It's our freedom too

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Perhaps the previous incumbent did something to the water in the Foreign Office which means that all future occupants of the post are doomed to suffer from some strange inability to understand the rest of the world, but Hunt’s comments comparing the EU to the Soviet Union were deeply insensitive to say the least.  For people who lived much of their lives under Soviet domination (a list which includes both the German Chancellor and the current president of the European Council), it was a comparison which betrayed an ignorant and arrogant attitude to their reality.  For most of the former Eastern Europe, the EU has been a force which has promoted liberalisation, democracy and freedom.  That’s not to say that all of the countries have perfect democracies yet; there are troubling events occurring in some of them.  But then politicians from a state where over half the legislators are appointees, bishops, or hereditaries are hardly in a position to lecture anyone else on democracy.

Back in 1970, I travelled to what was then Czechoslovakia with a group of other members of youth clubs from Glamorgan, and we stayed in a youth camp along with young people from a whole range of Eastern European countries.  One theme was common; they all complained about their lack of freedom to travel.  In many cases, even travel within their own countries was restricted; travel outside the Soviet bloc was a near impossibility.  They understood – better than Hunt ever will – what lack of freedom meant.  For the young people of those countries today, membership of the EU has brought them unprecedented freedom to travel, live and work across the continent.  Here in the UK, we have also benefitted enormously from the freedom of movement which membership of the EU has given us, as barriers have been torn down and rights harmonised, even though the UK has insisted on maintaining more barriers than other countries.  It just hasn’t always been so obvious to us because the restrictions which previously applied were not so tight in the first place (although some of us can still remember needing visas for some countries).

From the point of view of those who have enjoyed such a dramatic increase in their freedom of movement, there is something very strange indeed about the extent to which people in the UK are actually celebrating the fact that their government is planning to remove that freedom from its citizens.  I can’t help but wonder whether that sense of British exceptionalism isn’t at work here underpinning attitudes; perhaps people really do believe that it’s only other people’s freedom of movement which is being constrained, and that ‘Brits’ will still have all their existing rights protected.  From such a perspective, it’s only the freedom of ‘migrants’ which is being restricted, ‘ex-pats’ will be able to carry on as before.  But calling something by a different name doesn’t change what it is.  How long can it be before people realise that what they’ve been demanding amounts to restricting their own freedom?

Hypocrisy is the wrong accusation

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Some people on his own (Tory) side as well as anti-Brexit campaign group, ‘Best for Britain’ have been rather unkind to former Chancellor, Lord Lawson, over his application for a carte de séjour, allowing him to remain resident in France.  I can see why the idea that a prominent Brexiteer opting not just to live in France, but to complete all the necessary paperwork confirming his right of residence there, might look to some more than a little hypocritical.

I’m not sure that it is though.  Insofar as the more prominent Brexiteers really wanted to control movement of people at all, it was the movement of ‘other people’ – particularly the poorer ones – which was the subject of their expressed concern.  It was never the intention of rich supporters of Brexit that their own rights should in any way be curtailed.  I think it goes deeper than that, however.  Many Brexiteers are, and always have been, intensely relaxed about free movement; opposition to it was merely a device to persuade people to support what was for the Brexiteers themselves an ideological crusade against the EU.

What exactly is in the least bit hypocritical about a well-off person who believes that well-off people should be able to go wherever they like going wherever he likes?   Hypocrisy is the wrong accusation; there are plenty of others much more suitable.

Choosing the wrong target

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After Jeremy Corbyn’s speech at his party’s Scottish Branch meeting over the weekend, it is a complete mystery to me how anyone is still giving any credibility to the idea that Labour’s policy on the EU is in any way different in substance to that of the Tory government.  As an exercise in cakeism, it was a tour de force: Labour want all the benefits of the EU without being bound by any of the rules; they want to be outside the EU yet still have a say in all the important EU policies; they want the exact same benefits as we get from membership whilst having more freedom to make our own policies than any member, let alone any of the countries with which the EU has an existing relationship.  Other than the use of words, and the fig leaf of ‘a’ rather than ‘the’ customs union, it was a speech which could have come from the mouth of Johnson, Gove, Fox, or May.

Except, that is, for the part about immigration.  That was more Farage than Johnson and friends.  And it was a particularly depressing section of his speech, designed more to try to appeal to the prejudices of a particular segment of the electorate than to set out any sort of vision for the future.  There’s been plenty of research showing that the impact of immigration on wages and opportunities is minimal, but he chose to ignore that, concentrating instead on the idea that the damaging part of immigration, in economic terms, is when agencies bring in foreign labour to undercut workers in the UK.

Now, on a factual basis, I don’t know what proportion of total immigration this issue affects.  It’s certainly not all immigration, and I suspect that it’s actually a small part, but it’s a part which is more visible in some communities and some types of work than others, as a result of which it probably has more impact on people’s views on the issue than other types of immigration.  It would be interesting to see some more detailed research on it, but I’ll accept that there is a widespread perception that some agencies are getting around UK law on issues such as the minimum wage by providing food, accommodation, transport etc. and docking these costs (at an inflated level) from the wages being paid to the migrants concerned.  As I said, the extent to which this is a true or accurate perception is a question on which I do not have adequate information to make a judgement, but I’m certain that the perception is widely held.

If we suppose, for the sake of argument, that it is an accurate perception, and that the practice is in use widely across the UK, then it is reasonable to ask what the solution might be.  And my immediate reaction is that if there are holes in the law allowing unscrupulous capitalist employers to exploit employees, than those holes need to be plugged and enforcement action taken.  And had Corbyn suggested that, I would have whole-heartedly supported him.  Protecting workers from exploitation by unscrupulous employers is exactly the approach that I would have expected from anyone calling himself or herself a socialist.

Sadly, however, that wasn’t what he did.  To his shame, he effectively scapegoated the migrants themselves, by supporting an end to freedom of movement.  It’s a case of blaming the victims of an economic relationship based on power and wealth for being on the wrong side of that relationship.  His underlying point, I assume, is that freedom of movement for lower paid workers is a policy which is working more in the interests of employers than of employees.  But even if he’s right, the answer isn’t to curtail the freedom of workers to move, it is to curtail the freedom of employers to exploit.

Migration and economics

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One of the most over-used words in contemporary debate is ‘sustainable’.  Part of the problem is that it means different things to different people as they define it in ways which enable them to do what they want to do; and another part of the problem is that it’s become one of those fashionable words without which no report on anything is ever quite complete.  So in discussing the question, I start by pinning my colours firmly to the mast of the Brundtland report; it’s about using resources in a way which does not compromise future generations.

Currently, developed countries are a very long way from meeting that definition – it has been calculated that the earth’s population would require the resources of three earths to sustain its current level of resource consumption if every person on earth enjoyed the average living standard of the average person in the UK.  And some have argued that the US lifestyle would require four earths.  It’s not an exact calculation, of course, and some would argue about the detailed elements of it, but the basic conclusion – that current lifestyles in the developed world require the use of resources at an unsustainable rate – is a reasonable starting point. 

One thing that we can say with a high degree of certainty is that those people and countries which don’t currently enjoy the same standard of living as we do in Europe or the US aspire to achieve that standard of living.  That aspiration is one of the prime drivers of migration – faced with a choice of waiting until their own countries catch up or taking a short cut by moving to a country with an already existing higher standard of living, many in the world’s poorer countries are choosing the latter.  And who can blame them?

It’s a mechanism which doesn’t only operate between the world’s poorest countries and the richest; it also operates ‘regionally’ within both poorer areas and richer.  So, for instance, within the EU, those countries whose economies are lagging are seeing an outflow towards those countries with higher average incomes and better job availability.  Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians etc. come to the UK first and foremost because they feel that their prospects are better here than they are in their countries of origin.  And they’re not wrong about that.  We in Wales should be only too aware of the phenomenon – the cause is exactly the same as that which has, for generations, led so many of our own young people to head towards London or even further afield.

We perceive it differently though, partly because the line on the map between England and Wales is seen to be entirely different in nature from the line between the UK and ’the continent’, and partly because immigration and emigration appear to be two completely different phenomena.  Whilst I understand why the perceptions are different, the objective reality is that there is no real difference on either score.  For us here in Wales, both types of migration are part of our lived experience – but emigration is actually the bigger issue.  It’s only because the perspective from which the issue is usually examined and reported is a very ‘British’ one (in which movement from Wales to England doesn’t count as ‘migration’ at all because it’s seen as ‘internal’) that we end up with politicians discussing the question as though the problem is controlling who comes in.  Actually, we could gain more insight if we were to look at the problem from the perspective of those countries in Eastern Europe which are losing so many of their young people to places like the UK, Germany, or France.

That brings me to the paper launched today by the Welsh Government, talking about controls on immigration post-Brexit.  The report talks about the problems Wales faces from an ageing population and the need for immigration in order to sustain services and communities, and suggests an approach to managing immigration which is dependent first and foremost on the need for the skills of the immigrants.  In effect it focuses overwhelmingly on one-way migration (inwards) by a specific demographic (people of working age), and specifically refers to the need to avoid the working-age population decline which would otherwise occur.  I found that a very narrow and short term perspective on a much more complex issue.  That’s understandable, to an extent, in the context of the short-term problems likely to be caused by Brexit, particularly to a country like Wales which is already suffering from an outflow of qualified young people.  In that sense, it looks like an attempt to balance a response to tabloid-driven xenophobia and the immediate needs of the Welsh economy, but what it doesn’t even touch on is how we get to a situation where population and resource-usage are in balance over the long term – and not just in Wales.

The underlying economic model is broken; it depends on an ever-growing population of working age to support an ever-growing population of pensioners.  It owes more to Ponzi than to sustainability.  There’s a difference in emphasis, but the approach being taken to freedom of movement by the Welsh government differs little in principle from that of the UK government – it’s all about the economic self-interest of the country receiving migrants, and has little to say about the interests of migrants or those of their countries of origin, let alone about our wider collective interests.

Punishment and excuses

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The Brexit Secretary came up with a new formulation of ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ this week when he said that no deal would be better than a ‘punishment deal’.  It has a nice ring to it in terms of rhetoric, but it’s every bit as silly as the previous formulation.  And it glosses over the fact that there will be two agreements, not one. 

As far as the second deal, the trade deal, is concerned, we already know that the worst possible outcome is to revert to WTO rules, and that outcome is the inevitable result of no deal.  There is simply no means by which the EU27 can offer worse terms than that; so there is no way of ‘punishing’ anyone.  And we already know that no deal which leaves the UK outside the single market (an inevitable consequence of rejecting freedom of movement and the jurisdiction of the ECJ) can never be as good as membership of the EU.  So any agreement will be better than WTO terms but worse than current terms; ‘no deal’ cannot be better than even the worst negotiated deal.

But prior to that trade deal, the first deal – and the one that has to be largely agreed as a precursor to any trade deal – is about the terms of exit.  There will be many elements to this, but the only one that offers any scope for meting out anything resembling ‘punishment’ is the agreement over the amount to be paid by the UK to the EU.  This has regularly – and wrongly – been presented as though it were some sort of ‘exit bill’.  It is not; it is a calculation of the amount of money which is required to be paid to meet the UK’s obligations under agreements to which it is already party. 

There is certainly plenty of scope for a difference of opinion over which elements should be included and the number of pounds to be attached to each element, and if the EU27 really wanted to punish the UK for daring to leave, this is where they have the most scope for doing so.  The Institute of Economic Affairs has suggested that the total could be as low as £26billion; rumours from within the EU suggest a number anywhere up to £100billion. 

Whether it would be in the EU’s interests to demand an excessive sum is another question entirely; getting something from the UK is obviously better than seeing the UK walk away without paying anything.  And it’s ‘true’ that the UK could simply walk away and pay nothing; but it isn’t the cost-free option as which some seem to see it.  In the first place, seeking a trade deal on better terms than the WTO terms with the EU immediately after walking away from previously agreed commitments isn’t exactly the best way to get them in the right frame of mind for the negotiation.  And in the second place, it would seriously harm the UK’s reputation and ability to make agreements with anyone else.  Who, after all, would want to negotiate a deal on anything with a country which thinks it can tear up a contract at will and walk away with no consequences?  Who would trust such a country?

So, on the specific issue of the amount to be paid, both sides have a clear interest in coming to an agreement  Threats to the contrary by one side will be more of an obstacle than an aid in reaching that agreement.  I can’t believe that David Davis doesn’t understand all this; his abject capitulation over his previous suggestion that the scheduling of talks would be the ‘row of the summer’ certainly suggests that he has a better grasp of reality than his rhetoric indicates.  So why go to so much trouble, repeatedly, to make things harder for himself by trying to raise the stakes?  I wonder if he really wants a deal at the end of the day or not; perhaps he’s just setting the scene to be able to blame those nasty foreigners for the outcome that he really wants – an excuse to walk away.

Who's out of step here?

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The initial position taken by the UK Government over the future rights of EU citizens does not bode well for the Brexit negotiating strategy.  Denying rights to people who have not yet arrived in the UK at the point of exiting the EU is one thing, but retrospectively removing rights from people who are already here is another thing entirely.  It's a strange logic which leads the UK Government to believe that removing rights from EU citizens is anything resembling the ‘fair and reasonable offer’ as which they are describing it, especially when the EU27 have already stated that they want to protect all those rights currently enjoyed by UK citizens elsewhere in the EU.  Given the importance of getting this issue right before trade talks can even start, it seems a very curious way of trying to earn a bit of friendship.

Craig Murray describes it well as a bit of ‘pointless cruelty’, and it has already emerged that it will require even those EU citizens who have applied for and obtained residency rights to apply again for a new and lesser status.  What on earth is the thinking behind this which enables apparently intelligent people to conclude that there is anything fair or reasonable about this?

It strikes me that part of the issue here might well be very differing conceptions about citizen’s rights.  It is already true that EU citizens living in the UK have more rights, in terms of bringing family to join them for instance, than do UK citizens.  And it is revealing that in drawing attention to that apparent unfairness, the implicit assumption is that EU citizens’ rights should be curtailed rather than widening the rights of UK citizens.  Indeed, in more general terms, the government seems to have a real problem in acknowledging the whole concept of people having ‘rights’ at all – it’s a very un-British concept.  Although the term ‘citizen’ is more widely used than it used to be, the underlying reality is that people in the UK are subjects with obligations, rather than citizens with rights.  They are two very different perspectives.

If we start with that implicit assumption about subjects with obligations, it becomes a lot easier to understand how the ‘offer’ which the government has made might indeed appear to be a ‘fair and reasonable’ one; but it was never going to appear that way to anyone who starts from the other perspective.  It seems typical of May and her team that they have no real conception or understanding of the gulf between the two perspectives, and therefore are making no real effort to bridge it.  Understanding the thinking of other parties is key to any successful negotiation but on this issue, as on so many others, the UK Government seems determined to insist that it’s everyone else who is out of step.

An initial reaction

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At one level, not a lot has changed; it is clear that we will still have a Tory Government, which will be able to rely on the members of the DUP for support on most issues, even without a formal agreement or coalition.  Yet at another level a great deal has changed; a Prime Minister who chose to make the election all about how strong she was and how she needed to strengthen her hand has become a Prime Minister who has demonstrated how weak she is and has weakened her own hand.  It was a spectacular miscalculation.

In terms of the immediate problem in hand, it does not change the fact of the Brexit vote; there is still no majority in parliament for revisiting the decision or allowing a second vote when the details are clear.  What has changed is that there is no longer a majority in the House of Commons for a form of Brexit which involves leaving both the single market and the Customs Union.  Even the DUP, as I understand their position, prefer continued membership of both whilst being outside the EU itself; and there are some members on the Tory benches – even some strong Brexiteers - who would also prefer that scenario, for a period at least, and who are rather less committed to the hard-line anti-immigrant rhetoric of people like May.

However, a preference for that outcome isn’t the same as a willingness to support the concessions which will be necessary to achieve it.  Whilst membership of the European Economic Area can offer many of the economic benefits of membership of the EU, it would come at a price, in terms of acceptance of EU rules, acceptance of the authority of the ECJ, annual payments into the EU, and a willingness to accept freedom of movement.  Without compromise on at least some of those, it’s hard to see how the parliamentary majority can be translated into a deal.

I find it hard to see how even May, with her recently well-demonstrated ability to stand on her head whilst arguing that she hasn’t moved, can make any of the necessary compromises – replacing her is probably the first prerequisite for a change in the UK’s position to a more pragmatic stance.  The good news is that her party will probably see to that, even if not immediately.  The second prerequisite is probably for the Labour Party to drop its insistence on an end to free movement and be a bit more open to compromise.  At the moment, I’m not sure how likely that is; they seem to have hooked themselves on an anti-immigration peg in the belief that it was electorally necessary.

Thinking around the alternative futures for Wales, I remain convinced that reversing Brexit is the best option, and I remain disappointed that so few are making that case.  But continued membership of the single market and Customs Union through the EEA would at least offer a fast-track return to the EU at some future date – either for the UK as a whole or for an independent Wales (and Scotland).  I can at least see a route forward for an independent Wales in that context, which I could not see in the context of the type of Brexit being pursued by May.  However, yesterday’s result was not enough to make me feel optimistic about such an outcome – just a little less pessimistic.

Brexit realities - 1

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Brexit was never about controlling immigration – but it is now.

I don’t simply mean that immigration wasn’t the subject on the ballot paper (although it wasn’t), I mean that it wasn’t the driving force of those arguing for Brexit (in most cases anyway).  It might well have been the main argument they used to win the referendum, but that’s a different question.

Looking back at the statements of some of the leading Brexiteers, they started out being quite positive about the economic benefits of migration, almost seeing it as a peripheral issue.  But it became clear that they were losing the economic argument, so they fell back on the argument that had most leverage with the target electorate.  It was a cynical ploy, of course; but it worked.  There was a large undercurrent of opposition to immigration, and that was effectively marshalled to support an entirely different objective.

It matters little that many of those opposed to immigration were more opposed to non-EU immigration than EU migration (there’s an obvious racist element involved in that), or that leaving the EU could have no impact on that non-EU immigration.  The Brexiteers successfully conflated two very different issues and ended up winning a majority on the back of that tactic.

It’s then that the problems really started.  Most of them never expected to win, and some of them, at least, seemed not really to have wanted to win.  The UKIP brigade did, of course, along with the more extreme elements of the Tory Party; but for many in the Tory Party it was more about resolving the internal politics of their party than about the future of the UK. 

However, win they did, albeit narrowly, and in the process of pulling that off they created a wholly unrealistic expectation that the UK could retain the economic benefits of membership whilst ending freedom of movement.  And having encouraged the genie of immigration control out of the bottle, they now find themselves in a position where they are afraid not to deliver on the promises made (even if those expected to do the delivering weren’t the ones who made the promises).

So, although controlling immigration really wasn’t the central driver for most of these seeking the exit door, fear of voter reaction to any failure to meet the expectations raised has now become the prime driver for those tasked with delivery.  That sets a context for everything else.

Progressive access to privileges

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I’m not sure that anyone knows any more what Labour’s position is as a party on immigration and freedom of movement.  It’s one of the few things on which Corbyn has actually been fairly clear and consistent; his argument that treating it as a numbers game is a silly approach is one with which I concur.  I also agree with him that tackling the way in which unscrupulous employers exploit migrants, and find ways of paying them less than the minimum wage would be likely to reduce immigration numbers in itself.  (Although I disagree with his apparent belief that controlling numbers of immigrants is a reason for doing that – I think ending exploitation is a sufficient justification in itself.)

But he’s regularly being undermined by Labour MPs who are so afraid of losing votes and seats that they are using UKIP language and policies themselves.  And as we’ve seen this week, some are desperately keen to ‘bounce’ him into changing his position.  In the process, of course, they strengthen the narrative that immigration ‘needs’ to be controlled.  But what has struck me is the extent to which Corbyn’s almost honourable stance on the issue has been described as vague and unclear, because he refuses to say what he will do to reduce immigration as a result of rejecting the whole premise of the question. 

It’s a classic example of the Overton window in operation, and the media – including the so-called impartial BBC – are restricting debate to a narrow band rather than accepting that there are opinions which lie outside it.  So, as far as those questioning Corbyn are concerned, immigration is a problem, it needs to be reduced and because he won’t say how or by how many he will reduce it, he’s being vague or evasive.  It isn’t that Corbyn hasn’t tried very hard to be clear and consistent; it’s rather that his views don’t fall within the narrow window in which debate is currently ‘allowed’ to take place. 

I’m sure that the UKIP/Tory/Labour mainstream/media consensus is more than happy to exclude any views which don’t fit their own preconceptions, but it doesn’t make for a debate in which the question is properly and rationally considered.  If only those who agree that immigration is a problem are to be given any credibility, no real alternatives will ever be heard.  And that, in turn, strengthens the boundaries of the window.  No surprise that immigration ends up being seen as a ‘problem’ even where in those areas where there is none.

Sticking with the Labour Party and immigration, I was well and truly gobsmacked listening to Kinnock Junior pontificating on the matter on the BBC on Tuesday.  He sat there, as a representative of the Labour Party – the self-proclaimed party of working people - arguing for a two-tier approach to the issue under which the high-paid would have complete freedom of movement whilst the lower orders would be subject to restrictions and quotas.  When Nye Bevan said that nothing was too good for the working class, he didn’t add a list of exceptions, or talk about a two-tier system of access to privileges; but his successors clearly believe that there are some things to which mere oiks should not aspire.  Still, it’s a timely reminder to those who keep banging on about a ‘progressive’ alliance of just what ‘progressive’ means to the twenty-first century Labour Party.

Serving whose interests?

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Our First Minister seems to have had a nice little jaunt to Norway to see how they cope with being outside the EU but inside the Single Market.  A small oil-rich country on the fringes of the EU sounds almost similar to Wales – apart from the ‘oil-rich’ bit, which is pretty central to Norway’s economic success and is economically more important than any apparent similarities.  Oh, and the bulk of their exports to the EU consist of oil and gas delivered through pipelines rather than goods which need to be physically checked to ascertain their true origin.  Whatever, the basic model of being in the Single Market but outside the EU is certainly one deserving of some consideration, even if not immediately obviously relevant to Wales.

The response of the Tories’ leader in Wales was entirely predictable: Norway might be interesting, but what we need to concentrate on is a uniquely British solution, a unique relationship with the other EU countries of a type which no-one else enjoys.  The implication is clearly that it will be not only unique, but ‘better’ - after all, if an existing model was considered good enough, it would be a lot quicker and simpler to replicate that than to create an entirely new model.  It might even be achievable within the fabled two year timetable.

The other 27 will give the UK that unique and better deal, because …?  Well, because they’re all foreigners and the UK is unique and special.  Obviously.  And of course, countries such as Norway which have already negotiated deals will be more than happy for the UK to come along and get a better deal, because …?  Well, because they’re foreigners, not special and unique like the British, and they know their place.  Again, obviously.

I was disappointed, but not surprised, at the First Minister’s reference to retaining freedom of movement, but only to go to a pre-identified job.  (And sadly, Plaid has been making very similar noises.)  It’s as though they see freedom of movement as something which applies only to other people, forgetting – or more likely deliberately ignoring – the probable reciprocity of any such arrangement.  But in the real world constraints on ‘them’ coming ‘here’ also mean that the same constraints will apply to ‘us’ going ‘there’. 

So, in effect, politicians talking about limiting freedom of movement, in the case of nationals of other EU states, to those who have jobs to come to are also telling us that our own freedom of movement should be limited to that which primarily serves the interests of capital and employers rather than being considered as a right of ordinary people.  Yet still they claim to be ‘internationalists’, ‘socialists’, and ‘progressives’.  Their definitions of those words seem to owe more to Orwell than to Marx.

Going beyond the evidence

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Saturday’s Western Mail published the results of an opinion poll on the EU, which indicated that the majority in Wales regard access to the single market as being more important than control of migration.  I don’t know whether there were additional results in the polling which have not been published, but given the figures in this report, it would have been interesting to see how they correlated with the way people voted in June.

In the form in which the report appeared, other members of the EU could be forgiven for asking “If the most important thing to you is access to the single market, why on earth did you vote to leave?”, because at first sight, it certainly seems as though people are asking for the sort of access which membership currently gives us.  And if only 30% think that ending freedom of movement within the EU is more important, it suggests that, while immigration is clearly a strong factor, it is not enough in itself to explain the June result.

Part of the problem, of course, is that people were told (and are still being told) over and over again that these are not alternatives; the UK can have both.  I’m not alone in believing that to be the stuff of fantasy, but in presenting them as alternatives the poll doesn’t help us to understand how many people still believe that.  Ranking them in terms of their relative importance doesn’t actually tell us that concern about immigration has receded, merely that the possible economic impact of the decision people took is becoming more real. 

I don’t doubt that the question of immigration was a major factor in the way people voted in June, but we need to keep reminding ourselves that “Do you want to stop migration from other EU countries?” was not the question on the ballot papers.  In claiming that the vote was actually a mandate for ending or reducing migration from the EU, to such an extent that it must take primacy in negotiations, the government are going beyond the facts, and basing their policy on surmise.

Let’s look at some numbers.  The vote to leave was won by a margin of 52-48%.  It’s probably reasonable to assume that, for the 48% who voted to remain, there was an implicit willingness (not necessarily the same thing as enthusiasm, of course) to continue with existing rules on freedom of movement.  But how realistic is to make the converse assumption about the 52% who voted to leave?  Is it accurate to say that all of them wanted an end to freedom of movement?  I don’t think it is; migration may have been a dominating factor for a large number, but there were also significant numbers who wanted to leave for entirely different reasons. 

What that means, in mathematical terms, is that even if as many as 95% of that 52% thought immigration was the main factor, that would still leave only a minority of those who voted wanting to put an end to freedom of movement at the top of the list.  And whilst I accept that great play was made of immigration, I simply don’t believe that it was the main driver for such a large percentage of leave voters.  I accept that it’s as dangerous for me to assume that I know the minds of that 52% as it is for the government to do so, but I can at least point to some evidence for my belief.  The day after the poll, Lord Ashcroft released some poll findings which suggested that this was actually the second most important reason mentioned by leave voters, and that 33% of leave voters made it their most important factor.

Now a little bit of simple arithmetic (33% of 52%) tells us that that means that around 17% of all of those who voted did so first and foremost because they wanted an end to freedom of movement.  By making the demands of that 17% an absolute red line in negotiations, the UK Government is not only ignoring the views of the majority of the voting population, it is also ignoring the views of the majority who voted to leave.  And they’re claiming that this is democracy.

That’s an over-simplistic analysis, of course.  There will have been some who put migration high up their list as a second or third factor; and there will even be some of the remain voters who have some concern over migration.  My point, basically, is that none of us can actually be certain about any of this, because it wasn’t the question that people were asked.  It underlines the problem with holding a referendum on a complex matter without detail on the consequences (as compared, for instance with the post-legislative referendums on devolution), but it underlines even more the dangers of governments choosing to interpret the results in ways which match their own preconceptions and prejudices.

Pointing out, repeatedly, that they’re going beyond the data that they have isn’t the same thing as whinging about a result that we don’t like (whatever they may say), particularly when the result of going beyond that data is likely to have a serious impact on the future of all of us in the short to medium term.

Elections and arguments

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There is much on which I would disagree with Jeremy Corbyn.  He has, though, struck one of the more sensible notes amongst politicians in his refusal to set any sort of numerical limit on immigration, but to pay attention instead to how we respond to any problems caused.  He’s ploughing a lone furrow, however.  Even most of his own party seem to disagree with him, with our own First Minister declaring last week that Corbyn is out of touch with Labour voters, and that however things might look from London, they look different here.  The First Minister is right on that last point, although not perhaps in the way he intended.  The key difference between London and Wales on this issue is that London has a great deal of immigration, and Wales has very little, but I doubt that that is what he meant.

Carwyn Jones didn’t tell us what he thinks that the limit on immigration should be, or how it should be set.  He also didn’t give us the benefit of his views on why immigration is such a bad idea – assuming that he really believes that it is (and he surely wouldn’t want controls if he doesn’t, would he?).  All he told us was, in essence, that Labour voters are against immigration and might vote for UKIP if Labour doesn’t copy the basics of UKIP’s policy.  I wouldn’t personally describe that as a particularly sound basis for policy-making, but I suppose it’s part of what they mean when they say that policy should be ‘evidence-based’.  There’s plenty of evidence that voters don’t like immigration, after all.

Yesterday, disappointingly, Plaid added its two-penn’orth to the anti-immigration argument.  It was more nuanced, and prefaced with a sensible statement that some immigration is good, but it ultimately came down to saying that we should be ‘picky’ about who can migrate, and that we should try and retain an ‘element of’ free movement.  I’m not at all sure that one can have ‘an element’ of any type of freedom; it sounds like it comes from the same school of thought as the idea that a woman can be ‘slightly’ pregnant.  Some things are binary – they either exist or they don’t.

In this case, freedom of movement which is constrained by governments being picky or setting criteria isn’t freedom of movement at all; it’s a privilege granted only to some.  Privilege and freedom aren’t at all the same thing.

So, we have a situation where UKIP, the Tories, Labour and Plaid are now all agreed that freedom of movement is a bad thing and should be constrained; the difference between them is about numbers and criteria - about how many should be accorded the privilege and how they should be selected.  That’s a question of detail, not principle.  The details are not insignificant, and I’m not arguing that they’re not important; but we do need to understand the distinction between a difference of degree and a difference of principle.

The First Minister was at least honest enough to admit, in effect, that his case isn’t based on economics or any other particular impact which immigration might be having on Wales; it is based entirely on party electoral considerations.  I suspect the same is true of Plaid, although it wasn’t made that explicit.

It might be, of course (and it is only a might – this is far from certain), that adopting a watered down version of UKIP’s central argument will help to stop that party gaining further traction.  But that isn’t the same thing as countering their arguments.  In fact, it’s quite the reverse.  Adopting the anti freedom of movement position of UKIP not only fails to counter their argument, it actually legitimises it, reinforces it, and brings it into the mainstream of politics. 

Defeating the arguments of parties like UKIP isn’t simply about keeping them out of power by implementing milder forms of their policies, it’s about getting out and explaining why those policies are damaging and dangerous.  It’s about concepts and ideologies, not just electoral outcomes.  They may well lose the elections, but there’s a danger that they’re winning the battle of ideas, and that their ‘opponents’ are helping them to do so.

Freedom for whom?

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They say that a lie can travel halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on, and the speed of media in the twenty first century is only adding to the truth of that.  The fake story about Nigel Farage moving to the US is still being shared and passed on, despite having been repudiated almost immediately.  It’s just too delicious a story; something that many of us would like to believe because of what it would say about his honesty and consistency.  And it helped that this particular untruth started in the Times, usually regarded as being rather more reliable than the tabloids where many of expect to read untruths - and are rarely disappointed.

It made me think a little bit, though, about the idea of ‘freedom of movement’ and what people mean by it.  The Brexit referendum was won, in part, on the rejection of the idea by the Leave side, but for the suggestion that someone like Farage could, if he wanted, up sticks and move to the USA to have any credibility one has to assume that he would see himself as being free to do so.  And I suspect that he would so see himself.  They’re not quite so opposed to freedom of movement when it comes to themselves.

And that in turn made me wonder what the reaction would be if a lot of American citizens decided that they didn’t like the idea of a Trump presidency and would rather like to emigrate to the UK.  Would they be welcome?  After all, an immigrant is an immigrant wherever he comes from, isn’t he?  And I couldn’t help but conclude that the extent of any welcome might depend on a range of factors.  The most obvious is wealth – wealthy immigrants are always welcomed more than poor ones.  And I rather suspect that ethnic origin and language might play a factor as well.

And that brings me back to what people mean when they refer to freedom of movement and restricting it.  It seems to me that they are, ultimately, in favour of freedom of movement for some but not for others.  Rich, white, English-speaking immigrants are more acceptable than poor, black, non-English speakers.  Freedom of movement is seen as a privilege for the few, not a right for the many.  In the case of the parties which traditionally stand for the privileged few, that shouldn’t surprise us – but Labour’s position has essentially become the same, quibbling only about a few details. 

But what if we ask ourselves who are the people with the greatest need to be able to move elsewhere in order to escape a “nasty, brutish and short” existence?  That would be a rather different demographic.

Playground politics

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A lot of hot air has been expended in recent days about the difference between ‘access to’ and ‘membership of’ the single market, and about the fact that Labour’s AMs ‘voted with the Tories’ in response to a Plaid Cymru-tabled motion.

In general, I’m singularly unimpressed with the various parties’ regular practice of accusing everyone else of ‘voting with X’ on a particular issue.  It always strikes me as being a way of avoiding discussion of the substantive issue by resorting to simplistic insult rather than a way of throwing light on the issue.  In any situation where there is a binary choice of voting for or against a proposition, politicians can only choose one of those options (or, of course, they can abdicate all responsibility, and choose to sit on their hands and abstain).  One would hope that politicians would be mature enough to decide how to vote on the basis of the proposition itself, rather than on the basis of who else might be voting on which side.  Being on the same side as another party in such a binary situation isn’t the same as forming a coalition with that other party, or even agreeing with them on policy – it’s perfectly possible for two parties to oppose any given policy on totally different grounds.  To hear some of them talk, one might think that voting the same way as party X – usually, but not invariably, the Tories – is equivalent to forming a pact with the devil himself.

Returning to the question of ‘access’ or ‘membership’, whilst it could be argued that ‘membership’ is simply a special case of ‘access’ and is therefore included within the broader term, there clearly is an important unresolved question about the nature and extent of access by UK, and therefore Welsh, businesses to the single market post-Brexit.  I agree with the thrust of the Plaid proposal in the Assembly that membership is preferable to any lesser form of access in the interests of economic continuity and stability, but I’m also convinced that full membership without accepting a lot of other rules and regulations, including free movement of people, is an unattainable goal.

The political question is about how we respond to that contradiction.  It’s been depressing to see Labour AMs and MPs lining up to declare that free movement is no longer acceptable because we have to accept and adjust to the ‘legitimate concerns’ that people have about immigration.  What these ‘legitimate concerns’ are is never spelt out; the position of said AMs and MPs looks more like capitulation to a vague and prejudiced xenophobia than a thought-out policy position.  It’s increasingly clear, though, that Labour, like the Tories, is moving to a position of accepting that full membership of the single market is an impossible goal, as a result of the conditions which they themselves are seeking to impose.

Part of the Labour response to Plaid’s motion was to describe it as a motion whose main aim was to be the basis of a press release afterwards.  I think they’re right to say that, but don’t see anything wrong with doing that if the purpose of the press release were to highlight the issue itself and the dangers that we face if we damage our trading position simply in order to secure more control over EU migration.  The bigger problem for me wasn’t using a motion and a press release in that fashion; it was that the publicity which the party sought was more about the playground politics of who voted with whom than with the real and important issue of the economic impact of having to leave the single market as a direct result of demanding controls over migration.

If we are to convince people that arbitrary reductions in migration will be economically damaging, we need to address and debate that question directly and make the link clear, rather than indulge in simplistic point-scoring.  To date, few politicians – in any party – seem willing to do that.

The unimportance of boundaries

Tweet There’s a certain inevitability about the way in which those in the UK who don’t like open borders have responded to the numbers of people travelling across Europe in recent weeks.  Part of it includes scornful references to the Schengen agreement, and they tell us how fortunate it is that the UK never signed up to it.

It’s true, of course, that the retention of border controls by the UK has prevented many people from reaching the UK.  It’s also true that the open border policy of much of Europe means that once people are in the Schengen area, there is no physical means of preventing them travelling as they like within that area.  Such a response within the UK does, though, reinforce the perception elsewhere in Europe that the UK is a member of the EU but not really part of it.  The UK’s anti-EU brigade may claim that they want to return to a ‘common market’, but in truth, they struggle with the concept of a ‘common’ anything.

It also betrays an attitude towards borders which is based on a perception that some borders are right and natural and need to be protected, whereas others do not, and an attitude towards movement by people which regards it as a privilege rather than as a right.  Both of those attitudes are being reinforced on a daily basis.  It’s something that should worry us more than it seems to.

Most of those who demand the continuation of full and rigorous border controls at all points of entry would be outraged at the thought of border controls between England and Scotland or Wales (although, to be fair, some of them strike me as the sort of people who’d really rather like to introduce controls on movement between counties if they thought they could get away with it).  But why?  What is it about the boundaries between states which makes them more sacrosanct than other boundaries?  All boundaries are, ultimately, human constructs.  There’s nothing eternal or inevitable about any of them; and most, if not all, have moved regularly over the centuries.  The idea that they are rigid, natural, and eternal is of fairly recent origin.

Politicians would be doing us a better service if they expended their efforts on working out how to prepare for, and deal with the consequences of, free movement than on using the current problems to restrict that freedom still further.

In whose interests?

Tweet As we’ve seen recently, people-smuggling is not only a criminal act, it can also have tragic consequences when the ‘entrepreneurs’ involved, who have already taken whatever cash they can get from desperate people, decide to abandon their victims to die.  It must be one of the very few crimes, however, where the instinctive reaction of so many politicians is to crack down on the victims.

Events of recent weeks have also exposed the huge difference in perceptions as to what the EU is about between, basically, the UK Government and everyone else.  For one of the countries taking the greatest strain in handling the consequences of migration, Germany, the idea of free movement of people within Europe is close to being an article of faith; for the UK Government, free movement is a privilege for the few, to be allowed only by exception.

I don’t know from where the UK Government got the idea that free movement was only ever intended to apply to people who had already found a job in the country to which people were moving.  Perhaps they simply think that if they repeat that mantra often enough we’ll all believe.  But it isn’t in line with the sort of freedom for citizens to which most of the rest of Europe signed up.  It’s clear that the UK’s idea of Europe is one where freedom of movement applies only to capital, not to people. 

Interestingly, that preoccupation with the interests of capital rather than citizens was precisely one of the fears of those of us who opposed membership in the 1975 referendum, but it turns out that we had less to fear from the other members of the EU than from the UK Government.

Tackling inequality, not immigration

Tweet The 19th-century French radical Alexandre Ledru-Rollin probably never said “There go my people. I must find out where they are going, so that I can lead them”.  Many of the best quotes turn out to be less than entirely accurate.  But that doesn’t reduce their value – and in the case of this one it seems a good description of the approach of many contemporary politicians.  The question is not what they believe (even they seem not to know that) but what they think they have to say to get elected.  And in pursuit of that utterly unprincipled aim many of them are prepared to do and say almost anything.

It’s hard to think of a single political issue which better illustrates the point than immigration.  Politicians seem to be falling over themselves to demonstrate that they will be tougher on immigration.  Are they doing it because they believe is right?  I doubt it; it’s more a case of following opinion than of leading at.  But the net effect is to reinforce rather than challenge prejudice.

All of the discussion around immigration seems to start from the perspective that migration is, or should be, a privilege granted only to a few.  And the competition between parties and politicians is about who can keep that number the lowest and set the highest bar for qualification for that privilege.  But what would happen if we stand the principle on its head?  Why not start from the perspective that freedom of movement and residence is not a privilege for a few, but a right for all?  On that basis the the question becomes not to whom the privilege should be granted – which is all the UK’s parties seem able to discuss - but from whom the freedom should be withheld, and on what basis.

There’s a danger of oversimplifying the reasons for migration.  Of course people have different reasons for seeking to move from one country to another, and I wouldn’t want to understate the impact of conflict and famine for instance.  But the one single cause which has the greatest influence on the movement of people is economic inequality; in essence people believe that they can have a better life, a better quality of life, in a country other than their native country.  And responding to that by raising barriers is not only managing the symptoms rather than the cause, it’s also an attempt to embed and perpetuate inequality rather than reduce it.

Freedom of movement as a starting point is hardly populist, although it strikes me that there are plenty of people who, when pressed, believe that they should be free to move and that it’s only other people’s freedom which should be restricted.  But being popular isn’t the same as being honest or principled, and prejudiced opinion can only be changed by challenging it, not by pandering to it.

We live in a world of finite resources.  The world’s population is growing and that population aspires to the living standards of the richest.  There are two possible policy responses to this – the first is to accept that resources need to be shared more fairly, and the second is to create fortresses to protect the haves from the have nots.  Much of the debate about immigration owes more to that second policy position than the first.  But only the first is tenable in the long term.  It is delusional to believe that current levels of inequality can be sustained for the indefinite future, and even more so to believe that it can be sustained by building barriers.