someone more senior – are most vulnerable to automation precisely because they’re routine. Baby lawyers learn the ropes by drawing up endless contracts, but AI can do that in seconds. It’s probably capable of many things young journalists start out by doing too, like turning a simple press release into a story (or more depressingly, scraping clickbait content off rival websites). But if companies automate away the bottom rung of the ladder, how do you reach the next rung up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/13/young-people-degrees-labour-market-ai
If that continues populist parties of left and right will continue to gain support, even from graduates.
A UBI funded by a robot tax also would become inevitable
One of our most pressing economic problems is productivity per worker. A robot tax would compound the problem, making automation more expensive and encouraging further over-dependency on low skilled labour.
The successful North European countries show the way. Education, education, education, and way more business investment.
Productivity per worker is irrelevant if automation means no jobs left for workers to do.
If corporations continue to automate jobs, even skilled ones, a robot tax is inevitable, not least to fund the massively expanding welfare bill.
Education also doesn't make much difference if even graduates find graduate jobs automated
That’s been the argument with every advancement in technology since the spinning jenny. And every time the long term impact is a huge advancement in global prosperity.
One thing’s for sure, if we don’t invest in education then the outcomes will be a hell of a lot worse.
Well so far the evidence from AI is certainly not a huge advancement in global prosperity, indeed ironically jobs which don't need much education like care home workers or do not need a degree like plumbers and electricians may be more immune to AI
Surely we can design a robot that turns up at your house 3 days late, in the afternoon instead of the morning, asks for some tea and biscuits, says this is going to be a bigger job than I thought, then leaves after 15 mins, sends an invoice for £100 and never comes back or answers their phone again?
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
A couple of points from your link:-
Young people in line for good degrees from good Russell Group universities, who have for years obediently jumped through every hoop provided, are working in bars, going travelling, or despondently...
It’s the betrayal that hurts. We drilled it into them that if they worked hard at school and made it into university then the world could be their oyster...
This is essentially the point I was making the other day in relation to Americans and increasingly Britons who have, to the best of their beliefs and abilities, played by the rules in order to advance, only to find the game is rigged against them.
An important but separate point that @Leon might have made, or anyone in relation to WFH as well as AI is this:-
And all the time, AI is stealthily creeping up on the entry-level jobs they’re chasing. The tasks companies tend to give to young, green trainees – the routine grunt work they can’t easily mess up, which can be swiftly checked by someone more senior – are most vulnerable to automation precisely because they’re routine. Baby lawyers learn the ropes by drawing up endless contracts, but AI can do that in seconds. It’s probably capable of many things young journalists start out by doing too, like turning a simple press release into a story (or more depressingly, scraping clickbait content off rival websites). But if companies automate away the bottom rung of the ladder, how do you reach the next rung up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/13/young-people-degrees-labour-market-ai
If that continues populist parties of left and right will continue to gain support, even from graduates.
A UBI funded by a robot tax also would become inevitable
One of our most pressing economic problems is productivity per worker. A robot tax would compound the problem, making automation more expensive and encouraging further over-dependency on low skilled labour.
The successful North European countries show the way. Education, education, education, and way more business investment.
Productivity per worker is irrelevant if automation means no jobs left for workers to do.
If corporations continue to automate jobs, even skilled ones, a robot tax is inevitable, not least to fund the massively expanding welfare bill.
Education also doesn't make much difference if even graduates find graduate jobs automated
That’s been the argument with every advancement in technology since the spinning jenny. And every time the long term impact is a huge advancement in global prosperity.
One thing’s for sure, if we don’t invest in education then the outcomes will be a hell of a lot worse.
Well so far the evidence from AI is certainly not a huge advancement in global prosperity, indeed ironically jobs which don't need much education like care home workers or do not need a degree like plumbers and electricians may be more immune to AI
It’s already starting to show a bit in some of my clients’ results. Lower headcount for the same revenue and margin, but higher pay per FTE.
Which will just embolden populists like Corbyn and Farage further.
I am struggling to understand how Starmer’s tightening of immigration policy can be described as “Powellite” by anyone except professional shit-stirrers.
Agreed. We’re still looking at 240K plus a year..
Note the Powell speech was made at a time when net migration was negative - with somewhere around 200k immigrants, and 300k emigrants annually.
The Powell speech was a warning to do something before what has happened, happened. It was made in order to stop the UK becoming an ‘Island of strangers’, or ‘sleepwalking into segregation’.
Powell was taking about the British becoming strangers in their own country. Starmer seems to be warning of immigrants being strangers to us if they can't integrate.
Starmers speech was misguided and he could have looked tough on immigration without looking like a Powell wannabbee .
As Starmer shreds his principles one still hasn’t met a grisly end in his chase for Reform voters.
So far staying in the ECHR has survived ! And not that I want to tempt fate but leaving that might be a bridge too far for his party and would result in cabinet resignations and a collapse of what’s left of his coalition of voters .
Starmers 'Island of Strangers' was unbelievably stupid, especially coming from a Labour PM
His attempts to outdo Farage will never succeed and he needs to understand his comment is more likely to send his voters to the Lib Dems, Green, Plaid and SNP while not winning one Reform voter to his policies
So he should simply leave migration to Reform? That seems…sub-optimal.
He’s probably best off getting things done with a minimum of fuss then announcing the results when it works, rather than pretending to be something he isn’t by saying things he doesn’t mean to satisfy people who will never like him anyway.
As noted on here, numbers are due to fall, so results are already baked in.
Also, nobody actually likes Starmer.
I think Isam's wider point is correct. Starmer is pissing off Labour core voters to curry favour with voters who will always hate him and the Labour Party.
Something in Labour's favour is the general ire is focused on Starmer personally, which is why disagreeable opponents are setting fire to HIS property. When he goes, which might be sooner than we all thought, maybe his replacement can work a Johnsonesque revival, post Theresa May.
Name the replacement that is going to work that particular miracle.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
I don't like any of them. Burnham (whom I despise) might make the cut, and save for the odd gaff I quite like Darren Jones. And you can keep your Wes Streetings. He is almost Badenoch level annoying. And of course Starmer has sidelined any women of substance.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
I have said I see Jenrick and Farage as cheeks of the same arse.
So no.
(I can't beleive anyone who thinks that Jenrick- Braverman is a dream ticket isn't already lost to Reform...)
Two Cambridge educated lawyers would lead to a Tory landslide.
The country loves lawyers, see Attlee, Thatcher, Blair, and Starmer as opposition leaders who take their parties from opposition to government.
Labour should just pay France to take the boats back. In response we take legitimate asylum seekers.
That would be politically courageous for the French politicans.
Sir Frederick 'Jumbo' Stewart: There are four words to be included in a proposal if you want it thrown out. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Complicated. Lengthy. Expensive. Controversial. And if you want to be *really* sure that the Minister doesn't accept it, you must say the decision is "courageous". Bernard Woolley: And that's worse than "controversial"? Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh, yes! "Controversial" only means "this will lose you votes". "Courageous" means "this will lose you the election"!
Solution. Far fewer degrees, slim down the universities.
A couple of points from your link:-
Young people in line for good degrees from good Russell Group universities, who have for years obediently jumped through every hoop provided, are working in bars, going travelling, or despondently...
It’s the betrayal that hurts. We drilled it into them that if they worked hard at school and made it into university then the world could be their oyster...
This is essentially the point I was making the other day in relation to Americans and increasingly Britons who have, to the best of their beliefs and abilities, played by the rules in order to advance, only to find the game is rigged against them.
An important but separate point that @Leon might have made, or anyone in relation to WFH as well as AI is this:-
And all the time, AI is stealthily creeping up on the entry-level jobs they’re chasing. The tasks companies tend to give to young, green trainees – the routine grunt work they can’t easily mess up, which can be swiftly checked by someone more senior – are most vulnerable to automation precisely because they’re routine. Baby lawyers learn the ropes by drawing up endless contracts, but AI can do that in seconds. It’s probably capable of many things young journalists start out by doing too, like turning a simple press release into a story (or more depressingly, scraping clickbait content off rival websites). But if companies automate away the bottom rung of the ladder, how do you reach the next rung up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/13/young-people-degrees-labour-market-ai
If that continues populist parties of left and right will continue to gain support, even from graduates.
A UBI funded by a robot tax also would become inevitable
One of our most pressing economic problems is productivity per worker. A robot tax would compound the problem, making automation more expensive and encouraging further over-dependency on low skilled labour.
The successful North European countries show the way. Education, education, education, and way more business investment.
Productivity per worker is irrelevant if automation means no jobs left for workers to do.
If corporations continue to automate jobs, even skilled ones, a robot tax is inevitable, not least to fund the massively expanding welfare bill.
Education also doesn't make much difference if even graduates find graduate jobs automated
That’s been the argument with every advancement in technology since the spinning jenny. And every time the long term impact is a huge advancement in global prosperity.
One thing’s for sure, if we don’t invest in education then the outcomes will be a hell of a lot worse.
Well so far the evidence from AI is certainly not a huge advancement in global prosperity, indeed ironically jobs which don't need much education like care home workers or do not need a degree like plumbers and electricians may be more immune to AI
Surely we can design a robot that turns up at your house 3 days late, in the afternoon instead of the morning, asks for some tea and biscuits, says this is going to be a bigger job than I thought, then leaves after 15 mins, sends an invoice for £100 and never comes back or answers their phone again?
Will I find myself speaking in a weird chatty mockney accent and trying to act a bit manly when interacting with this robot?
Labour should just pay France to take the boats back. In response we take legitimate asylum seekers.
As determined buy whom? Is it still the case that those crossing the channel in small boats tend to 'lose' any ID and documents in the process? So how then do we know who they are and if their case is legitimate?
I've been reading KL, about the Nazi concentration camps, recently. Its not a new story to me, but the level of horrifying detail in it is astonishing. You can see why the asylum laws we have now arose after the second world war, with the horror of what the Nazis had done (and to be fair, the communists too). The idea that your life might be under threat from your own government is a slam dunk asylum claim. But has mission creep set in in the 80 years since the liberation of Bergen-Belsen? What should be the limits of asylum?
We are also confused now because we live in a global world were travel to any part of the world is possible in under a day. People everywhere can see the riches of Western lifestyle and desire that for themselves. Why wouldn't they? So economic migration and asylum are now very entangled.
When the Red Army reached Germany they couldn't believe what the found/ Why would the Germans, who had fridges, cars, and all the other accoutrements of modern (well 1940's) life want to invade the primitive lands of the the USSR? Why indeed. But you can see why a poor Albanian might fancy working in Sunderland, by whatever means it takes.
If Reform has gone from penumbra to umbra, does that mean I can now officially take umbrage?
As 'penumbra to umbra' means going from being partly shadowed to completely shadowed, I think that it's the Conservative Party that has gone on that journey.
Comments
We should treat people as individuals, not classes.
We should be looking to attract and keep the high skilled individuals, and not the minimum wage ones. Its not all or nothing.
“Look what those horrible black people will do if they are in a majority. The Democrats like black people - they even elected Hussein Obama. I’m one of you, I’ll protect you. Follow me! And leave your wallets at the door.”
https://x.com/tnewtondunn/status/1922194828181331976
Near as free movement with the EU, but restrictions on benefits.
A steepish income or education threshold for everyone else. And a special category for artistic merit.
Spending all money like there's no tomorrow with a failure to account for accruals is a fast-track to bankruptcy.
Reform were second and an independent third. LD fourth. My guess, those indies (Tunbridge Wells Alliance) are probably going back Tory not Reform at the next GE.
Because the Messiah is going to be too busy doing press conferences to want to run Labour.
As an Anglican the Episcopal church's stance is pathetic, they may as well be the church wing of liberal Democrats now
While asylum is a somewhat different manner of issue, since it involves fundamental principles, I prefer to look at immigration through a pragmatic lens. There's a huge practical difference between 200k pa and 600k pa, which often isn't acknowledged by those who are strongly in favour, or strongly against immigration.
Starmer is a very poor orator, but calling his "strangers" comment Powellite is absurd hyperbole, IMO.
“Labour makes speech on immigration”
No, not like that!
There are plenty of Reform-curious voters out there as we have recently seen. Given that they are a nota party (no one presumably voted reform on account of their policies on private-public partnerships in the NHS) one of the main bugbears was and is immigration.
There was too much of it. The numbers were bonkers. As we all know, aggregate GDP might be improved, but per capita not so much (actually marginally worse) with high immigration. There is of course the value chain argument (pushing "indigenous" people further up it) but people don't care about that. They hear about hundreds of thousands of people, millions perhaps, and worry about that poor old maid cycling to holy communion. Because they worry the church might have become a Cafe Nero, or a mosque.
The speech will have reassured plenty of Reform voters that the major parties of government are listening.
Look on it as analagous to Brexit. UKIP agitated to the point whereby their numbers made Dave offer a referendum.
A good move for Lab and SKS imo.
The issue of people from ordinary backgrounds aspiring to a middle class life depends on a couple of factors. First it rather depends on what counts as a 'middle class life'; secondly there is geography. As a Londoner who hasn't lived there for 40 years, I have no idea how this can work in London; in all sorts of bits of the the north it can work because the gulf is smaller, I see the rise from 'working class kid' to middle class displayed in front of me all the time.
Secondly, whatever AI does there is still going to be a jobs market. The western world is a job creation scheme, and this isn't ending. There is still an infinity of opportunities around.
What is useless and damaging for nearly everyone is a sense of entitlement.
There are various reasons why one might or might not be concerned about the size of the Boriswave, but I don't understand why Bart is talking about minimum wage workers.
People feel very real anxieties about it. Not something I’ve experienced myself but I was wrong to dismiss them in the past.
However, I do still maintain that the immigration we had from the EU was much better in terms of likelihood to leave and integrate than what we’ve had since.
But white people are many times less likely to be victims than are black people. The suggestion of 'genocide', even as hyperbole, is offensive nonsense.
Now your Conservative glass is always half full and you have promoted a few narratives which gives us a decent majority Conservative.Government in 2029. Now part of your prospectus is Reform implode, which I believe to be a fair one. It is the Tory recovery I fail to see, and who takes them out of the Wilderness? Would you be content with the Jenrick- Braverman dream ticket?
The figures were from the OBR.
They will simply contribute far less than they take out. That’s untenable but Labour had trailed they were going to increase ILR to ten years but Cooper backtracked on this in the HOC and it is now understood to,remain at 5 years.
Dig deep comrades.
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/britains-ilr-emergency
I think it's probably intended to express a difference between levels of immigration which more readily allow integration and those which don't.
What those numbers might be is open for debate. And are just as much determined by what provision we make for doing so.
His immediate response - "I don't believe in numbers"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/19/race.socialexclusion
For example, Hillary Clinton and Obama were AOK with gay marriage since the beginnings of their political careers. It was just that to be electable, they had to say the opposite. So it is considered very bad form to bring up their previous anti-gay marriage speeches, among Democrats. "They had to say that, in public..."
In progressive culture, the idea of *limiting* rights for an oppressed and/or minority group is an anathema. Really, really icky. Migrants generally fall into the "oppressed and/or minority" - so talk of limiting immigration is talk of limiting rights. Not nice.
But surely, you say, the progressive types can understand that this is something Starmer "has to say"? The difference is that he is actually proposing *policy* - not vague "I wouldn't support...." (see the Hillary and Obama speeches on gay marriage.
For example, the shutdown of care home companies issuing their own visas has pretty much happened already.
The fact that it annoys some people just shows how far down the rabbithole of any-implicit-criticism-of-immigration-is-beyond-the-pale many have gone.
ETA: An alternative take is that the Turks - and others in that general direction - have much greater belief in the competence of their governments: that they not only have the expertise to develop a cure for cancer, but also have the capacity to keep it secret! The Scandis are like, "What, those fuckwits? No way!"
The problem is that every time Starmer will make a speech or talk about falling migration numbers, then Farage will just post some more videos like the ones he posted yesterday:
https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1921847002712637905?t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Listening to Starmer drone on about numbers will never be even 10% as impactful as the visceral experience of watching migrants board boats at Calais & arrive at Dover.
Starmer has to stop the boats & empty the hotels. These are impacts of migration that people can see with their own eyes. No amount of quoting migration numbers will overcome voters' disquiet about the boats.
A UBI funded by a robot tax also would become inevitable
While the whole of the 150 seat House of Representatives was up for re-election, only just over half (40) of the 76 Senate seats were decided on May 3rd.
The complexity of the Australian system, however, means the new Senators don't take their seats until July 1st so Senators who are leaving at the end of next month were able to vote in the leadership election and three backed Ley to give her a four vote margin.
The truth is Ley's margin within the caucus is paper thin but so was Tony Abbott's in 2009 and he went on to win in 2013 but of course lost in 2016.
It's fair to say the Coalition is still in shock after their worst election result ever - just 41 seats though they lead in three of the four yet to declare so could end up with 44 but they will face a Labor Government bench with 94 MPs.
It is a big ideological change for the Liberals and also the Coalition, it would be like the Tories have just elected Tugendhat over Jenrick.
The question will be whether the Liberals can win back centrist pro climate change action Teal Independents in particular as well as swing voters without losing hard right voters to One Nation (though Australia's 2PP preferred system makes the latter less of a worry if they still get their preferences)
The successful North European countries show the way. Education, education, education, and way more business investment.
Whatever the conservative problems are Boris Johnson is not the answer
If corporations continue to automate jobs, even skilled ones, a robot tax is inevitable, not least to fund the massively expanding welfare bill.
Education also doesn't make much difference if even graduates find graduate jobs automated
When most boomers have met their maker, does our pensions, health and care system get a few years of relief as a smaller group of elderly pass through it? And likewise does our housing market open up as those big properties owned since the 80s come back on to the market?
Someone somewhere will have done the maths. I should have asked Paul yesterday.
Boris Johnson is not the answer
One thing’s for sure, if we don’t invest in education then the outcomes will be a hell of a lot worse.
Polling will be significant over the next 18-24 months - with only a three year gap between elections, Ley hasn't got the time to make an impact that Badenoch "enjoys" over here.
Much of this was reversed quite quickly, but the fact that the government was so naïve about the inevitable abuse of these visa programs was telling.
The days of apprentices making all their tools and tool boxes from scratch vanished. And there was the issue of people running CNC mills and lathes needing to start on manual work first to learn the basics.
The issue is that costs are increasing so much faster than what demographics explain. So it's only a marginal relief in spending.
By picking Boris as their man to tackle immigration, they picked someone who can tell a brilliant story but is lazy, a poor manager and no interest in the detail. It turned out disastrously for them. Why do they think picking another from the same ilk will work this time?
I've not heard a single coherent workable solution from anyone - including Reform - relating to illegal immigration (not just "the boats") and little realistic thinking about reducing the number of illegal immigrants in the general population (visa overstays).
"Emptying the hotels" will require a much faster and better asylum processing and deportation (where unsuccessful) system. Are we processing cases faster, are we deporting more of those whose applications were unsuccessful?
Legal immigration is numerically the challenge - Starmer knows this - but as I said earlier, the balance between the socio-cultural politics and the economic politics isn't easy.
The ground is also shifting - Starmer's speech yesterday was as much about integration as immigration. It is much easier not to integrate now than it was for those arriving in the 50s and 60s. People like People They Know and inevitably migrants (whether in East Ham or on the Costa del Sol) will gather in communities and try to keep a semblance of where they came from. The truth is as we have all, thanks to technology and other societal changes, become more insular and individual, not exclusively, not wholly but more than was the case.
But the opportunity is not necessarily to pluck Americans directly from Stanford or Harvard. It’s to take European, Chinese, Indian, Canadian academics and scientists who might otherwise have headed to the US but are either put off or find their route blocked.
So no.
(I can't beleive anyone who thinks that Jenrick- Braverman is a dream ticket isn't already lost to Reform...)
The country loves lawyers, see Attlee, Thatcher, Blair, and Starmer as opposition leaders who take their parties from opposition to government.
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/07/04/history-suggests-lawyer-starmer-was-always-going-to-win-this-election/
Interesting discussion with a colleague yesterday about whether our students should be considered as adults. In theory. once they turn 18 the answer is yes. In practice so many of them are incredibly immature. My colleague had been speaking to a fairly senior pyscho researcher who says that in reality students are not adults until the mid twenties, in brain maturity.
Its also pretty clear that once again we are seeing a huge change in work coming down the line and we are not ready. The utopias of 1950's sci fi had no one actually working for a living - robots did it all. In that world what do people do? Who pays the bills? What is the point of life?
I think the idea of 4 day weeks is something to explore. Condense the job that is done into four days. AI helps a lot.* Something to try.
*Not every job for sure.
The boats are, as I have mentioned, an issue of control. Very obviously the government has none over our borders. That is the main point.
Successive governments have wrestled with this and no doubt will continue to wrestle with it.
The few thousand people the boats bring to this country are neither here nor there.
Plus Howard won the popular vote in England and that’s all that matters.
I don't believe, Iike you, that Starmer even believes this rubbiy. However he's said it now and his days should be numbered.
Even Trump is now proposing to increase income tax for the highest earners to fund tax cuts for the middle and lower earners
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-is-ok-with-republicans-raising-taxes-rich-2025-05-09/
Starmer seems to be warning of immigrants being strangers to us if they can't integrate.
Those are two quite different things, I think ?
Sir Frederick 'Jumbo' Stewart: There are four words to be included in a proposal if you want it thrown out.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Complicated. Lengthy. Expensive. Controversial. And if you want to be *really* sure that the Minister doesn't accept it, you must say the decision is "courageous".
Bernard Woolley: And that's worse than "controversial"?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh, yes! "Controversial" only means "this will lose you votes". "Courageous" means "this will lose you the election"!
I've been reading KL, about the Nazi concentration camps, recently. Its not a new story to me, but the level of horrifying detail in it is astonishing. You can see why the asylum laws we have now arose after the second world war, with the horror of what the Nazis had done (and to be fair, the communists too). The idea that your life might be under threat from your own government is a slam dunk asylum claim. But has mission creep set in in the 80 years since the liberation of Bergen-Belsen? What should be the limits of asylum?
We are also confused now because we live in a global world were travel to any part of the world is possible in under a day. People everywhere can see the riches of Western lifestyle and desire that for themselves. Why wouldn't they? So economic migration and asylum are now very entangled.
When the Red Army reached Germany they couldn't believe what the found/ Why would the Germans, who had fridges, cars, and all the other accoutrements of modern (well 1940's) life want to invade the primitive lands of the the USSR? Why indeed. But you can see why a poor Albanian might fancy working in Sunderland, by whatever means it takes.