Not everybody is flat wrong about immigration though. This is kind of my point, you seem to be taking the worst elements of that movement and applying their traits to anybody who has concerns. Many people see through all the bullshit the likes of Farage spout and still have concerns about the sheer numbers and seeming lack of integration in some areas. I believe you have made similar points yourself in the past even. I agree completely with your comments relating to people feeling poorer and public services being completely gutted for what it's worth, that undoubtedly plays a huge part. I've always felt this is a big reason why no government truly wants to resolve the issue (please excuse poor choice of words as struggling to articulate it better). As it's a convenient tool for dividing people and ensuring the ongoing massive wealth transfer which has been happening for decades is less noticable
But this was a continuation (on both sides of the atlantic and in the EU) of the status quo shafting the system while crowing about how much they spent on "public services and infrastructure" while they were funding it not by surpluses but by borrowing kaboodles of wonga on credit. The whole of the western world collapsed at the financial crisis with no way to feed the ponzy of money to their lenders and has never recovered from it since due to borrowing masses more money. The whole of this western model was always to pull more cheap labour into where they decided it was needed to make people see cheaper prices and while that abated them used state funds to throw even more at those they were setting up the shaft upon with free money, wage top ups, to distract them from the fact that employers should have been paying market rate and for training and all the rest. On top of that, the "underfunded universities" argument above is BS. It is too many university places created with no way of funding other than government guarantess publicised as student debt that has caused that. The majority of that money will not be paid back by students however much it is labelled as student debt and we have just entered the end zone of the first batch of these 30 year loans ending......to be written off by the public purse and paid up. And this universities BS was sold as "Brits are too good for these rubbish jobs" when the reality was "get the youth into education so they don't fill up the unemployment numbers as we pull all these EU workers into those jobs they would probably have done from school." So from '97 we had PFI which we are still a long way off paying off entirely and then we had student fees which is another whammy that we are just about to start paying off! We are not here as a result of "14 years of Tories!" We are here because of 30 years since the Blair/Clinton/EU revolution which has seen our government keep massive debt off the books in buy now pay later options which relied on "no more boom or bust" and "we will never see a recession again" and when we hit that financial crash there was no way to recover. When we hit Covid we were absolutely done for.......... ...........yet you all still think it was "the tories wot done it." It was not. It was the world status quo wot done it and the Tories moved into that space to basically take the reigns form Blair and Labour have moved into that void too now. There is no way to get out of this when we have so much state liabilities off the books and not counted as debt!
I agree with you about social cohesion. I also agree immigration is too high. But this was the solution from the Tories to our failing economy. And it hasn’t worked. But we are totally reliant on this immigration now for a lot of reasons. But first up, we need more honesty from the anti immigration lot. Net migration is going down. It jas dropped to (a far too high) 440k. But the small boat types are only 44k of that. Again, too many but a tiny fragment of the incoming 1.2 million. We have an aging population and horribly underfunded services that only work with poorly paid foreigners doing the work. The thing I am trying to say is this: nobody lets us talk about immigration thing is bollocks. All anyone talks about is immigration. From all parties. All newspapers. The only thing you are not allowed to say is: you have your facts wrong.
So the Tories had 14 years, coming in with we will fix the economy, and their utter failure to fix the economy is not their fault? Okaaaaayyyyyyy.
Slightly off tangent but I also feel we're still somewhat living in the post covid legacy. I said at the time that you cannot lock people in their homes, deny them the ability to exercise properly, the ability to earn money, the ability to socialise etc and not expect there to be a huge change in the psyche of those people. It fueled an already growing mistrust in government imo and made people much more rebellious.
The "people with money" are being fed your money by the state! IT isn't Bob and Jean's B&B that is getting money to house irregular immigrants or refugees. It is big business. It wasn't your Nan's second home guaranteed direct rents from housing benefit, it was big profit portfolios. Your Nan wasn't getting rent from the EU workers either. It was big business portfolios that have grown and grown and grown. Big business is coining it in more and more from state funds. Across the board, not just housing various peoples of need, the state has more and more set itself up to guarantee money to "people with money."
Again I don't disagree with a lot of that. The issue we face is that those balanced conversations needed to happen a long time ago and the horse has kind of bolted in that respect now as it's gone too far and people have become entrenched. I agree with your point about the boats being a tiny proportion of total immigration and in some respects have always found it a bit of a red herring to the wider debate. I suppose there's an argument though that this group costs more in financial terms and potentially social ones also, in particular the way the previous government decided to deal with it using the hotels.
I don’t disagree. Never forget the previous government stoked this by deliberately slowing the processing of migrants.
Which goes back to my earlier point of I don't really think any government wants to truly address it as it's a convenient distraction for them as well as being a massive ****ing headache.
What is missing is discourse that explains, loudly and unmissably, what the real facts of migration are, what work migrants do, how they actually impact the economy and most importantly, make people aware of the LONG TERM goals around migration. We simply cannot change it significantly in the short term. I have issues with this government, particularly around poor messaging, but they do seem to have long term plans in place to change our reliance on migration.
This is a much more sensible post. I agree on the rhetoric being false from those that are pushing the anti immigration angle and I agree on this misunderstanding of "small boats etc" even though I would bet that people class all "illegal immigration" in this category. Clearly people misunderstand what the real numbers are here however........... ...........The "net" argument is where it all falls apart. This has been a defence for a couple of decades now but this is not an apples/apples statement. Most of the immigration is coming into the lower end of the labour market while most of the outward (working age) is going out from the middle to upper / skilled labour market. It was never like for like so the bottom end of the labour market was flooded over time since 2004 while the skilled to middle bracket has gradually depleted. The "stop the boats" part of it has been a constant refocusing of governments since the Arab Spring because it suits for them to push the Sangat / calais / stop the boats angle to distract from all the legal immigration that they all wanted! Farage was not talking much (if anything) about boats until a few years ago! He was railing about EU free movement (government supported policy) It was government policy to focus the public on the French to UK (lorries, channel tunnel, small boats.) We have "chronically underfunded services" because governments from both parties support and supported policies that sent all the money out to lenders and money grabbers. No-one will notice. There will never be another recession. We'll just keep the ponzi moving the money. No one will ever notice. And still the left support the very people, technocrats and policies that are the architects of it all and continue to support the framework of stealing YOUR money! Admittedly a lot of Labour's failings at the moment is them desparately trying to pay for the costs of the ponzi with no idea or indeed desire to stop that ponzi.........because they all support it!
I didn't say it was not their fault. You said that. I said the narrative of it being the Tories fault is presented as being the reason why we are here. It is not "The Tories fault" it is all of them that followed one after the other, tinkering here and there while the money syphon structure remained as a continuation. Tories were just the continuation party for 14 years of a 30 year or so project. If you really really want to blame the Tories you can look at the last couple of years of the Major government. They set the wheels in motion......Blair took up the reigns........Brown and then Tories and..........we are where we are! There is no way out!
Better than simply letting everything rot, which was the Tory way. I know a lot of people in public services, and all of them, from legal aid, through police, through to my doctor, through to teachers, are happier now that Labour are investing in what they do. Farage is a shyster who will take about whatever gets people angry to stay relevant.
We need a government willing to invest. Borrow and invest is the only way out. Renationalise services that are broken. Remove outside influence in the NHS. I will even agree that we need to let the weaker unis die. But the problems this country face are nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with poor governance.
You can't give your thoughts on illegal immigration without being branded as a far right racist. Despite people having genuine concerns about boatloads of of unvetted men arriving daily. We have no idea who these people are and what there criminal background is. Having these concerns does not make you far right or racist. But you will get branded that by the left anyway....
People tried to have a discussion on this in the decade leading up to Brexit. People tried to tell people that they were getting shafted out of jobs by their companies and replaced but they were silenced immediately by "racist" and lies by employers that it was not true backed up by politicians quite happy to carry that line "that woman was a bigot"............when people know what happened to them personally. "They are doing jobs British workers don't want to do" - This was the stock message. These jobs did not appear from nowhere in 2004! They were being done by British workers! What changed between 2004 through to Brexit? The British downed tools? (you really seem to think that) and so "they are doing jobs the British don't want to do?" No employers replaced them with cheaper workers on NMW instead of the "market rate" they were paying before the bottom end of the labour market became a free for all. And they got an obeyant workforce not demanding their rights like the annoying Brits that did. This has spiralled into a self fulfilling prophecy over the years from before the financial crash right through to now! Those were the questions that needed honesty not denials from employers repeated by politicians and liberal TV media. Anyone who said this would be scowled upon and branded a liar! How can anyone not understand when presented with this narrative that British people (that don't want to do these jobs) were doing these jobs! And why do people separate the Labour era from the Tory era...........and the pre Brexit EU immigration from the post Brexit immigration? It is one long continuation of half of society calling the other side of society liars for daring to talk about their own true lived experience! Because it suited what they wanted to believe, and in the politician's case because it supported their continuation of this ponzi. Cheaper labour kept prices down, people (that weren't shafted) think they are richer, think life is improving! The same people that warble on about right wingers always going on about scroungers.........turned loads more people into "scroungers" and then tried to shut them up by calling them liars and racists.........when they just wanted the jobs they had back What we have now is just a culmination of what has gone on over the past 30 years. The immigration is just one aspect of this globalist takeover and governments happy to feed that money upward. People bang on about Thatcher and Thatcherite but she made cuts and made the country richer, whether that meant the money got spread around or not is a good argument, however it was not Thatcher that didn't make cuts and faked the good times by setting up schemes to divert the money up by ways of not needing to show it in the books. The "Tory austerity" that we constantly hear about added debt! How is that austerity? The cuts were because we actually have no money! The state has no money because of all this sidelined debt which they don't need to add to the books.......until it transfers from private debt onto the government's books! All this talk of underfunding things that we already signed 30 year deals for the private sector to do with maintenance contracts (PFI.) We are paying twice!
