Imagine for a moment
a different world in which the UK managed to solve its endemic problems. It’s
vanishingly unlikely, of course. As long as governments of whatever hue insist
that the constraints on what they can do are a lack of money and the need to
abide by a set of fiscal rules which they themselves have devised, rather than the
availability of physical resources and the concentration of wealth in fewer and
fewer hands, there is no real prospect of meaningful change.
But, for the sake of
argument, bear with me for a moment. Suppose we could get to a situation where the
NHS could provide the help that people need, when they need it, with negligible
waiting lists; suppose that we had an educational system which produced
consistently good results and was the envy of much of the world; suppose that everyone
had adequate housing suitable to meet their needs. Suppose also that we had ‘full’
employment: in realistic terms, everyone of working age who was able to work
could get a decently-paid job that they wanted to do; suppose that that
included not just UK citizens, but also those who had come here from elsewhere;
and suppose that all those who arrived from elsewhere spoke impeccable English
(or Welsh, of course). In such an ideal world, do we believe that Farage,
Badenoch, Starmer, Mahmoud etc. would stop banging on about the need to block
migration and remove some or all of those already here?
Sadly, I don’t think
it would change their position one iota. There are those who argue that they
simply hate migrants per se – I don’t believe that they do. I suspect, rather
more cynically, that they believe that a sufficient proportion of the
electorate hate migrants so much that there are large numbers of votes to be
had by being seen to be tough on migration. It’s not that the politicians
themselves are racists or xenophobes, they’re simply willing to appeal to
voters who are in order to win elections.
Whether their faith
in the innate prejudices of a significant part of the electorate is justified
or not is an unknown. For the reasons outlined at the beginning, it’s not a
theory which is ever likely to be tested. And for as long as UK governments
refuse to fix the problems which they can then blame on migrants, they will get
away with pretending that anti-migrant feelings are based on what they choose
to call ‘legitimate concerns’ rather than on prejudice and racism, and claim
that expelling people rather then improving conditions is the way to solve
those problems. Actually, it’s worse than that. By refusing to address the
underlying problems and concentrating instead on deporting people, they
reinforce the idea that migration is the source of the problems; in other words, the
Reeves/Starmer fiscal rules reinforce
the narrative about migration. Their ideological blinkers are directly aiding
the Farages of this world.
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