What makes concerns 'legitimate'?

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The ‘independence’ referendum held in Piddington earlier this week has largely been treated as a bit of a joke and dismissed as symbolic rather than serious. Treating it as symbolic is not unreasonable – those behind it don’t really seem to be terribly serious about setting up border crossing points, let alone a police force and/or army to repel any asylum-seekers that might be sent to the area by the UK government. I’m a little puzzled about the mechanism under which the referendum was run – it surely can’t have been in any way publicly-funded, not least because a parish council running a publicly-funded referendum on an issue way outside its purview would be an interesting precedent. I doubt, though, that even a referendum run entirely by volunteers would be treated quite so indulgently if it were called by, to choose a body at random, one of the UK’s devolved parliaments.

It has had the effect that its instigators presumably wanted, which was to draw attention to local concerns about the plans to use a nearby MoD base as a temporary home for asylum-seekers. I’m not sure that it has shown the opponents of the plan in an entirely positive light, however.

There are certainly practical issues around moving 1200 people into a site: things like availability of public transport, shops, medical facilities etc. There will be issues of that nature wherever people are placed, and it’s entirely reasonable to check that they’ve been thought about and that provision is being made to match the need. And at least some of those objecting do seem to be talking about this type of issue. Others, sadly, less so.

Talk of women needing to attend self-defence classes, for instance, is based on some very dark – and unsubstantiated – assumptions about a whole group of people. Associated with that is the suggestion that these people are ‘unvetted’. It’s true, as far as it goes – but how many of the existing local residents have been ‘vetted’? We don’t really know our neighbours and the secrets they might be harbouring, even if we’ve lived in an area for decades, but we can be certain that, amongst them – even in a small village – there will be a sprinkling of actual or potential criminals. It’s true that we know even less about people moving in, but that’s true whether it’s an individual, a family, or a thousand people as proposed in the Piddington area. When it comes to people moving between villages and cities, no-one seriously suggests that all movement should be banned in order to prevent the movement of anyone who might turn out to be a criminal. In terms of sheer numbers, there are likely to be more potential criminals in a group of 1,000 than in a family of 4, but there is no hard evidence that the proportion will be any higher than amongst the existing population. All we have is an assumption, based on the assertions of racists and their enablers, that asylum-seekers always pose a greater threat than white British citizens.

We need a reasoned debate about how to treat people arriving in the UK by irregular means and where to house them pending any decisions on their longer-term future, but politicians leaping in to support people’s ‘legitimate’ concerns isn’t it. The only thing that makes those some of concerns legitimate is politicians describing them as such. Whilst facts and logic are never going to win an argument against prejudice and hatred of ‘the other’, reinforcing those attitudes by calling them ‘legitimate’ simply makes things worse.

Spotting the obvious isn't always easy

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One of Andy Burnham’s acolytes told us this week that people who are migrating to London from elsewhere in the UK are causing problems in London, and that Burnham’s policy of directing investment into all parts of the UK rather than concentrating it all in London would help to discourage such migration. It’s impossible to disagree with the proposition: if lack of opportunity in one area of the UK encourages migration to the wealthiest area, then the best ‘solution’ to the perceived ‘problem’ is to invest in creating opportunities elsewhere. I think we can reasonably assume that the relevant ‘elsewhere’ includes Wales and Scotland as well as the north of England, although that isn’t always clear when London-based politicians are talking. No doubt some conspiracy theorists will see the suggestion as being an example of the way governments are trying to restrict our movement, but the basic proposition – widening the geographic range of opportunity – is surely sound.

But, hold on a moment – there’s also a glaring inconsistency in that policy. When people from poorer parts of the world see the riches of the UK (and even the poorest parts of the UK will look rich to many) and seek to migrate to benefit from those riches, Labour and Tory alike tell us that the ‘solution’ is to cut the economic aid which might help to develop opportunities in their home countries, and divert the money to providing the migrants with temporary accommodation before deporting them. It’s strange how they find that which is blindingly obvious in one context so hard to discern in another.

Judge them by thir actions, not their words

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The Home Secretary has announced that because people from certain countries who come to the UK as students are more likely than those from other countries to then apply for asylum, she will ban anyone from those countries coming to the UK on a student visa. She could just as easily – and just as truthfully – have said that students coming from a country where there is conflict are more likely to apply for asylum than those from countries where there is no conflict. Who’d have thought it? It’s almost as though people coming from places where they have genuine reasons to seek asylum might be more likely to seek asylum.

Treating people on the basis of being able to place them in a certain category rather than looking at them as individuals is always going to be problematic. I’m pretty certain that people with dark skin coming to the UK on student visas are more likely to apply for asylum than people with fair skin, although I’ll admit that I don’t have hard evidence to back that up, other than the entirely coincidental fact that it is true of all the countries she has selected. If the Home Secretary banned all those of a darker hue from applying for student visas, she would be more roundly condemned than she has been. Her announcement yesterday was not as overtly racist as that would be, even if the effect might end up indirectly discriminating on race. It is, though, much the same thing – treating people on the basis of a collective attribute rather than their individual circumstances.

It is essentially a lazy response to a complex issue. “Some of that group might apply for asylum, so we’ll ban all of them from studying here” might attract a positive headline from the right wing media, but it doesn’t reflect any sense of fairness or compassion. Insofar as I understand ‘traditional British values’, it’s also deeply un-British. But then again, I’ve long stopped trying to understand those values in terms of what people say they are – actions tell an entirely different story.

What happens to migrants' property?

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If Nigel Farage were ever to become UK Prime Minister and implement his policy of reversing the residency rights of just about anyone who had migrated to the UK in the past, what would happen to any assets which those migrants had accumulated? I mean, just supposing for a minute that you were a French politician who had found £885,000 down the back of the sofa to buy a house so that your boyfriend could claim to live somewhere that he rarely visited, what would happen to the house if you were forced to return to France so that your boyfriend could implement a wild promise he had made whilst campaigning?

Maybe Farage’s policy has some unstated loopholes, such as excluding French people in possession of valuable homes, although nothing he’s said so far implies any great willingness to make exceptions; he’s even ready to split families as part of his plan, so getting married and having kids doesn't work either. Maybe the assets of those expelled would simply pass to any convenient partner who was allowed to remain. That would make it quite a cunning plan – Farage would end up with a house in his constituency after all, and (unless he was the one who happened to lose £885,000 down the back of the sofa) he’d have got it for nothing.

Starmer and Reeves are feeding Farageism

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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.

Reinforcing migrant blame only keeps us on the same trajectory

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As something of a parting shot yesterday, Trump told Starmer that immigration “destroys countries from within”, and advised him to deploy the military to stop migration. How that would work isn’t clear, but perhaps he means a few extra-judicial killings of the sort which he is implementing himself. Trumpland tends to see absolute destruction on all sides – his response to an unfavourable court ruling on his imposition of tariffs was to suggest that the court’s decision “would literally destroy the United States of America” as well. The threat of ‘absolute destruction’ is key to his regular invocation of an emergency of one sort or another. It’s hyperbole of course: a good general rule of thumb is that any sentence containing the word ‘literally’ is probably going to be more hyperbole than fact. Even when it isn’t from Trump.

I can’t think of any actual historical example which would lend support to the idea that immigration destroys countries; on the contrary, immigration has made many countries what they are today, with the US being perhaps the most obvious example. What immigration can do, however, is change the culture of a country, sometimes in small ways, and sometimes – especially when the ruling elite are drawn entirely from the immigrant population – much more drastically. Once again, the US stands out as a particular example of cultural replacement as Europeans marginalised, and at times massacred, the former population. The world’s greatest exponents of cultural replacement have been the European colonial powers, foremost amongst them Spain, England and France, but with dishonourable mentions for Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy as well. And here in Wales, we are not exactly unfamiliar with the idea of cultural replacement either, albeit as victim more than perpetrator.

Does the current level of immigration – either into the US or the UK – really threaten that sort of cultural change? There’s no evidence to suggest that it does. Unlike a true invasion where the ruling group is replaced, attracting migrants into the general population really doesn’t have that much impact. Historical evidence says that, after two or three generations, the descendants of immigrants tend to absorb the majority culture more often than challenging or changing it. The economic impact of migration is disputed; most objective studies suggest that it has a net positive effect overall, but for those who are not being well-served by the economy at present, immigration is a convenient scapegoat. Especially when exaggerated by those who seek to use people’s fears and prejudices as a route to power. One of the main elements of those prejudices – we cannot avoid this truth – is a form of racism; not always based on skin colour, although that’s certainly a factor, but often on a fear or dislike of anyone seen to be ‘different’.

I seriously doubt whether the likes of Trump or Farage (or Starmer or Badenoch come to that) really care very much about immigration at all. Playing to perceived prejudices is just a route to power, and dividing those over whom they seek power is a bonus. The result is that, rather than challenging or changing those prejudices, they reinforce them. Those who seek to rebut the arguments generally highlight facts and statistics, but it’s an approach doomed to fail. People will not be swayed by facts and statistics from a view which was never based on facts or statistics in the first place. There is a certain inevitability about the destination if we stay on the current trajectory. A standard piece of advice to writers is ‘show, don’t tell’, and a good starting place for governing politicians would be to create and then demonstrate economic success for all rather than verbally reinforcing blame. I’m not holding my breath.

Upping the stakes

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President Trump has been widely (and justifiably) mocked for his promise to reduce the price of medicines in the US by up to 1,500%. It’s an illustration of his somewhat shaky grasp of elementary mathematics, although I suppose it helps to explain how he managed to bankrupt casinos. By and large, UK politicians have not shown themselves to be quite so mathematically challenged as Trump, and the argument about the extent to which immigration should be allowed has largely stayed on the positive side of zero. Until last week.

Robert Jenrick has now attempted to trump Labour, Reform and his own party by calling for a ten year period in which net migration to the UK should be negative. It’s a reduction of more than 100% in the level of immigration, even if it’s not yet quite in the Trumpian league of 1,500%. Give him time. But given what we know about the falling birth rate, he is effectively demanding that the population of the UK should be cut as a deliberate act of government policy. To say that it puts him somewhat outside the normal range of political consensus is an understatement: other politicians (including both Farage and Badenoch) have recently been calling for measures to increase the birth rate to tackle the potential problems associated with a declining population (even though that rather ignores the fact that using an increased birthrate to fill gaps in the UK economy has a rather lengthy lead time). But being outside the consensus is probably what he’s after.

The consequences of a falling population would be significant, not least because those being driven, or encouraged, to leave are likely to be of working age and therefore making a positive contribution to the productive economy. Unless, of course, he wants to offer incentives – which an increasing number of us might even be willing to consider, with madmen like Jenrick and Farage in danger of leading a government – for UK pensioners to emigrate. I suspect not, however: something tells me that predominantly white UK-born people aren’t the ones he wants to get rid of. He hasn’t yet offered a solution to that economic conundrum, and probably won’t. Not only because there isn’t a simple one, but also because spelling out the consequences might somewhat undermine the blatant appeal to prejudice.

It would also be seriously at odds with the rest of his political philosophy. Actually, a reduced population would not, in itself, be an entirely bad thing, ignoring for a moment that merely moving people from one country to another doesn’t exactly achieve an overall reduction. It would reduce the demand for finite resources which is hardly a poor idea, but it would also require a significant rethink in the way the economy works to ensure that economic benefits are shared more equally rather than being increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. That, or force an increasing proportion of the population into poverty, which is not an obvious election-winning strategy, particularly if the deliberately-impoverished come from the voting demographic being wooed by his rhetoric. As they inevitably would. We shall have to see who will attempt to out-compete him, by assigning a hard number to the target for exporting residents in a government-sponsored people trafficking scheme. The way things are going, I wouldn’t put it past Labour to open the bidding.

Papers, please?

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There are some advantages to the idea of issuing ID cards to all, but unsurprisingly they’re not necessarily the ones which advocates use, nor are they as easily implemented as those advocates have suggested. The sort of electronic ID which is being mooted could make it easier for citizens to access government services, depending on how it is implemented. They could make it easier to prove identity when seeking credit, or buying age-restricted products. They also have some potential advantages in policing, although that only works if people are obliged to carry them. It is precisely that potential obligation to carry them which raises concerns for many, as well as carrying echoes of an unpleasant past. There’s a practical obstacle as well: whilst most of us do have smartphones these days, not everyone does, and even those who do don’t always feel it essential to carry them at all times.

One of the more novel reasons suggested this week for implementing ID cards is that it would allegedly help to reduce the ‘pull factor’ of the UK economy, which means that the UK apparently attracts migrants because they find it easy to get work in the black economy. To say that I’m unconvinced about the logic of that would be an understatement. If people are able to get work in the black economy without a NI number and without paying PAYE, then what exactly is the mechanism by which the need to have electronic ID changes that? An employer prepared to take on a member of staff without that person demonstrating the right to work in the UK is no more likely to demand to see an ID, whether physical or electronic, than (s)he is to demand a NI number. It’s called the black economy for a reason.

I’m not a huge fan of the idea of ‘British values’, largely because I’ve never seen a clear definition of them which is anything like uniquely British nor which comes close to matching the observed values of those who claim to espouse them. But given that they are supposed to be a thing, to the extent that I understand what that thing is there’s something very un-British about any move towards a ‘Papers, please!’ type of society. And there’s something very dishonest (another breach of those same values?) about a claim that doing so will reduce migration. Authoritarians always want more control over citizens, and this looks like another attempt to get that, using whatever short-term crowd-pleasing argument comes to hand.

Men of fighting age

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Those who would stir up anti-migrant feelings have recently taken to describing migrants being accommodated in hotels as ‘men of fighting age’. There’s no universally-accepted definition of ‘fighting age’, but broadly speaking most of us would probably think in terms of 18-45 year olds. I haven’t seen any definitive statistics on the question, but it is probably not unreasonable to assume that many of those arriving (in small boats, in particular) do indeed fit that demographic. The objective of using the term is clearly to encourage fear of the asylum-seekers.

There are some very obvious reasons why the demographic would be slanted in that way, however, and they’re nothing to do with a desire to terrorise the local population. It is precisely the demographic likely to be targeted by the regimes they are fleeing – whether as potential dissenters or even as potential soldiers. There is also a natural human resistance to risking the lives of families with children; and if a family wants to flee, who better to send as the ’advance party’ than those perceived as being most likely to be able to establish themselves in the new country.

That leads us to the corollary of the ‘fighting men’ trope: that same group are also the most likely to be capable of adding to the productive economy and the least likely – at least until any other family members arrive – to be adding to demand on services such as health, education and benefits. Allowed to work, even if only temporarily whilst their asylum claims are processed, they would actually add to, rather than subtract from, the economic health of the UK. Referring to them, more accurately and usefully, as ‘men at their peak productive age’ would, of course, have little effect on those determined to demonise them, but then those who reach their political position on the basis of prejudices and priors are never going to be swayed by mere facts anyway. It might, though, help to encourage a more reasonable debate amongst those to whom facts continue to have some salience.

Running out of excuses

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Despite what Marx said about tragedy and farce, history never really repeats itself. There are historical parallels, of course, but different groups of people in different contexts never fully replicate the responses of other groups in past times. Marx also asserted that human nature is not something fixed and unchanging (an assumption at the root of much conservative thought) but something which is continually changing and developing, arising more from social and economic relationships than from an innate characteristic. But when those relationships barely change over a long period human nature can appear to be more permanent.

Where the capacity for cruelty fits is open to debate. Those of us who hope for a better world cling to the idea that it isn’t an essential part of us, just waiting to be invoked, but that hope is sometimes challenged. We know from the history of Europe during the first half of the twentieth century just how easy it is for ordinary citizens, given a uniform, weapons and legal authority, to apply their cruelty against the vulnerable and weak – and not even just to ‘follow orders’, but to go beyond and add their own twists when dealing with people who they no longer see as human. The Milgram experiment showed us how easy it is to get randomly selected people to inflict pain on others when told to do so by someone in authority.

Some of the stories coming out of the US seem to indicate that little has changed. Random arrests and detentions – even of firefighters in the middle of dealing with a blaze – are becoming the Trumpian norm; and ‘disappearing’ people and moving them across the country whilst depriving them of adequate food, water and hygiene seem to be widely accepted, with far too many US citizens seemingly welcoming what is happening.

Here in the UK, we had Farage this week proposing to round up and detain at least 600,000 people in camps before deporting them to anywhere which will take them, regardless of their potential fate when they arrive. That is close to 1% of the UK’s population – one in every hundred people, and even if (after a bit of back-tracking) women and children will be ‘dealt with’ later in the programme, he’s been quite clear that they’re not exempt. There can be few of us who don’t know 100 people; even if the proportion of migrants in Wales is lower than it is in the big cities of England, many of us will know at least one person on Farage’s list, even if we don't realise it. They say it will be a ‘targeted’ program, but as we’ve seen in the US, when the target for the number removed becomes the main driver, discriminating between those here illegally and others becomes a luxury, not a necessity, and he’s already made it quite clear that there will be no right of appeal, and no right to any due process before removal.

With the immediate reaction from the Tory leader having been to try and be even harder than Farage by not excluding women and children from her immediate action plans, and Sir Starmer’s lot apparently being more concerned about whether the ‘solution’ is workable than whether it is moral, there is little room for any optimism that the ‘main’ parties will show any leadership. When deliberate cruelty stalked the European mainland nearly a century ago, news of what was happening wasn’t always readily available – people had the excuse of ‘not really knowing’. We’re no longer in that age – news spreads instantly and widely, and even if some of the stories might turn out to be exaggerations, the general drift of what is happening, and the truth of many of the specifics, is clear. What’s our excuse this time?

Legitimising tyrants and wannnabes

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In talking about what concessions should be made to Putin, some commentators have referred to the need to address his ‘legitimate fears’. But what makes a fear ‘legitimate’? I can understand why Putin might not like the idea of a successful democracy – or even semi-democracy – on his doorstep; I can understand why he might not want another Nato member on his border; I can even understand why he might not be happy about Ukraine becoming part of the EU economic bloc, but what turns these aspirations and wishes into ‘legitimate’ concerns? Ukraine posed him no threat, and the ‘fears’ seem to have been more of an excuse to indulge his fantasy about recreating the Russian Empire than about being afraid of anything. We, and especially Ukraine, have no choice but to deal with him because of his military power and willingness to use it, but that doesn’t endow his wishes with one iota of legitimacy, and our use of language shouldn’t do so either. Recognising the reality of raw power and ruthlessness isn’t at all the same thing as agreeing that there is any justification for it.

Something similar applies, in a very different context and on a wholly different scale, to the ‘legitimate’ concerns of those opposing all migration. What, exactly, is the difference between blatant xenophobia and paranoia on the one hand, and ‘legitimate’ concerns on the other? And when and how does the one morph into the other? The distinction is not at all clear to me, but politicians are increasingly falling into the habit of using the word ‘legitimate’ to describe the motivations of those opposing migration, as if they are afraid to confront the much darker motives driving many of those opponents. Actually, I think that I can answer my own question: what legitimises fears or concerns is using the word legitimate to describe them. The language we use is important. Those referring to Putin’s fears as legitimate strengthen his hand, just as those who refer to legitimate concerns about migration strengthen the hand of the Farages of this world. Whether we’re dealing with the actual real world authoritarian in the Kremlin, or the wannabe authoritarian of Reform, legitimising part of what they say doesn’t make it easier to debate the matter rationally, it merely encourages them to bank the win, and expand their demands.

There’s nothing ‘legitimate’ about invading a neighbouring country or about spreading deliberate untruths to whip up hatred of migrants and foreigners. Suggesting that there is merely facilitates them.

Save the alligators!

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Americans have a saying that when you’re up to your waist (although they generally refer to a similarly-located part of the anatomy) in alligators, it’s difficult to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp. In less expressive language, sometimes, even if people start a project with a clear objective, the practical difficulties encountered along the way can assume such a significance that the aim becomes more of a distant aspiration: killing alligators becomes an end in itself.

To the surprise of no-one except the current and previous governments, reducing net immigration (assuming one thinks that to be a problem in the first place), turns out to be rather more complex than their rhetoric has ever suggested. ‘Stopping the boats’ is really just one – and not a particularly large one at that, in the scheme of things – element of the problem. Short of starting a war with France by forcibly landing people back on French beaches, deliberately killing the occupants of the boats, or simply ignoring international commitments and regulations such as the law of the seas, there isn’t actually any way of stopping the boats at all. Once they enter UK territorial waters, the UK government has a legal obligation to ensure the safety of the occupants, and prior to that point, the French government has a similar responsibility.

Sir Warmonger’s latest wheeze to address the issue is to make an agreement with France for a ‘one in, one out’ policy, initially capped at a maximum of 50 each way per week. The mathematically competent (a category which obviously excludes government ministers) will immediately note two things about this proposal. The first is that minus one plus one nets out to nil; the proposal would reduce the total net migration into the UK by precisely zero. And the second is that 2600 a year is around 6% of the total number making the crossing; a proposal to swap 6% of those making the journey for a different 6% is supposed to deter the other 94% from even trying, presumably by encouraging them to wait to see if they can get into the select 6% who will be allowed a safe crossing. Clearly, the PM hopes that those members of the electorate salivating over the prospect of deporting people in chains are as mathematically challenged as himself.

Interestingly, one of the main arguments put forward by those who think that the use of force, detention, and deterrence to stop people crossing is the wrong approach has been that a better alternative is to allow safe crossing and perform a proper assessment of asylum claims before deciding whether or not to deport. The proposal looks a lot like doing exactly that, except on such a small scale as to make no difference. It’s all a form of scope creep in reverse. Reduce net migration becomes stop the boats becomes stop some of the boats becomes swap some of those arriving by boat for some others who didn’t get in a boat. Then, it can be declared to be a huge success. Just about the only certainty is that absolutely no alligators get killed in the process. I suppose the animal rights lobby might be pleased about that, even if the alligators were only ever an allusion.

Colonialism doesn't always involve invasion or conquest

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Sir Starmer’s speech on immigration earlier this week had obvious echoes of the words of Enoch Powell more than half a century ago, and repeated attempts to pretend that there is no similarity between the words used by the two men look like simply digging an already big hole a bit deeper. I accept that it was almost certainly unintentional. Starmer would have been about 6 in 1968 when Powell delivered his infamous speech, and the coterie of advisers and speech writers around him probably even younger. Lack of a direct memory of Powell’s speech – or even of the man himself – is understandable, even if it demonstrates a certain lack of knowledge of political history. The bigger problem isn’t about whether he was or was not aping an odious politician of the past, deliberately or otherwise – it’s about the extent to which what looked like extreme views in 1968 have become part of the political mainstream, not just for Reform Ltd but also for the Tories and even Labour. Starmer’s words would have been anathema to Wilson and the Labour Party back then, yet their modern-day counterparts are falling over themselves to justify and amplify them.

There is another unpleasant aspect to the words used by UK parties when referring to migrants, which is that it sees them largely in terms of their value (or cost) to the UK economy. So, low-paid (which isn’t the same as low-skilled, although one would be hard-pressed to glean that from Starmer’s words) bad, high-paid good. Rarely do any of our politicians seem to see migrants or would-be migrants as human beings with aspirations and needs. There’s also an interesting paradox in the fact that the low-paid are doing work for which it is proving difficult to recruit UK labour, whilst at least some of the higher-paid jobs are easier to fill locally. Who is ‘stealing’ whose jobs? Whether the higher-paid jobs can or cannot be filled locally, and whilst bearing in mind the caveat that high-paid isn’t always the same as high-skilled, attracting what are seen as being the ‘brightest and best’ from elsewhere has an inevitable knock-on effect on the society and economy of those countries losing those people to the UK. It’s a modern form of colonialism.

Even amongst those brave souls in the Labour Party who are speaking out against the proposed changes, there is a degree of objectification of the people involved. Take the words of a former adviser to Mark Drakeford, quoted here: “To have a sustainable indigenous population requires a fertility rate 2.1. The UK rate is 1.4. This means our indigenous population is shrinking and aging and we are completely dependent on immigrants to remain a viable country”. What could be more neo-colonialist than outsourcing the responsibility for maintaining population levels (even supposing that to be a good thing anyway, but that’s a subject for another day)? And where is the consideration of the impact on those other countries of losing the people of an age group likely to be child-bearing? Moving a perceived problem elsewhere doesn’t ‘solve’ it.

Migration is a complex issue which involves real people living real lives. Reducing it to a cost-benefit analysis, and treating migrants as units of economic production is dehumanising. But it’s what we get when politicians decide that playing to prejudice is more likely to win them votes than attempting to conduct a serious conversation around the issue. Starmer is part of the problem, and what he has to offer is no solution.

What about the responsibility of the individuals?

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In the latest example of deliberate lawlessness, it seems that the Trump administration has wilfully ignored a judge’s order to turn back flights carrying deportees to El Salvador, even to the extent that another flight took off after the judge had issued his ruling. The legal arguments about written vs verbal orders and the limits of judicial competence, to say nothing of the use of wartime powers in peacetime, will continue to play out in the US courts. Those of us without legal expertise are not well-placed to forecast the eventual outcome, although Trump’s record of losing court cases is impressive. The actions of his administration are unusual, in that the normal response to a court ruling in any country where the rule of law is held to be important is to obey the ruling whilst appealing it, rather than make up excuses to ignore it.

In an unrelated incident last week, Musk posted an ill-conceived tweet in which he argued that Hitler, Stalin and Mao killed no-one – the killings were all carried out by public servants. It appears to have been some sort of attempt to justify mass sackings of civil servants, although ‘insensitive’ is a wholly inadequate word to describe that. Technically, however, Musk was correct – the physical killings were carried out by those given the orders rather than by those issuing the orders. The Nuremberg trials fairly comprehensively demolished the argument that ‘only following orders’ was an acceptable excuse, and found that those executing the orders also bore individual responsibility for their actions.

That brings me back to those deportation flights. The orders may have come from the White House, but the actual deportations were carried out by individual public officials and law enforcement officers. Maybe the pilots and airport staff who facilitated the flights also bear some responsibility. They are, of course, effectively immune from prosecution whilst His Orangeness reigns in the White House, but such immunity may not live for long after that. Perhaps they assume – as Trump increasingly seems to be doing – that the regime will never come to an end: cancelling elections starts to look like a mere misdemeanour rather than a felony after his actions so far. But I do wonder how much thought they’ve given to the potential consequences of their own actions should democracy and the rule of law ever be restored in the US. But then, I suppose that another lesson from Nuremberg was about how easy it is for ordinary people to get caught up in a belief that what they are doing is normal. And with Labour's continuing assault on the most vulnerable in society, it might not only be the US forgetting that particular lesson.

Sometimes a small dose doesn't inoculate, it increases the desire

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When it comes to traditional vaccines, the science of giving people a small dose, a dose of a milder version, or a dead sample of the pathogen in order to promote the formation of antibodies and thus protect the individuals is well-established. And whatever some of the anti-vaxxers of this world might say, the evidence is that it overwhelmingly works, with complications and harm from the vaccine being extremely rare occurrences.

It's a category error, however, to seek to apply the same principle in the world of politics, and it’s a category error which the current Starmer government is making with great enthusiasm. Feeling threatened by the potential public support for Reform’s desire for mass deportations and ever more heartless treatment of the most desperate, they seem to believe that releasing selective footage of a tiny number of individuals being shackled and escorted onto planes for deportation will somehow defeat the toxin offered by Farage and his crew. But for those who want mass deportations, action against a tiny number doesn’t protect against the desire for more, it inflames it. ‘If they can do it for a few, why not for millions’ is a more likely reaction than ‘who needs Reform when Labour are doing the same thing’.

It shouldn’t take more than a moment’s reflection to work out that legitimising the process on a small scale will only encourage those who want to implement it on a large scale to ask themselves whether, if the approach is acceptable, they shouldn’t just vote for people who actually want to do much more of it rather than someone who believes that doing a little will be enough to buy their votes. Maybe there really will be some who will conclude that, if they can get Labour to implement Reform’s policies, then they don’t need to vote for Reform at all. But implementing Reform’s policies to stop Reform from gaining power to implement its policies doesn’t look like the smartest of moves. And whether that’s where Labour should be looking for votes is a matter on which people may have different opinions. To the extent that there are still some half-decent members and supporters of the Labour Party, it might lose them more than it gains them, but these are all calculations which Labour has presumably attempted to carry out in its attempts to stave off the surge towards Reform.

That, perhaps, is the greatest condemnation of all for Labour’s approach. Gaining and retaining power by implementing whatever policies seem most likely to achieve that has elevated that aim to be the be all and end all of their approach to politics. For a party founded on noble principles it’s reaching for the absolute nadir.

Keeping 'them' at arms length is deliberate policy

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It turns out that Starmer’s much-vaunted ‘reset’ with the EU amounts to little more than changing the colour of the icing on the imaginary cake. Just like his predecessors, he believes that the UK is so important to everyone that it can have the advantages of membership of the EU without having to abide by the same rules, or make any concessions in return. Little Englander cakeism is alive and well in the English Labour Party; it’s just a little more polite and diplomatic in its language.

One of the issues surrounds the idea of some sort of youth mobility scheme, under which young people from the UK and young people from the EU would be given the right, for a limited period of time, to travel to each other’s countries and experience a little of life there. Getting to know and understand each other better is one of the aims of the whole European project, which began in the aftermath of a war in which a lack of common understanding led to millions of deaths. Youth mobility is one of those things which, taken in isolation, many would consider entirely unobjectionable. Not so the Home Secretary, who sees it as allowing ‘migration’ and is strongly opposing it in cabinet, even if the consequence is a lack of movement on the PM’s stated objective of smoothing trade between the EU and the UK. Given that it’s a mutual scheme – traffic is supposed to be two ways – what is the objection to such a reasonable proposal?

The Home Secretary clearly believes that there would be a large difference between the numbers coming here from the EU and the numbers travelling from the UK to the EU, which would show in the statistics as an increase in net migration. There are two reasons why she might be right.

The first is language. Whilst proficiency in two or more languages is common in most of Europe, with English being the second language of choice in most cases, modern foreign language teaching has largely been gutted in the UK. Other Europeans find it easier to adapt to the UK than young people from the UK do in the rest of Europe. That makes the UK a destination of choice for young Europeans (and, of course, part of the reason that the EU is pushing the idea so hard).

The second is to do with class and affluence. In the UK, the desire to allow young people to broaden their experiences and learn about other peoples and cultures is largely a middle-class obsession. Look at who supports it – the liberal and middle class elites. It just doesn’t have the same resonance and attraction for young working class people in the so-called ‘red wall’ or post-industrial areas. It’s not something that they see as relevant to them. The political opposition comes overwhelmingly from the Little Englanders who very much want those young people not to mingle with foreigners in case they do find a commonality of interest and understanding. And it’s that political opposition which is the real obstacle.

The fact that the Home Secretary might be right about the imbalance in numbers is not, however, a reason for simply dismissing the idea completely. The language problem could be overcome, in time, by investing more in the teaching of European languages, and the problem of relevance only to middle-class children could be overcome by a system of grants, scholarships, and encouragement for those not following a more academic path in life. But both of those things require political will and a consistent policy over many years; and that is the problem. If your political strategy depends on stoking hatred and fear of difference, to say nothing of an inherent belief in your own group’s natural superiority, the last thing you want is to encourage any mingling with ‘them’.

Sadly, such Little Englandism isn’t confined to the ranks of Reform and the Tories; it seems to have found a very comfortable home in the Labour Party as well. Worse, within the UK it isn’t even wholly confined to England either. In Wales, however, we do have a route to escape it if we choose. It wouldn’t take long for an independent Wales to understand that our longer term interests have more in common with those of a number of other small nations and regions on the mainland than with our large neighbour, stuck as it is in a distorted dream of past glory.

Economic migration is neither new nor unique

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For generation after generation, Wales has lost people, particularly young people, who have left to seek a better future elsewhere. The immediate cause is well-understood: a lack of opportunity here, coupled with greater opportunity elsewhere. Within the UK, it’s not a phenomenon unique to Wales of course; Scotland and much of England outside the south-east corner have suffered the same fate. The wider reasons for that economic imbalance are well-understood as well: a centralised state which concentrates power, wealth and talent in the centre by sucking it in from the peripheries. The extractive and exploitative nature of the Welsh economy is easily seen by looking at transport links – the best ones overwhelmingly run from west to east rather than north to south, historically facilitating the extraction of mineral and other wealth.

The fact that Wales has not been an independent country during that time, and the consequent lack of a recognised international border obscures the basic fact: most of those who left Wales were (and are) what are today called, usually pejoratively, economic migrants. People who live in an area denuded of much of its wealth by far-away rulers migrate in search of a share of what was originally theirs anyway. We’re not good at recognising it, but it is the same imperative which drives many of the migrants reaching these shores currently. Coming from countries which were systematically exploited and robbed by their colonialists, they travel to where the wealth now resides in search of opportunity. And it should be no surprise that the country of choice for many of them will be the one which colonised them, and whose language was imposed upon them. So, for example, Algerians tend to favour France and those from the former British Empire tend to favour the UK.

If anyone should be able to understand and empathise with economic migrants, it is us here in Wales. But by and large, many amongst us don’t. Perhaps it’s due to a lack of understanding of our own history, coupled with an acceptance of the version of history with which we are fed. But the bottom line is that, whilst many in Wales blame the exploiters for the loss of those who leave, they blame the individuals for the new arrivals. In truth, our interests have more in common. If it’s an unfair distribution of wealth which drives economic migration, it is a fairer distribution which will reduce it. It’s no accident that, in the UK as in the US, anti-immigrant sentiment is being driven and funded by some of the richest political donors. We only have to ask ourselves who might feel most threatened by any suggestion of a fairer distribution of wealth, whether within a state or more globally, to understand why.

Labour ministers encourage hostility to migrants

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Ministers in the Labour government have rightly condemned those who have been whipping up hatred against migrants in general and refugees and asylum-seekers in particular, especially on social media, but they seem to be completely blind to the effect that their own words and deeds are having. Their own words may not be as blunt and direct, but that simply makes them all the more insidious.

I cannot be alone in having noticed a recent increase in the number of memes circulating drawing comparisons between the cut to the winter fuel allowance or the failure to remove the two-child benefit cap on the one hand, and paying for food and accommodation for migrants on the other. It’s a silly comparison to make, of course; an economy like that of the UK can easily do both. But the government has made a deliberate choice not to do both, and in its insistence on the nonsensical household analogy for government debt has effectively encouraged people to believe that doing one thing necessarily prevents them doing another, because of a ‘lack of money’.

Cutting the state pension by at least 2.5% for most pensioners (which is the effect of the change to the winter fuel allowance) is a deliberate political choice. Keeping 300,000 children in poverty for at least a few months longer (which is the effect of failing to scrap the 2 child benefit cap, even if they change it in the budget) is another deliberate political choice. They weren’t forced to do either, but have chosen to do both because of a blind adherence to a fiscal rule based on Tory ideology about the size of the state and the protection of private wealth. But if you tell people often enough that the old and the young must suffer because of a non-existent ‘lack of money’, it should hardly be a surprise if some people draw comparisons with other items of expenditure and suggest cutting those instead. The result is that Labour’s dishonesty over government finances makes them as guilty as others of inflaming attitudes towards desperate people seeking a better life for themselves and their families. It doesn’t excuse the attacks on hotels, mosques, businesses or individuals – nothing can excuse that – but the false claim that the government ‘has no choice’ is an active encouragement to people to put the blame elsewhere. It turns out that divide and rule is an approach to government which isn’t ended by throwing out the Tories.

So what's the 'right' number?

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From the data available, it’s not at all clear that migration is as salient an issue in the election as some politicians seem to believe. On the other hand, if they bang on about it long enough and often enough, its salience is likely to increase – that’s just one of the many ways in which Labour seem to be determined to validate, rather than challenge, the Tory agenda. Starmer told us yesterday that net immigration is ‘too high’ and that Labour will slash the numbers. One might think that someone who believed that a number was ‘too high’ might have at least a rough idea of what number would not fit that description, but it is another of those details on which he seems to be clueless. And even if he feels unable to be precise about a number, it would surely be reasonable to expect that he would at least be able to set out, in rough terms, what criteria he would use to determine an answer to the question.

Sunak says much the same thing, and is thrashing around for policies which will reverse current trends – my, will he be angry when he finds out who’s been in government for the last 14 years. Whilst he can offer potential ways of cutting the numbers, in public he’s remarkably sanguine about the effect of those ‘solutions’ on the finances of UK universities, to say nothing of the sustainability of the entire health and social care sector. Perhaps he really does believe that most older people – his only remaining target group of voters, apparently – really would prefer to die for lack of care than receive care from some foreigner. Farage’s suggestion that the answer is to reduce net migration to zero is even further detached from reality, but then, so is the probability that he’ll ever have to implement anything he says.

It's worth noting that some of those most keen on eliminating immigration are also arguing for UK families to have more children. Well, well-off families at least – they don’t really want the poorer to have any children at all. Traditionally, the argument against immigration has been that we don’t have the homes, hospitals, schools etc to support the extra people, but it should be obvious that an increase in population caused by an increased birth rate leads to exactly the same pressures on services in the long run. And if the Tory-Labour antipathy towards immigrants isn’t rationally based on that sort of argument, then on what is it based? It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the underlying basis owes more to vote-seeking than anything else. It means that the ‘right answer’ for net migration is whatever number they think will prevent them losing racist and xenophobic votes to the other party. And it’s why they can’t ever put a number on it, because their opponent will simply outbid (or should that be underbid?) them. It’s ultimately a race to the bottom, and a pretty shameful one at that, given that they both understand the economic and social impact of drastically cutting numbers but are too afraid to spell it out.

There is, though, another solution open to them. Since the debate is largely about ‘net’ migration (a numbers game which rather ignores the fact that much of their target audience is more concerned about characteristics such as skin colour and religion than numbers), they could simply introduce a scheme under which large numbers of UK citizens are persuaded to leave. It would need both a carrot and a stick, but they are largely implementing the stick part already – poor services and declining standards of living (one might even add a rejection of action to reduce the climate change which is leading to semi-permanent rain). Given a big enough carrot, I’m sure that there are millions who might be open to an offer to live a better life elsewhere. Compulsory French, Spanish and Italian in schools might turn out to be rather more useful than Sunak’s weird obsession with Maths.

The Nuremberg Defence

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Some lawyers are saying that any civil servants who assist the government in breaching international law (in this case, by ignoring injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights) will be personally liable for their actions. The PM has responded by saying that “civil servants will be expected to follow ministerial guidance” – even if that guidance is known to be unlawful. Presumably, he thinks that the civil servants, should they subsequently find themselves up before a judge somewhere or other, will use the defence that they were ‘only following orders’. The civil servants involved would be well advised to do a little research on what has become known as the ‘Nuremberg Defence’ before relying on it. History is not on the side of those who try it.

Notwithstanding Sunak’s talk of flights within 8 – 10 weeks, and even if they’re telling the truth (which, based on experience, seems unlikely) about having lined up an airport, some charter planes, sufficient trained security guards and a load of courts and judges, the chances of any actually taking off before an autumn election, let alone deterring anyone, still look pretty slim. Supposing that they do manage it, while Sunak seems to believe that film of planes taking off will excite his diminishing target group of voters it’s reasonable to wonder whether film of handcuffed refugees being forcibly carried onto aeroplanes will appeal to quite so many. No matter how hard they try (and they will) to prevent such footage becoming public, it’s doubtful that their efforts will be successful for long, or that the public reaction will be quite as positive as he hopes. Telling us that those involved are ‘only following orders’ isn’t likely to help.