Migration has poisoned politics for far too long
The truth needs to be told, because migration isn't going away any time soon.
As I drafted this the PMINO1, Rishi Sunak, was scurrying about Westminster trying to round up enough votes to pass the first reading of whatever version of his Rwanda legislation he can get through the Commons.
Again, Mr Sunak finds himself squeezed between the rump of traditional Conservatives to whom operation within the Rule of Law might still be an important principle and the NatCon Ultras. For a man whose appearance suggests intense and repeated physical squeezing not to avoid such situations would seem a little careless, but there you are.
Aside from the highly questionable legal issues - call me old fashioned but it seems what the ‘government’ is saying is “the courts said it wasn’t safe to send people but we’ve agreed that it is and signed a treaty to prove it therefore it is safe” - and the eye watering cost of the whole shoddy exercise (£169,000 per migrant if goes ahead) lies the reality remains that even if fully operational Rwanda deportation scheme worked as a ‘deterrent’ against people smuggling gangs with inflatables - and there is no evidence that it will - the overall net migration numbers would hardly be impacted. Net migration to the UK (the total coming in minus the total leaving) was 672,000 for the year to June 2023. Of those 44,460 came across the channel in small boats. So even stopping all of the net total remains above 625,000. There is some detail about this in the graph below and in the footnote but a lot more at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.2
Google ‘migration’ on images and you will see pictures of trails of people trekking with backpacks and mass queues along roads. That’s the impression both conventional and social media gives - but it is wrong; more than 96% of people currently arrive in the UK by legal means - the great majority via Heathrow.3 At 3.7% of the total arrivals, those coming to the UK by the illegal cross channel route should not be entirely dismissed but it is a problem that is almost entirely self-inflicted by the ‘government’s’ breathtaking incompetence.
That incompetence is summed up nicely by the failure to negotiate a returns agreement with the EU as a part of the withdrawal process.4 That was the point at which the UK had some negotiating power, because being able to trade off one thing against another is a means of the EU getting a deal done - so concessions are possible at the margins at the point where the EU just wants to get the damn thing done. But the UK didn’t attempt to negotiate a returns agreement at all - even though ‘protecting borders’ was supposed to be a big thing and not having a returns agreement means sending arrivals back can’t be done automatically. Now the UK knows it needs one its chances of getting one are slim, not impossible, but slim. Meanwhile back at the Home Office processing of migrants continues at snail’s pace. If migration is regarded as a national crisis, then the response is feeble. A cynic might conclude that the ‘government’ isn’t particularly bothered about this because having a ‘migration crisis’ suits its propaganda purposes, surely not?
Why do that relatively small number people want to deal with gangsters and dice with death come to the UK? My guess is they are pretty desperate but beyond that why? The UK is attractive for several mutually reinforcing reasons: there is work in a complex multi-layered, multi-ethnic economy, there are well established communities of many ethnicities and for some extended family links, the UK has no ID card system, all of which makes it easier to disappear, and the world’s ‘second language’ is spoken - a few words of English get you a long way.
Sadly, the ever so cunning plan to deport migrants to Rwanda is nothing to do with seriously attempting to address the situation and everything to do with the battle for what passes for a soul in the Conservative Party. The detailed legislation could be voted down by both the Ultras AND traditional Conservatives, but whoever wins the pyrrhic victory the real issue of migration will remain. From time-to-time it will recede but, like the tides, it will flow again, poisoning the politics of the UK in perpetuity. It will be a running sore for as long as politicians continue to avoid telling the unvarnished truth to the electorate. That failure is partly a web of outright mendacious lies and the making of impossible promises, but more is a desire to assume the ostrich position and more still a failure to know what is, in fact, the truth. The Rwanda scheme is another lie - presented as the solution it isn’t. Brexit, on this more than any other area, was a lie - not only did the UK already have control of its borders but the bulk of UK inward migration was always from outside the EU.
The rantings within the Conservatives about the “alarm” among the electorate at net migration numbers doesn’t square with current opinion polling. It’s a core vote strategy designed to defend against disgruntled Brexit supporters returned from UKIP who gave Johnson the benefit of the doubt in 2019. But they made a promise and they failed to deliver, Now the best they can manage is to be seen to be trying.
Everything we said would happen has happened
But it isn’t as if they were not warned what would happen. EU migration would certainly be reduced with the end of freedom of movement, staying out of Erasmus+ and imposing immoral price tags on falling in love with a European citizen, but it would simply be replaced by immigration from elsewhere. I very much doubt that’s what the UKIP wing of the Tories had in mind but that exactly what has happened. The red line in the graph below shows the end of freedom of movement at the end of 2020. From then on EU migration is flat, migration from outside the EU hit an upward path.
Meanwhile the sectors that are affected are exactly those sectors that it was always evidently would be affected. The hard reality is that in certain sectors of the economy ‘Britons’ simply do not want to do those poorly paid and/or seasonal jobs; fruit picking, agricultural labour, care home staffing, hospitality. This has been part of the reality in various sectors of the UK economy since the 1950s. In fact it is more often than not the reality of affluence. Turks will do jobs Germans don’t want, Mexicans will do jobs Americans don’t want, Algerians will do jobs the French don’t want, Indonesians will pick up where the Dutch won’t go, North Africans will do jobs the Spanish aren’t keen on, and so on. Some of it is about low pay and poor unionisation, certainly, but even in social market economies better regulated than the UK the same patterns are evident. That’s how migration and seasonal employment works, how it has always worked. The evidence is repeatedly stated by the sector organisations reporting the ongoing struggle to fill vacancies. The graphs below shows the effect of Brexit on EU employment by sector.
How much more poison?
The importance of migration as an issue ebbs and flows, returning on the back of economics and events to poison politics. The fear of ‘other’ and defence of ‘what is ours’ is part of human tribalism. The desire to defend our hill against the lot from down the track isn’t too far removed from the instinct that prevail over reason when migration rises in importance as an issue. The discussion is more mannered than it was once, and in some ways that makes it more difficult to debate the issue and change minds than it was when it was very clearly linked to race. Simple logic on labour markets still has appeal: ‘they are taking our jobs’, ‘cheap labour’ and so on. Equally simplistic claims about ‘strain on the health service’, ‘not enough school places’ or ‘getting houses local people can’t get’. Simplistic though these claims may be, they are not without an element of truth. A large influx of labour to a local economy IS disruptive, undercutting wages DID happen and governments failed to deal with it. And even though inward migration has kept the NHS running since the 1950s there may well be some places where an influx of new residents has placed strains on the service. Why on earth would these things not happen? The point is to confront market failure and mitigate, not to run and hide.
Because we live in a country where migration is part of the economic furniture and where the fantasy that the clock can be turned back to a world that never existed is targeted at an ageing white electorate brought up with the post-imperial fiction that Britannia still ruled the waves. That generation retains critical mass and political influence. Meanwhile 672,000 more people came to the UK in the year to June 2023 than left, 96% by perfectly legal channels. Despite Brexit, despite the hostile environment and despite restrictions that absurdly seek to exclude those in the most productive economic sectors, they still came. Among them 84,000 returning British citizens, some of whom, I’ve no idea how many though I have met a surprising number, have lived in other lands since their childhood but who in old age return to the old country to take advantage of the free at the point of use healthcare to which they have never contributed a penny but to which they are still entitled. These folk are never thought of as benefit migrants. Meanwhile inward migration has propped up productivity (there are only two ways to produce growth; more people working or people working more efficiently) and expanded the tax base to finance the pensions and bus passes of the aging population.
Unless the NatCon Ultras are stupid beyond reason they must, in dusty confines of their brains, understand this, even if they don’t especially like it. Yet the lie persisted through Brexit and still persists now despite the fact that everything I and many others said about what would happen with the pattern of migration having come to pass - and quicker than anticipated because of the amplifying effect of the pandemic. Everything else - Rwanda, small boats, blaming the lawyers, blaming the French - it’s all to distract from that uncomfortable truth; the false promise of restricting migration at the same time as foregoing the efficiencies of the European single market will diminish productivity at the very time it needs to rise.
Too often politicians ran and hid from those realities or recognised them too late. These problems could have been addressed, should have been addressed, but too often the ostrich position was taken and the field was left open to populists with easy answers. There was and is no excuse for not levelling with people. The notion that the debate on migration can never be won is a miserable abdication of political leadership. Pretending that the issue can be sidestepped is ridiculous because there is seventy years of evidence that somebody will try to take advantage of the tribal instinct. So to say nothing, to ignore it, to appease, are all just different forms of surrender. Others won’t leave it alone so you might as well tell the truth. For if we don’t believe we can make an argument, what on Earth is the point of us?
If you haven’t read it yet …
I threatened some lists, but the long read took over, maybe next week. So a few recommendations on the reading front, or maybe as a present for someone nice.
Fixing Parliament
Chris Bryant, MP for Rhondda, and Chair of Standards and Privileges, knows probably as much as anyone about the UK Parliament. But unlike many who have such encyclopedic knowledge is isn’t an sad constitutional fanboy. I have many criticisms of Westminster and a clear view of why it produces bad legislation, but those views come badly from a former member of a different legislature. Imagine my smug satisfaction in learning that Chris Bryant largely shares my view, or rather I share his. So I wholeheartedly recommend his slim but serious volume “Code of Conduct”. He identifies the problem as part of a slide toward autocracy and exposes exactly why it can happen here. Of the many books that highlight the failures and absurdities of Westminster this is the most serious. All sorts of people will tell us that “nobody has raised this with them on the doorstep”. I expect not but understanding that the structures of government are contributing to bad government (which one way of the other they certainly do raise on the doorstep) is tricky. But be warned, without some surgery the disease will become untreatable, and we may never have a better chance. A visionary Prime Minister would put Chris Bryant in his Cabinet as Leader of the House and tell him to get on with changing it.
Alternative histories
By contrast, Katy Hessel’s “The Story of Art” was a best-selling success last year and spent a long time sitting in my reading queue. It is a history of art alluding to the foundation undergraduate read, “The Story of Art” by E.H.Gombrich, considering much the same progression of style and genre that can be read elsewhere, but told exclusively through work of female artists. And that’s the point, the actual title is “The Story of Art Without Men”. Just think a little - don’t Google anything - just write down the women artists who you can immediately bring to mind? ………………. See, yet many, many exist, who you have never heard of. Some had their ideas unceremoniously lifted by now famous male artists, others gained recognition long after their deaths, too many are still ignored. This book tells how far there is yet to travel. It’s a heavy tome - physically due to gloss stock to carry the rich illustration and the cover typography is a brilliant piece of book design. I ripped through it feeling somewhat embarrassed, because I’m an art history academic (of sorts) and should know better, my sole criticism is that it misses the financial element of art and artists. I believe, however, that it’s quite accessible and fun as well as being genuinely important. You can get a flavour from Ms Hessel’s Instagram @thegreatwomenartists - her success is richly deserved.
The bowler’s Holding …
5 As we’ve been dancing round the subject of racism, “Why We Kneel, How We Rise” by Jamaican former fast bowler and cricket commentator, Michael Holding, is a fascinating book. Written from the heart and full of anecdotes, it challenges a lot of conventional wisdom, explores institutional racism in sport, and confronts the reader with some uncomfortable truths - power is finite and others are going to share in in that is less for those who have always had it (white guys). You have to be pretty much my age to remember Holding at his very best. In the fifth test of the hot summer of 1976 at a parched Oval Holding took 14 wickets, destroying an able English batting line up and delivering a 3-0 win. His pace was terrifying, his gliding run up and action beautiful, and he looked like a soul star. The series took place in the shadow of an overtly racist outburst by England captain, Tony Grieg - a South African by birth - who had promised to make the West Indies “grovel”. Holding bowled with controlled anger throughout and at the Oval reached fast bowling perfection. I’ve yet to see better and his match figures remain a West Indies record, that it overshadowed an innings of 291 by Viv Richards says everything. It’s on YouTube below. The only problem with the book for me is, though I’m pretty clear about the “how we rise bit”, and I understand and support the purpose, I wanted to know the origin of the gesture and I’m still not sure of exactly “why we kneel”.6
Not normally being one for nostalgia, I’m afraid when it comes to cricket this is where it’s at - pre Packer, no helmets (yes, completely mad), proper jumpers and a raucous crowd up from nearby Brixton. Cricket really was better then.
The sharp eyed among you who received the email will have noticed that I have edited this as I somehow managed to paste in the wrong YouTube link. I’m blaming AC Milan. No matter - I’ve left the Lords link in below, because Andy Roberts was excellent too.
That all for now folks, thanks for reading.
Tell a friend.
Till next time, take care.
John
Prime Minister in name only.
The Migration Observatory quotes ONS figures. It is also the source of those statistics quoted and of the charts.
Arriving at Heathrow does involve a great deal of very long queues - so I suppose the images aren’t entirely wrong.
The Durham University law Prof, Thom Brooks has written extensively supporting this point. You can find out more here, should you want to.
Test Match Special aficionados know what comes next.
I guess I could have missed it, but I still don’t get why the knee.