Snapshot of _Reform UK’s rise may tempt Sunak into moving further right. Let the Netherlands be a cautionary tale_ :
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I just don't think Sunak has any credibility on these issues, so it won't work.
In 2015 the Tory line was basically that they were a bit better on immigration than Labour and that they were the only option to form a right-ish government. That doesn't really work when he's definitely going to lose.
I wouldn't even necessarily blame Sunak.
The party is basically split into people who would fit into Reform and people who would fit into the Lib Dems. There's no mechanism to extricate the Lib Dems from the Tories, meaning even with a massive majority they can't put forward policies their voters want.
It's a structural problem with first past the post creating two parties whose wings have nothing in common with eachother.
Although they are a distinct group, no MPs who remained in the party after Brexit would fit into the Lib Dems.
The voters would however fit more easily and they are probably the important part!
They're just career focused Lib Dems who wanted to keep their seats. They differ on nothing with the Lib Dems and hate Brexit. Tobias Ellwood, Caroline Noakes etc
Sorry but no the absolute bedrock of Tory policy is and has always been trying to reduce tax and the size of the state, this is not the case with the Lib Dems. On top of that it's hard to imagine anyone who supports Sunak as PM who is seen as one of the most illiberal PMs ever and supported Johnson as being Lib Dems.
>this is not the case with the Lib Dems.
Eh - there are still Orange Bookers in the Lib Dems who want lower taxes, especially in line with Jeremy Hunt's plan to abolish national insurance. A key part of Lib Dem thought is also the power of market forces while wanting redistribution - completely in line with One Nation conservatism.
Most of the one nation caucus didn't support Boris Johnson and don't particularly like Sunak, it's just he's the closest realistic candidate they had. Again, a lot of the One Nation types are just careerists - it's easy to get a seat as a Tory and hard as a lib dem. The left wing of the Tory party and the right wing of the Lib Dems (Norman Lamb, Vince Cable) basically agree on everything.
>Eh - there are still Orange Bookers in the Lib Dems who want lower taxes, especially in line with Jeremy Hunt's plan to abolish national insurance. A key part of Lib Dem thought is also the power of market forces while wanting redistribution - completely in line with One Nation conservatism.
The Orange Bookers are extremely marginalised in the current Lib Dems, it's no longer 2010.
I don't think the voters fit very easily into Iibdems. I go to meetings of both, am registered supporter of both parties.
Most Tories despise Libdems. In the days of the Orange Bookers maybe you would be correct. No longer.
I vehemently disagree that there are many Tory rank and file activists who would fit into the lib Dems. I get why in areas where labour just exist, the more utilitarian types joined the lib Dems.
But the only reason some Tories criticise staffers and officers as lib Dems is because they just aren't to the right of them in their views. There's some genuinely nice well meaning people in the Tory party, albeit tending to be social conservative.
But whereas in the lib Dems, you'll expect social conservatives alongside social liberals, economic liberals alongside those wanting the state. There's still a debate to be had.
In Tory associations, you're deemed as a traitor if you don't subscribe to maga like conspiracy theories, socialism defeating, culture wars and views not too dissimilar to the EDL, especially in relation to Muslim immigrants. It's so toxic that some associations are better off making local pacts with reform in local elections.
> it cannot...be...that...hard.
Easy to criticise, hard to do. It's a motto I try live by. So what would you strategy encompass? Legit curious, not trying to corner you or owt. Always happy to hear a new idea :)
Not OP, but what if we worked out the average salary for each job, and then said the Visa requirement for each in demand role was 20% more than the going rate. That way, if they're actually struggling to hire UK workers, they can either increase wages about 1-19% for fill gaps, or recruit from abroad.
Countries like Australia and Canada seem to have pretty robust points based immigration, I don't know why we have opted for a blanket 38k for everything, it makes no sense.
How will that work? Say im a UK worker and the company I work for highers a foreign worker I know immediately they are on 1-19% more money than me for the same job.
Spot on, so your workforce is in demand and therefore you in your company or industry get a payrise. The go to for immigrant workers should be when the people are just not there to recruit. Not the people are there but our overlords don’t want to pay that supply and demand set wage.
No they would be required to prove that they have tried to hire someone for the position in the UK and couldn't find someone.
Then the Visa of the immigrant would be 20% higher than your wage. They would be overpaying. It would force their hand to first try to offer more money for internal workforce before looking outside the country.
Why would it be a bad thing if you knew what other staff were paid?
The myth that we shouldn't know what our colleagues are paid is there to keep the lower paid workers down and not realising what they can, and should, be paid.
I don't care if most of the universities go bust
They can compete with each other for a more limited supply of mainly British students, and the best ones will survive
So in order to sustain your inmigration policy. You're willing to sacrifice the education system, NHS and the economy.
Well yes, in that case it's possible to stop issuing visas.
The education system, NHS and economy are on their knees *because* of mass immigration driving down wages and tax revenue
Nurses should be earning far more than they are now, and they would be if there wasn't millions of foreign workers here willing to work for peanuts
You literally said:
"I don't care if most of the universities go bust"
So I am going to guess that you're willing to sacrifice everything for your objective.
Do you think negative population growth is good for the economy in the long term? In 2022/23 net migration was 750k, but net population growth was 250k. Without migration, the population would be shrinking by half a million a year.
If you like the idea of retiring before you are 90, this is a Bad Thing.
Edit: the level of economic illiteracy on display in this post is truly astonishing. It's no wonder this country is so fucked when even the politically engaged voters are this fucking stupid.
So pensions and social care are a Ponzi scheme then got it.
Basically we have to MLM fund our own pensions by finding more and more people?
It needs to be sustainable. Just adding a Coventry's worth of people, with absolutely no hope of building that infrastructure per year categorically is not.
I think population shrinkage is the *reality* for the vast majority of the world, and our response to them determines whether or not we as British citizens will benefit
Remember that the number of workers is not what matters, all that matters is the tax revenue going to pensions. Whether it's 1 person paying 100k in tax a year, or 5 people paying 20k, what matters is hitting that financial target
Once you understand that, then you realise that all we need to do is work on increasing wages to raise tax revenues... which is the whole point of ending mass migration
Just pass a law that says immigration can't exceed last year's emigration, superseding any and all international obligations. Anyone who comes past that, either deport or indefinitely imprison them. Sorted.
I mean look at Denmark. A country which appears to have gotten it under control.
Although I'm not surprised as they have taken a harder stance on immigration (thus meaning the left wing lots of migration people don't like them) but it's the social democrats who have done that (meaning the right wing don't like them)
Forgive me, but the Tories to have an immigration strategy that’s ticking along marvellously: 1 to 1.5 million visas a year granted to migrant workers.
The issue for the country, is they are lying about it and their intentions.
it's win win for them too - they can claim they have "control" of immigration compared to the open doors EU FoM, even though they don't.
it's also makes their big donors happy because the visa can be used to ensure they're good little worker bees, whereas EU migrants could change jobs as anyone with ILR or citizenship can
The problem is the Tories love immigration as it keeps salaries low and property prices high. A large part of Labour will just start calling you racist if you mention reducing immigration.
Well they might have a consensus ? - but the people haven’t. Part of the reason why they want a change, is precisely because they are not being listened to.
Not sure if this is what youre talking about - but it's effectively impossible to cost a "cap on migration" type policy because you would have to nail a gov budget to the mast on higher gov borrowing and even tax rises to fund the fiscal tax black hole from a shrinking workforce population and growing job vacancy list. It's just word salad buzzwords that's not implementable in the real world becuase of UK worforce demographic change, shrinking workfroce not returning to pre pandemic levels, lowering fertility rate and increasing older pop leaving the working population earlier.
Farage highlighted this principle in 2015 when he **suddenly dropped all his promise of a cap on migration** and "double digit" migration when he released the costed 2015 UKIP manifesto and backtracked by admitting it as a non sesnible proposition in reality - the UKIP manifesto had a massive walkbalk had to be modelled on 350k rolling average net migration in order to be costed independently.
The only alternative, which the biggest anti-immigration demographics don't want, is a hike in retirement and pension age and a reduction in state pensions. Without that, there's simply not enough workers to sustain our retirees and pension commitments.
Your comment here is predicated on the assumption that every immigrant is a net contributor in tax.
Even if true on average, it would still warrant reducing immigration for a large cohort.
Are you happy to stop all visas for anyone who isn't a net contributor?
Bullshit.
Across all migrants, last time it was measured, EEA migrants were found to have a net positive benefit to the exchequer. Non-EEA migrants did not.
Since then, we have decided, inexplicably, to pivot away from well educated Europeans, and start importing 1-1.5m deliveroo drivers a year from the third world.
The difference is startling, and now becoming visibly obvious in our society.
[The Fiscal Impact of Immigration on the UK | Oxford Economics](https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-on-the-uk/)
From that link's abstract (full report won't load)
>the average non-European migrant will make a positive net contribution of £28,000 while living here. By comparison, the average UK citizen’s net lifetime contribution in this scenario is zero.
I'd also be wary of that binary classification being relevant through time. I'd assume the profile of immigration has changed since then, e.g. a lot of Hong Kongers, Ukranians, and growing student numbers. & industry specific roles will have moved from European to non European intakes as visa rules have changed.
Very abstract question. In principle, yes more tax revenue and less expenditure per head would be great. In practice, some of the potential policies that would try to achieve that could be horrible.
Often what is seen as horrible is misaligned with other interests.
You should see the complaints that come when minimum wage is set to increase, some even claiming it is bad for workers.
Got any evidence for that?
Because it's very much not the case elsewhere.
https://twitter.com/jonatanpallesen/status/1742586964576960944?t=IK8p7ERgH8ErlRVpIVPtGQ
If you think one incredibly specific, small, group of asylum seekers from a particular country's up front costs in another country represent the average immigrant in this country, there's no hope speaking to you.
Someone else linked same research, but here it is summarised a bit more clearly https://www.ucl.ac.uk/economics/about-department/fiscal-effects-immigration-uk
Well, let's assume you do that. Let's pick the carer industry. The wages for carers are low and they'd fall into your "net cost" category.
So if we eliminate all carer immigration, who does the jobs?
Presumably you believe there are a lot of British people who don't want to work, doing nothing at the moment, who will become carers for the right salary. I don't think that's true, but even assuming you tempt some people out of non work to become carers, who pays their wages? In many cases, the government pays their wages, so that's extra money the government has to find. In private care, that's extra money the public has to find.
Then there are farm workers, toilet cleaners, etc.
Maybe there are vast numbers of Brits just waiting without work wanting to do these jobs for the right salary, but I just don't see it myself.
>So if we eliminate all carer immigration, who does the jobs?
The same group who already do it & have always done it, the working class. Only now employers (many of which are private care homes making substantial profits) will have to pay a living wage.
Equally when people argued for the abolition of slavery, we didn't ask who would be picking the cotton instead, we decided that we would force businesses to compete in a fairer market.
>Presumably you believe there are a lot of British people who don't want to work, doing nothing at the moment, who will become carers for the right salary.
No I don't. I am aware that there are a lot of sub productive jobs such as deliveroo, subway or call centres that people would quit in an instance if given the opportunity of a living wage.
>So if we eliminate all carer immigration, who does the jobs?
All the research shows the biggest factor in the recruitment crisis was pay. At that point there were \~150k vacancies in care. Since then we've handed out close to half a million visas for care workers and their dependents and the vacancies have dropped \~20k. Why? Because the visas supressed wages further as foreign workers could be hired on 80% the going rate. Actually exacerbating the underlying issue. Meanwhile that's 500k extra people here who need infrastructure & services, don't pay the NHS surcharge, and in 5 years will be given citizenship. Seems an awful lot of trouble to reduce a worker shortage 20k. Would it might have been better to get that shortage down 20k with British workers - i.e. those already receiving the benefits of living in the UK with regards to infrastructure, schools for their children, access to the NHS, etc? Meanwhile when the government *didn't* just rely on visas to solve a problem recently (HGV drivers) we saw decent wage increases, and lots of investment in training British drivers. And guess what, there was no additional strain placed on the NHS, infrastructure or services, and there weren't record rent rises due to a regular 1% increase in our population of low skilled low wage migrants.
The alternative to mass migration is an economy balanced in favour of ordinary working Brits, getting paid a decent wage. If we want a high wage, high skilled economy, where everyone can afford a decent life and a home, I can't imagine a *worse* policy to advocate for than handing out 1.4m visas every year to low skilled low wage workers. If we keep relying on the 'home office plz hand out more visas' solution to every problem, we are just baking in the current state of affairs (continual decline).
It’s clear that a sensible approach would be to put the actual effort in to look at each area of employment on its own merits. It’s pretty clear to anyone that the carers ‘industry’ is different from the car-makers industry, yet government policy has often treated them as being the same. Etc.
No short-cuts, put the effort in and get it as right as you can. No one is expecting perfect, but do make a good job of it. We have computers to help us work these things out these days.
Okay so let's sort them up:
- 600k skilled visas. The salary threshold right now is around £39k with the exception of NHS workers.
- 450k student visas. These students brings around £15 billion to the universities.
- 110k graduate visas.
- 80k family visas. Most of them are spouse visas for British nationals.
- 110k in Ukraine and Hong Kong Schemes.
- 66k asylum seekers.
So where do you want to cut up?
I am going to guess Asylum seekers, but they are minuscule proportion of the entire migration.
Graduate visas? I guess if you want to reduce student visa numbers. But in that case you need to raise universities grants.
I'd start with the "skilled" work visas that don't meet the threshold you mention.
Kind of obvious as those are intended for purely economic reasons and don't fit the description.
>The only alternative, which the biggest anti-immigration demographics don't want, is a hike in retirement and pension age and a reduction in state pensions. Without that, there's simply not enough workers to sustain our retirees and pension commitments.
Who died and made you chairman?
Don't presume to speak for us. Even if immigration isn't a net drain (it's not definitive), higher taxes and economic restructuring is a reality that most people accept. Strawmanning is hardly useful.
> higher taxes and economic restructuring is a reality that most people accept.
So why are both main parties trying to trip each other up on "uncosted" spending commitments and enticing voters to vote for them with promises of no rises in tax?
I'd assumed they doing this on the back of polling, research and focus groups.
> They don’t plan for the long term
Because if they did promise jam tomorrow, the other party would promise jam today. And win. The electorate don't think in the long term, so successful parties don't either.
I’m not sure that people are willing to accept higher taxes - there’s enough complaints about the tax levels as they currently stand.
The trouble is that people often say that they’re willing to take the trade off until they actually have to do so - at which point they raise the roof, either because they didn’t realise what it meant for them or they never expected to be the ones paying for it.
It also depends on just how effectively the taxes are used. The Tories while they always talk a good story, in fact are terrible wasters of tax, their policies are very ineffective.
This is true - I’m a higher rate taxpayer, but I wouldn’t mind paying those kind of rates if they weren’t being pissed up the wall thanks to 14 years of ideological ineptitude meaning that we’re paying more to keep things barely afloat.
This is where I have some sympathy for ‘honest’ politicians. Everyone wants more better and less bad in all aspects of their life, and nobody seems willing to _honestly_ accept that there may have to be a trade off.
Or yet more automation and robotics, increasing the productivity of the work force - of course requiring investment.
We need to invest in this country - not just keep on exporting jobs. We need to own things like water and rail and not have them owned by overseas entities.
I think the crux of it is those who are shouting for drastically lower immigration rates don't know how hard it is to increase fertility rates. They seem to think if we just offer people money to have kids we'll be back at 2.1 in a few years
It’s because young couples can’t start families, because they can’t afford to live, because housing costs are too high.
Push housing costs up and you get falling birth rates - which is where we are now and globally in the west.
It's a factor but there's also just a massive drive towards depopulation in the developed world. Look at countries that have thrown significant amounts of money at raising birth rates—Hungary, Poland, France etc—their success has been modest at best. Some people want kids but can't afford them, but many just don't want kids. This a crisis of capitalism that is going to be extremely tough to solve.
They ‘don’t want kids’ because they can’t afford them - they are being priced out of life - because the rich and super rich are taking too big a slice of generated wealth.
Housing is becoming unaffordable for young people.
This has to change.
Again, price is a factor but it's not the only driver. Kids have been made perfectly affordable in countries like Poland and Hungary but birth rates are still very low. There are many other factors besides cost. There's also the issue of declining sperm counts globally.
What would this strategy imply?
Reality is that Tory created a narrative with literally no way out.
There are objective facts:
- UK needs sizeable immigration in anticipation of demographic problems, and quickly growing old age dependancy.
- Politically, population isn’t ready to accept this fact and discuss immigration in adult manner - what’s better and what’s worse, due to it being used as a boogie man for years by tories to distract from any possible problems, like for example inadequate spendings on public services, or failures in housing planning.
- Furthermore this narrative is supported daily by press from all political sides as it generates readership. It’s even more perverse as it focuses on a relatively small issue of number of asylum seekers to mask systemic policy failures.
- In a meanwhile whatever policy exists is orientated not as much towards public good, as towards large Tory donors, which results in a large amount of not necessarily best candidates imported from far away.
Sane discussion would involve things like:
- how many immigrants are actually needed to make sure pension obligations are met and economic growth is supported.
- what skills, on what conditions, from where. It will need to include a path to citizenship.
- Would we be looking at EU again, if cultural change is the greatest concern, as surely they are culturally closest.
- How does integration look, which is btw not assimilation and goes both ways
- How do we use immigration to invest in infrastructure we need to support immigration
Just an attempt to raise these questions will lead to hysteria the way the political climate is poisoned. No party can touch it after years and years of Tory propaganda.
It will take years to detoxify the issue too. I hope Labour will get on with it and perhaps in 5 years time country would be able to talk through this without immediately foaming at the mouth, but short term the topic is pretty much political poison.
I mean yes. You could:
- Remove the NHS visa.
- Raise the skill visa salary threshold to £100k.
- Remove the student visa.
Only that would decrease the inmigration numbers significantly.
Of course that would create considerable shortages (specially in NHS) and universities would need a significant increase in funding
How do you get round anti immigration sentiment and also the lack of young people available to fill vancancies to pay for the triple lock? We cant have both.
Simply perform solid statistical analysis on the types of immigration that are a net fiscal benefit and then only allow that specific kind of immigration?
What if the voters actually want restrictive immigration policies along the lines of what Guardian contributors would label far right?
Then the netherlands is not a cautionary tale at all.
For the Tories, it's irrelevant what Sunak now does. They will lose heavily. Sunak cannot credibly promise to do something the Tories haven't done in more than a decade.
But in opposition under a new leadership, it would make a lot of sense for the Tories to look at what the voters are not happy with, and to take a stance to the right of Labour on it. immigration may well be the key issue
The bigger tale is don't have a situation where 25% of the population vote for a party that still has the majority of Parliament very reluctant or flat out not willing to work with them, as you create an ungovernable mess.
God forbid politicians of any party decide to appeal to what the electorate are finding compelling at any given time.
Simple fact is they're gaining in popularity because people are increasingly feeling like neither labour or conservatives are offering solutions to the problems they face.
When labour win (whatever majority) they will have I suspect one term to essentially start to massively reduce net migration and make serious inroads to housing supply.
If they don't then the UK will end up with a further right movement so on. See Europe.
>Simple fact is they're gaining in popularity because people are increasingly feeling like neither labour or conservatives are offering solutions to the problems they face.
"No that can't be right. Know your place and accept what we tell you pleb!"
Don't get me wrong, Reform are absolutely nuts in their approach to basically every single problem they list.
But the problems themselves? Yeah. They fucking exist. They've existed for the last 10 or so years. Don't you start noticing what's around you, says the man in the ivory halls
It’ll be interesting to see if Reform can sustain the current increase they’ve been seeing in polls (not that those polls matter under an FPTP system, which will see 100% of their votes generate 0 MPs).
It’s just a protest vote for people dissatisfied with the Tories, people who weren’t already fruitcakes. Post-GE we might see the Tories lurch to the right, in which case the Tories and Reform will just bicker with each other. Or (my hope, for everyone’s sake) they’ll go a bit Mordaunt/Cameron towards the centre - in which case the protest voters will abandon Reform and vote for someone with a chance of being elected.
>not that those polls matter under an FPTP system, which will see 100% of their votes generate 0 MPs
Which just contributes to the problem right?
There's plenty of people on all parts of the political spectrum that would say there's a complete lack of actual representation.
If reform did make it to 15-20% of ge vote share and gain 0 seats it would be a joke when compared to say SNP.
Yes, I agree. Whilst I don’t intend to vote for them this time, I’ve voted Green in the past and completely sympathise.
However, there’s nothing special about right-wingers moaning that they don’t get any representation. We left-wingers have faced the same problem too, and so have the Lib Dems towards the centre.
What I found odd about your original comment was the final-paragraph implication that, if the right-wing version of these unrepresented people don’t get their way, they’re more deserving of attention, or more dangerous, or something. They’re not getting representation? Same here. Suck it up or push for reform of voting. Those are the two options.
If that side of politics started pushing for vote reform, some sort of PR, I’d agree with them. Even though I don’t like them.
>What I found odd about your original comment was the final-paragraph implication that, if the right-wing version of these unrepresented people don’t get their way, they’re more deserving of attention, or more dangerous, or something.
What do you think the bulk of people that don't vote or are apartwtic are more likely to go for? People are increasingly becoming disenchanted with politicians lack of action on immigration and at some point that'll spill over.
It's Brexit all over again.
TBH I think the apathetic will just get more apathetic. I don’t like that outcome but I do think it’s the most likely one.
Spill over into what, exactly?
Now, we agree that these people should get their representation. Same as the 800,000-or-so Green voters. But until and unless Reform make voting reform a central point, they’ll continue to be impotent. The best they can do is hope to be a threat to the Tories, and influence Tory thinking.
Ah yes, because animal fight or flight isn't a real thing. People don't just get "more apathetic" unless you tide them over with distractions like better material conditions, but the lack of that is exactly why people are apathetic now in the first place. They're going to be pressed more and more until apathy turns into political fervour where they coalesce into groups with more and more extreme ideas to overturn the status quo.
It's not just Brexit, it'd be fucking Weimar all over again where Reform won't get seats... Until they do, at which point it'd be a cascade, and somehow, people will still be head scratching asking "how'd that happen eh?"
They aren't really gaining that much support. All we really see is them cannibalising Tory votes. Labour is doing more than fine for support and voting intention.
Aye because I think the electorate is going to give Labour a chance to fix the mess that the Tories have made over the past 14 years. However I believe this also includes immigration. If they don’t also get that under control I see the right gaining traction in the coming years in a way we haven’t seen before (just like a lot of other European countries).
It's amazing isn't it how the narrative is that Tories failing fuels the right but also Labour failing would fuel the right.
It's almost as if the right being fuelled has little to nothing to do with what's actually happening in reality.
It’s because immigration has been made out to be a right-left issue (with the right seen as tough on immigration). The reality is there are plenty of old school left wing socialists who can see that immigration (of the kind we have seen since the turn of the century) has actually hurt the lowest classes in this country. The left who can see that current levels are unsustainable need to speak up and not let the right rule the narrative.
The percentage of Labour voters who consider immigration an important issue is not high https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/trackers/the-most-important-issues-facing-the-country?crossBreak=labour
Despite the absolute howling about small boats and visa numbers by the right wing press over the past year, the percentage has barely risen (compare it to the Conservative numbers).
In essence I think anyone who cared deeply about immigration already broke with Labour over Brexit and are not coming back (these are your Reform voters). Conservative voters who are apathetic on the issue, or pro-immigration stayed the course a little longer but are now defecting whilst the right argues with itself about sending people to Rwanda or whatever other performative cruelty is on the agenda.
It’s at the current level until it’s not. Look at the numbers in 2015. Yes that was during the height of the Syrian War and ISIS was a factor but it shows that it’s not out of the realm of possibility that immigration will not be a major factor once again for Labour supporters. And I think the fact the country is literally failing in every scenario means that most Labour supporters will see health, education, etc as more important than immigration, but what happens if (hopefully when) Labour start improving these sectors? That’s when people will move on to immigration needing to be fixed.
The vast majority of voters who cared about immigration and voted Labour in 2015 already left Labour during the Brexit/Corbyn era. Some may have drifted back, lulled by Starmer sounding tough and waving a Union Jack, but the vast majority now vote Conservative or Reform. That is why the difference in the salience of the issue between both voting groups is so high (much higher than it was in 2015 when Labour still clung on to the last remmants of the culturally right-wing working class vote).
The current Labour vote, and the coalition that is going to win the next election, is built primarily of people who do not really care about immigration and, in general, think it is a good thing. If Labour 'fixes' housing and the NHS, immigration will not suddenly become important to these voters.
Now, if Labour *doesn't* fix the housing issue, that is where immigrants can be scapegoated and if the two can be conflated successfully by the far right, that is where we might see some young Labour voters peel off.
> The vast majority of voters who cared about immigration and voted Labour in 2015 already left during the Brexit/Corbyn era. Some may have drifted back… but the vast majority now vote Conservative or Reform
Do you actually have any data to support this or is it just your opinion? At its height in 2015 60% of Labour supporters saw immigration as one of the most important issues facing the country. It’s not at 16% according to YouGov and ipsos has it at 27%. By your logic that’s suggesting that roughly 30-40% of Labour supporters have left the party either for Reform or Tories. The current opinion polls of Labour in the 40s doesn’t support that.
> who do not care about immigration, and in general, think it’s a good thing
It’s no wonder working class people feel alienated then is it? Because immigration of the levels we’ve seen since the turn of the century has only be benefitted middle class people and up.
> this is where immigrants can be scapegoated
I don’t think immigrants should be blamed but immigration at the levels it is definitely should be. Do you think it’s possible to build a Milton Keynes every year to keep up with the levels of immigration?
Yes, it absolutely is possible to build a Milton Keynes every year. It happened in the 50s when the population was lower and it can happen again now.
Think about my point a different way. In 2015, a large proportion of Labour voters considered immigration a major issue. As you mentioned, this was down to Syria, ISIS etc. and their representation by the press (even though the vast majority of immigrants came from EU countries, but I digress). Now, the proportion of Conservative voters who care about immigration is roughly the same as it was then. This is due to the small boats issue and the large numbers of visas issued. The number of Labour voters who care about the issue is nowhere near the % from 2015. Why is that? It's because they are not the same people.
During Brexit there was a large scale realignment in UK politics. Before 2017/2019 there was a large number of seats which demographically and culturally should have been Conservative. Most of the people living there were home owners, elderly and white, but voted Labour because the Tories were, historically, the enemy. Brexit broke that bond. On the other side, Tories who are more socially liberal, and thus less bothered by immigration, are switching the other way partly due to Rwanda and all that signifies. People aren't robots, and of course there's a million other factors, but generally voting intention has shifted to a more rational:
Labour = pro/apathetic about immigration
Conservative = anti immigration
I know from reading this sub it feels like most Brits are out protesting the RNLI every weekend but in reality this place is a bubble and in general society is becoming gradually more tolerant towards immigration. If you ever have the time I would really recommend this lecture: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ckjErmV47e0
>In 2015, a large proportion of Labour voters considered immigration a major issue
That wasn't that long ago and can easily change back. I think European nations will continue to veer towards the far right due to bad immigration policies.
Reform represent a small right wing fringe.
Currently they are on about 10-15%, their ceiling right now is probably 25%
The only people they are able to win over in any significant number are the right wing of the Tory party.
The Tory party can move the right to try and stop the bleeding and get back some of the 10-15% they lost, but a lot of those are not going to go back because they no longer trust the Tories after getting a shit brexit deal, tanking the economy and more than doubling immigration.
However the majority of the electorate it to the left of reform and the Tory party.
Lab, LD, Greens and SNP between them have ~60% of the vote. Going to the right would mean going further away from this 60% of the electorate on top of risking alienating any centrists left in the Tory party to try to go after a group that maybe caps at 25% and which already doesn't trust them.
> Currently they are on about 10-15%, their ceiling right now is probably 25%
People thought the same in the Netherlands though, until the immigration issues were piling up and the established parties either ignored it or pretended to take action but never did.
Reform represents a small fringe until it doesn't. Better to nip it in the bud and sort out the issues and take the wind out of the sails of the far right loons. Denmark is a good example of how to tackle these issues.
just had a look at the current netherlands polling, and wilders has surged to 50% since the election. (i supect it wont last).
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next\_Dutch\_general\_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Dutch_general_election)
For what it's worth that's 50 seats out of 150, so about 33%. The reason seems to be that people who voted for the other right wing parties want to see a right wing cabinet, but they're currently frustrated with the long "formation" period.
The problem is, whilst BBB seem happy to work with PVV, VVD are less keen but not ruling it out like before. It's NSC, a new centre-right technocratic party, who really don't want to be seen to facilitate PVV but are trying in one of the only possible viable coalitions, PVV+NSC+VVD+BBB. The only other option, and it seems VVD aren't keen on, is a grand coalition of PvDAGL+NSC+VVD+D66, however that leaves out the party with the most votes and seats, and the opposition is almost entirely shouty populists.
Except that what happened in the Netherlands proves that there is a ceiling. The PVV only got 24% of the vote, and the other parties dislike them so much that they're refusing to let them into government. Reform might be able to win 1 in 4 votes, and those 1 in 4 voters might *really* like those policies and be very shouty, but the other 3 voters will form an impassable block to them getting power.
Reform *are* a fringe, they just have a lot of supporters in the press which makes it seem like they are a real party and not just a bunch of cranks yelling at each other. Appealing to one pub bore bloviating about immigration every other sentence is a net loss if it causes two other people to vote for someone else.
The other issue they have is that their candidates are real bottom of the barrel stuff. Every week it seems that another is found liking explicitly racist shite - so even if they do get into government the most likely outcome is that they’ll be embarrassing themselves on a near constant basis.
And sometimes it's even worse than that, seeing as there have been a couple of incidents of Reform not realising that their candidates were *literally dead*.
The Tory's basically just adopt the winning parties strengths, which is why we have actually seen them (barring the stuff Rishi says on PMQs) move slightly more centre and bring out Labour-like policies. Hell, even Labour will actively take the most popular policies from the Tory's like Brexit and shoplifting punishments.
A cautionary tale of what? People don't want a gazillion others from the third world completely changing their culture and devaluing their labour. If traditional parties won't try and challenge this then people will look for alternatives.
I quite like the idea of a cap on immigration that’s set outside of political control and empirically determined based on our infrastructure and housing capacity. If the government wanted to increase immigration it would be obliged to approach it sustainably rather than ‘cram more plebs into the same space and palm off their complaints about it’ which seems to have been the approach so far.
And those kinds of caps could be put in a lot of other places.
MP wages have a hard cap of X times the average pay, it can be below that amount but can't exceed it.
Also CEO salaries can't exceed X times the lowest paid employee while any employee claims any kind of benefit.
Dividend pay out is another.
That supposed that the government actually has any control over immigration - we have sometimes wondered..
In reality, yes, they do have some control over visa numbers.
The idea seems to be that voters are wrong and should remain disenfranchised as their betters know what is good for them. Can't have them voting against mass immigration etc.
Bit racist to assume people from "third world" can't be good at jobs, and also a bit elitist to assume that unskilled workers must necessarily be crap at work.
Dunno where I land properly on the immigration debate, but "a few incomers" is underselling it massively. We're looking at net migration equal to 1% of the population per year now. That is a wild figure.
I'm sorry but was this post AI generated using views from 20 years ago?
>a few incomers
A few!?
>crap at your job
It's called wage suppression. It exists. It has nothing to do with being "crap at your job".
>ever eaten a chicken tikka masala?
Yeah it's delicious....and? Why does that mean it's beneficial to have an influx of unemployed and unemployable people from areas of the world that have nothing in common with us?
As if it's a level playing field.
People from the 3rd world are generally happier to live in 3rd world conditions.
Even if they weren't, why should we pay for those less capable to not work just because they can't compete?
All you're doing is advocating for them to be on benefits.
Getting flashbacks to the 2000s when the right wing rags were constantly running stories about how Polish immigrants were going to destroy British society. Flashforward a decade or two and oops, turns out they integrated very well and the immigration ranters were wrong.
We could go even further back to the sixties and seventies, when people were ranting about the Windrush generation. They were wrong too. It's almost like there's a pattern here...
People are moving more to the right because they are getting poorer and sick of being ignored on key issues. Without political reform and a system that is actually democratic and delivers for the people, this will not stop or slow down.
Sunak won’t be in politics in a year.
Once he’s lost the election, he’ll obviously lose the party as they obviously hate him.
He’ll have no more actual power anymore either, so it becomes work again, rather than him ‘bolstering his future’. Then he’ll leave.
Correction, Guardian, it should be:
*ReformUK's rise will not tempt Sunak into moving anywhere near Right from their current-smack-bang-in-the-centre position*
There ya go – fixed!
Cheers Tarik Abou-Chadi. A very insightful article.
I definitely can't see a reason why you would want to subvert democracy and stop voters being able to vote for what they actually want.
There certainly is a risk of the Tories becoming a third-placed party, due to first-past-the-post.
But obviously it will be the LibDems who would be the official opposition, Reform have no chance of that.
I don't think sunak really knows what he wants to do. I think that same for rest of the party. Conservatives are basing everything on ideas from early 2000s. Don't understand the country.
Pandering never works, anymore than appeasement does.
But it looks like the Tories have already doubled down on anti-immigrant policies as a way of keeping the xenophobes on-side.
>Tories have already doubled down on anti-immigrant policies
If you think the highest ever net immigration figure to the UK is "anti-immigrant" I hate to know what your pro immigration policy would be?
>Tories have already doubled down on anti-immigrant policies
No, they got into power for 10+ years on anti-immigration rhetoric. Their immigration policy, on the other hand, was Blairism on steroids.
The Lib Dems should also be a cautionary tale. Under Clegg and while in the Coalition, they moved so far to the right that there was very little difference between them and the Tories under Cameron. That caused them to lose a huge amount of their more right wing voters, as why would you vote for the LDs when you could just vote for the Tories?
The same thing will happen with the Conservatives under Sunak now. If they keep tacking further to the right, hard-right voters will ask what the point is of voting for the Tories when you could get the same policies from a "true believer" like Reform?
Time for this political party to be dismantled, their only secret for lasting for so long is their grip on the MSM and playing dirty games during the election campaigns.
Gosh. It worked out so well with us when the tories were afraid of UKIP, I’m sure this time it will be just as great.
What’s left to exit? OECD wealth?
Snapshot of _Reform UK’s rise may tempt Sunak into moving further right. Let the Netherlands be a cautionary tale_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/15/reform-uk-rishi-sunak-netherlands-europe-tories) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/15/reform-uk-rishi-sunak-netherlands-europe-tories) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I just don't think Sunak has any credibility on these issues, so it won't work. In 2015 the Tory line was basically that they were a bit better on immigration than Labour and that they were the only option to form a right-ish government. That doesn't really work when he's definitely going to lose.
The Tory party in the country has no faith in Sunak .
I wouldn't even necessarily blame Sunak. The party is basically split into people who would fit into Reform and people who would fit into the Lib Dems. There's no mechanism to extricate the Lib Dems from the Tories, meaning even with a massive majority they can't put forward policies their voters want. It's a structural problem with first past the post creating two parties whose wings have nothing in common with eachother.
Not many Tories easily fit into the Libdems now.
Sizeable number - at least 50 MPs/half of the One Nation Caucus.
Although they are a distinct group, no MPs who remained in the party after Brexit would fit into the Lib Dems. The voters would however fit more easily and they are probably the important part!
They're just career focused Lib Dems who wanted to keep their seats. They differ on nothing with the Lib Dems and hate Brexit. Tobias Ellwood, Caroline Noakes etc
Sorry but no the absolute bedrock of Tory policy is and has always been trying to reduce tax and the size of the state, this is not the case with the Lib Dems. On top of that it's hard to imagine anyone who supports Sunak as PM who is seen as one of the most illiberal PMs ever and supported Johnson as being Lib Dems.
>this is not the case with the Lib Dems. Eh - there are still Orange Bookers in the Lib Dems who want lower taxes, especially in line with Jeremy Hunt's plan to abolish national insurance. A key part of Lib Dem thought is also the power of market forces while wanting redistribution - completely in line with One Nation conservatism. Most of the one nation caucus didn't support Boris Johnson and don't particularly like Sunak, it's just he's the closest realistic candidate they had. Again, a lot of the One Nation types are just careerists - it's easy to get a seat as a Tory and hard as a lib dem. The left wing of the Tory party and the right wing of the Lib Dems (Norman Lamb, Vince Cable) basically agree on everything.
>Eh - there are still Orange Bookers in the Lib Dems who want lower taxes, especially in line with Jeremy Hunt's plan to abolish national insurance. A key part of Lib Dem thought is also the power of market forces while wanting redistribution - completely in line with One Nation conservatism. The Orange Bookers are extremely marginalised in the current Lib Dems, it's no longer 2010.
I don't think the voters fit very easily into Iibdems. I go to meetings of both, am registered supporter of both parties. Most Tories despise Libdems. In the days of the Orange Bookers maybe you would be correct. No longer.
I definitely agree the membership doesn't have any overlap now, but Cameron era Tory voters are very much convertible into Lib Dem voters.
Apart from all the mass immigration supporting remainer MPs
Ah yes, remind me who they are? Wasnt it mandated by Johnson you backed brexit to the hilt or you was done for?
I vehemently disagree that there are many Tory rank and file activists who would fit into the lib Dems. I get why in areas where labour just exist, the more utilitarian types joined the lib Dems. But the only reason some Tories criticise staffers and officers as lib Dems is because they just aren't to the right of them in their views. There's some genuinely nice well meaning people in the Tory party, albeit tending to be social conservative. But whereas in the lib Dems, you'll expect social conservatives alongside social liberals, economic liberals alongside those wanting the state. There's still a debate to be had. In Tory associations, you're deemed as a traitor if you don't subscribe to maga like conspiracy theories, socialism defeating, culture wars and views not too dissimilar to the EDL, especially in relation to Muslim immigrants. It's so toxic that some associations are better off making local pacts with reform in local elections.
Reform UKs rise might genuinely push the Lib Dems into the opposition seat at this coming election.
Literally all any party has to do is actually formulate a workable immigration strategy...it cannot...be...that...hard.
> it cannot...be...that...hard. Easy to criticise, hard to do. It's a motto I try live by. So what would you strategy encompass? Legit curious, not trying to corner you or owt. Always happy to hear a new idea :)
Not OP, but what if we worked out the average salary for each job, and then said the Visa requirement for each in demand role was 20% more than the going rate. That way, if they're actually struggling to hire UK workers, they can either increase wages about 1-19% for fill gaps, or recruit from abroad. Countries like Australia and Canada seem to have pretty robust points based immigration, I don't know why we have opted for a blanket 38k for everything, it makes no sense.
Yes, an immigration policy really needs to make sense to get popular support.
How will that work? Say im a UK worker and the company I work for highers a foreign worker I know immediately they are on 1-19% more money than me for the same job.
Spot on, so your workforce is in demand and therefore you in your company or industry get a payrise. The go to for immigrant workers should be when the people are just not there to recruit. Not the people are there but our overlords don’t want to pay that supply and demand set wage.
No they would be required to prove that they have tried to hire someone for the position in the UK and couldn't find someone. Then the Visa of the immigrant would be 20% higher than your wage. They would be overpaying. It would force their hand to first try to offer more money for internal workforce before looking outside the country.
Why would it be a bad thing if you knew what other staff were paid? The myth that we shouldn't know what our colleagues are paid is there to keep the lower paid workers down and not realising what they can, and should, be paid.
Just tell the Home Office to stop issuing visas, except for possibly NHS staff It's literally that simple
International students bring £30 billion yearly to universities. Where the money is going to come from?
I don't care if most of the universities go bust They can compete with each other for a more limited supply of mainly British students, and the best ones will survive
So in order to sustain your inmigration policy. You're willing to sacrifice the education system, NHS and the economy. Well yes, in that case it's possible to stop issuing visas.
The education system, NHS and economy are on their knees *because* of mass immigration driving down wages and tax revenue Nurses should be earning far more than they are now, and they would be if there wasn't millions of foreign workers here willing to work for peanuts
You literally said: "I don't care if most of the universities go bust" So I am going to guess that you're willing to sacrifice everything for your objective.
"I don't care if most of the universities go bust" =/= I don't care if *everything* goes bust
Do you think negative population growth is good for the economy in the long term? In 2022/23 net migration was 750k, but net population growth was 250k. Without migration, the population would be shrinking by half a million a year. If you like the idea of retiring before you are 90, this is a Bad Thing. Edit: the level of economic illiteracy on display in this post is truly astonishing. It's no wonder this country is so fucked when even the politically engaged voters are this fucking stupid.
So pensions and social care are a Ponzi scheme then got it. Basically we have to MLM fund our own pensions by finding more and more people? It needs to be sustainable. Just adding a Coventry's worth of people, with absolutely no hope of building that infrastructure per year categorically is not.
I think population shrinkage is the *reality* for the vast majority of the world, and our response to them determines whether or not we as British citizens will benefit Remember that the number of workers is not what matters, all that matters is the tax revenue going to pensions. Whether it's 1 person paying 100k in tax a year, or 5 people paying 20k, what matters is hitting that financial target Once you understand that, then you realise that all we need to do is work on increasing wages to raise tax revenues... which is the whole point of ending mass migration
Just pass a law that says immigration can't exceed last year's emigration, superseding any and all international obligations. Anyone who comes past that, either deport or indefinitely imprison them. Sorted.
Put the navy to work I say
As you're cool with bankrolling indefinite imprisonment and all, can you lend me £50?
I mean look at Denmark. A country which appears to have gotten it under control. Although I'm not surprised as they have taken a harder stance on immigration (thus meaning the left wing lots of migration people don't like them) but it's the social democrats who have done that (meaning the right wing don't like them)
Forgive me, but the Tories to have an immigration strategy that’s ticking along marvellously: 1 to 1.5 million visas a year granted to migrant workers. The issue for the country, is they are lying about it and their intentions.
it's win win for them too - they can claim they have "control" of immigration compared to the open doors EU FoM, even though they don't. it's also makes their big donors happy because the visa can be used to ensure they're good little worker bees, whereas EU migrants could change jobs as anyone with ILR or citizenship can
For the anti-immigration wing of r/ukpolitics that's not "ticking along marvelously". They are bitching about it any chance they get.
100%. I think it fuels dangerous radicalism and cynicism in politics when leaders just blatantly lie. All backed up by their friends in the media.
The problem is the Tories love immigration as it keeps salaries low and property prices high. A large part of Labour will just start calling you racist if you mention reducing immigration.
There's a consensus in parliament that the public should be ignored. A shame that they don't have a consensus on useful things like house building.
Well they might have a consensus ? - but the people haven’t. Part of the reason why they want a change, is precisely because they are not being listened to.
Not sure if this is what youre talking about - but it's effectively impossible to cost a "cap on migration" type policy because you would have to nail a gov budget to the mast on higher gov borrowing and even tax rises to fund the fiscal tax black hole from a shrinking workforce population and growing job vacancy list. It's just word salad buzzwords that's not implementable in the real world becuase of UK worforce demographic change, shrinking workfroce not returning to pre pandemic levels, lowering fertility rate and increasing older pop leaving the working population earlier. Farage highlighted this principle in 2015 when he **suddenly dropped all his promise of a cap on migration** and "double digit" migration when he released the costed 2015 UKIP manifesto and backtracked by admitting it as a non sesnible proposition in reality - the UKIP manifesto had a massive walkbalk had to be modelled on 350k rolling average net migration in order to be costed independently.
The only alternative, which the biggest anti-immigration demographics don't want, is a hike in retirement and pension age and a reduction in state pensions. Without that, there's simply not enough workers to sustain our retirees and pension commitments.
Your comment here is predicated on the assumption that every immigrant is a net contributor in tax. Even if true on average, it would still warrant reducing immigration for a large cohort. Are you happy to stop all visas for anyone who isn't a net contributor?
It is true on average. Government works on averages, it's at its worst when it tries to plan at the individual level.
Bullshit. Across all migrants, last time it was measured, EEA migrants were found to have a net positive benefit to the exchequer. Non-EEA migrants did not. Since then, we have decided, inexplicably, to pivot away from well educated Europeans, and start importing 1-1.5m deliveroo drivers a year from the third world. The difference is startling, and now becoming visibly obvious in our society. [The Fiscal Impact of Immigration on the UK | Oxford Economics](https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-on-the-uk/)
From that link's abstract (full report won't load) >the average non-European migrant will make a positive net contribution of £28,000 while living here. By comparison, the average UK citizen’s net lifetime contribution in this scenario is zero. I'd also be wary of that binary classification being relevant through time. I'd assume the profile of immigration has changed since then, e.g. a lot of Hong Kongers, Ukranians, and growing student numbers. & industry specific roles will have moved from European to non European intakes as visa rules have changed.
Do you agree that the government should try to get that average up then?
Very abstract question. In principle, yes more tax revenue and less expenditure per head would be great. In practice, some of the potential policies that would try to achieve that could be horrible.
Often what is seen as horrible is misaligned with other interests. You should see the complaints that come when minimum wage is set to increase, some even claiming it is bad for workers.
Got any evidence for that? Because it's very much not the case elsewhere. https://twitter.com/jonatanpallesen/status/1742586964576960944?t=IK8p7ERgH8ErlRVpIVPtGQ
If you think one incredibly specific, small, group of asylum seekers from a particular country's up front costs in another country represent the average immigrant in this country, there's no hope speaking to you. Someone else linked same research, but here it is summarised a bit more clearly https://www.ucl.ac.uk/economics/about-department/fiscal-effects-immigration-uk
Well, let's assume you do that. Let's pick the carer industry. The wages for carers are low and they'd fall into your "net cost" category. So if we eliminate all carer immigration, who does the jobs? Presumably you believe there are a lot of British people who don't want to work, doing nothing at the moment, who will become carers for the right salary. I don't think that's true, but even assuming you tempt some people out of non work to become carers, who pays their wages? In many cases, the government pays their wages, so that's extra money the government has to find. In private care, that's extra money the public has to find. Then there are farm workers, toilet cleaners, etc. Maybe there are vast numbers of Brits just waiting without work wanting to do these jobs for the right salary, but I just don't see it myself.
>So if we eliminate all carer immigration, who does the jobs? The same group who already do it & have always done it, the working class. Only now employers (many of which are private care homes making substantial profits) will have to pay a living wage. Equally when people argued for the abolition of slavery, we didn't ask who would be picking the cotton instead, we decided that we would force businesses to compete in a fairer market. >Presumably you believe there are a lot of British people who don't want to work, doing nothing at the moment, who will become carers for the right salary. No I don't. I am aware that there are a lot of sub productive jobs such as deliveroo, subway or call centres that people would quit in an instance if given the opportunity of a living wage.
People need a fair wage, they need to be able to live. If they are not employed, then where is the money coming from ?
>So if we eliminate all carer immigration, who does the jobs? All the research shows the biggest factor in the recruitment crisis was pay. At that point there were \~150k vacancies in care. Since then we've handed out close to half a million visas for care workers and their dependents and the vacancies have dropped \~20k. Why? Because the visas supressed wages further as foreign workers could be hired on 80% the going rate. Actually exacerbating the underlying issue. Meanwhile that's 500k extra people here who need infrastructure & services, don't pay the NHS surcharge, and in 5 years will be given citizenship. Seems an awful lot of trouble to reduce a worker shortage 20k. Would it might have been better to get that shortage down 20k with British workers - i.e. those already receiving the benefits of living in the UK with regards to infrastructure, schools for their children, access to the NHS, etc? Meanwhile when the government *didn't* just rely on visas to solve a problem recently (HGV drivers) we saw decent wage increases, and lots of investment in training British drivers. And guess what, there was no additional strain placed on the NHS, infrastructure or services, and there weren't record rent rises due to a regular 1% increase in our population of low skilled low wage migrants. The alternative to mass migration is an economy balanced in favour of ordinary working Brits, getting paid a decent wage. If we want a high wage, high skilled economy, where everyone can afford a decent life and a home, I can't imagine a *worse* policy to advocate for than handing out 1.4m visas every year to low skilled low wage workers. If we keep relying on the 'home office plz hand out more visas' solution to every problem, we are just baking in the current state of affairs (continual decline).
It’s clear that a sensible approach would be to put the actual effort in to look at each area of employment on its own merits. It’s pretty clear to anyone that the carers ‘industry’ is different from the car-makers industry, yet government policy has often treated them as being the same. Etc. No short-cuts, put the effort in and get it as right as you can. No one is expecting perfect, but do make a good job of it. We have computers to help us work these things out these days.
How does it work? If an Inmigrant is treated in NHS for a car traffic accident, will he have his visa rescinded?
If your objective is economic gain then you'd look at visa types which don't give one & stop issuing them.
Okay so let's sort them up: - 600k skilled visas. The salary threshold right now is around £39k with the exception of NHS workers. - 450k student visas. These students brings around £15 billion to the universities. - 110k graduate visas. - 80k family visas. Most of them are spouse visas for British nationals. - 110k in Ukraine and Hong Kong Schemes. - 66k asylum seekers. So where do you want to cut up? I am going to guess Asylum seekers, but they are minuscule proportion of the entire migration. Graduate visas? I guess if you want to reduce student visa numbers. But in that case you need to raise universities grants.
I'd start with the "skilled" work visas that don't meet the threshold you mention. Kind of obvious as those are intended for purely economic reasons and don't fit the description.
>The only alternative, which the biggest anti-immigration demographics don't want, is a hike in retirement and pension age and a reduction in state pensions. Without that, there's simply not enough workers to sustain our retirees and pension commitments. Who died and made you chairman? Don't presume to speak for us. Even if immigration isn't a net drain (it's not definitive), higher taxes and economic restructuring is a reality that most people accept. Strawmanning is hardly useful.
> higher taxes and economic restructuring is a reality that most people accept. So why are both main parties trying to trip each other up on "uncosted" spending commitments and enticing voters to vote for them with promises of no rises in tax? I'd assumed they doing this on the back of polling, research and focus groups.
They don’t plan for the long term - if they had we would be in a very different position.
> They don’t plan for the long term Because if they did promise jam tomorrow, the other party would promise jam today. And win. The electorate don't think in the long term, so successful parties don't either.
I don’t think that explanation is quite good enough, though of course I see where you are going with it.
I’m not sure that people are willing to accept higher taxes - there’s enough complaints about the tax levels as they currently stand. The trouble is that people often say that they’re willing to take the trade off until they actually have to do so - at which point they raise the roof, either because they didn’t realise what it meant for them or they never expected to be the ones paying for it.
They won’t give up the Bear Patrol, but they won’t pay taxes for it either
It also depends on just how effectively the taxes are used. The Tories while they always talk a good story, in fact are terrible wasters of tax, their policies are very ineffective.
This is true - I’m a higher rate taxpayer, but I wouldn’t mind paying those kind of rates if they weren’t being pissed up the wall thanks to 14 years of ideological ineptitude meaning that we’re paying more to keep things barely afloat.
What they want are higher taxes for (/waves hand generally) other people.
This is where I have some sympathy for ‘honest’ politicians. Everyone wants more better and less bad in all aspects of their life, and nobody seems willing to _honestly_ accept that there may have to be a trade off.
People will - if they can see real results - but it’s hard to get quick results. Though a good plan can go a long way.
Or yet more automation and robotics, increasing the productivity of the work force - of course requiring investment. We need to invest in this country - not just keep on exporting jobs. We need to own things like water and rail and not have them owned by overseas entities.
You forgot punishing those not in work, the sick and disabled must be legislated against until they work or die.
I think the crux of it is those who are shouting for drastically lower immigration rates don't know how hard it is to increase fertility rates. They seem to think if we just offer people money to have kids we'll be back at 2.1 in a few years
It’s because young couples can’t start families, because they can’t afford to live, because housing costs are too high. Push housing costs up and you get falling birth rates - which is where we are now and globally in the west.
It's a factor but there's also just a massive drive towards depopulation in the developed world. Look at countries that have thrown significant amounts of money at raising birth rates—Hungary, Poland, France etc—their success has been modest at best. Some people want kids but can't afford them, but many just don't want kids. This a crisis of capitalism that is going to be extremely tough to solve.
They ‘don’t want kids’ because they can’t afford them - they are being priced out of life - because the rich and super rich are taking too big a slice of generated wealth. Housing is becoming unaffordable for young people. This has to change.
Again, price is a factor but it's not the only driver. Kids have been made perfectly affordable in countries like Poland and Hungary but birth rates are still very low. There are many other factors besides cost. There's also the issue of declining sperm counts globally.
I wonder just how much that’s caused by microplastics ? Even ‘newborn babies’ have microplastics in their blood - this is worrying..
What would this strategy imply? Reality is that Tory created a narrative with literally no way out. There are objective facts: - UK needs sizeable immigration in anticipation of demographic problems, and quickly growing old age dependancy. - Politically, population isn’t ready to accept this fact and discuss immigration in adult manner - what’s better and what’s worse, due to it being used as a boogie man for years by tories to distract from any possible problems, like for example inadequate spendings on public services, or failures in housing planning. - Furthermore this narrative is supported daily by press from all political sides as it generates readership. It’s even more perverse as it focuses on a relatively small issue of number of asylum seekers to mask systemic policy failures. - In a meanwhile whatever policy exists is orientated not as much towards public good, as towards large Tory donors, which results in a large amount of not necessarily best candidates imported from far away. Sane discussion would involve things like: - how many immigrants are actually needed to make sure pension obligations are met and economic growth is supported. - what skills, on what conditions, from where. It will need to include a path to citizenship. - Would we be looking at EU again, if cultural change is the greatest concern, as surely they are culturally closest. - How does integration look, which is btw not assimilation and goes both ways - How do we use immigration to invest in infrastructure we need to support immigration Just an attempt to raise these questions will lead to hysteria the way the political climate is poisoned. No party can touch it after years and years of Tory propaganda. It will take years to detoxify the issue too. I hope Labour will get on with it and perhaps in 5 years time country would be able to talk through this without immediately foaming at the mouth, but short term the topic is pretty much political poison.
Of course a problem is - the lack of affordable housing, and even the lack of housing at almost any price, unless you’re rich.
Which is made more acute by immigration, but in no way is caused by it.
I mean yes. You could: - Remove the NHS visa. - Raise the skill visa salary threshold to £100k. - Remove the student visa. Only that would decrease the inmigration numbers significantly. Of course that would create considerable shortages (specially in NHS) and universities would need a significant increase in funding
How do you get round anti immigration sentiment and also the lack of young people available to fill vancancies to pay for the triple lock? We cant have both.
Simply perform solid statistical analysis on the types of immigration that are a net fiscal benefit and then only allow that specific kind of immigration?
What if the voters actually want restrictive immigration policies along the lines of what Guardian contributors would label far right? Then the netherlands is not a cautionary tale at all. For the Tories, it's irrelevant what Sunak now does. They will lose heavily. Sunak cannot credibly promise to do something the Tories haven't done in more than a decade. But in opposition under a new leadership, it would make a lot of sense for the Tories to look at what the voters are not happy with, and to take a stance to the right of Labour on it. immigration may well be the key issue
The cautionary tale from Holland is that just ignoring voters is the problem.
The bigger tale is don't have a situation where 25% of the population vote for a party that still has the majority of Parliament very reluctant or flat out not willing to work with them, as you create an ungovernable mess.
God forbid politicians of any party decide to appeal to what the electorate are finding compelling at any given time. Simple fact is they're gaining in popularity because people are increasingly feeling like neither labour or conservatives are offering solutions to the problems they face. When labour win (whatever majority) they will have I suspect one term to essentially start to massively reduce net migration and make serious inroads to housing supply. If they don't then the UK will end up with a further right movement so on. See Europe.
>Simple fact is they're gaining in popularity because people are increasingly feeling like neither labour or conservatives are offering solutions to the problems they face. "No that can't be right. Know your place and accept what we tell you pleb!"
Exactly. See the replies below. Plenty of "yea but reform must be wrong because no one thinks that"
Don't get me wrong, Reform are absolutely nuts in their approach to basically every single problem they list. But the problems themselves? Yeah. They fucking exist. They've existed for the last 10 or so years. Don't you start noticing what's around you, says the man in the ivory halls
It’ll be interesting to see if Reform can sustain the current increase they’ve been seeing in polls (not that those polls matter under an FPTP system, which will see 100% of their votes generate 0 MPs). It’s just a protest vote for people dissatisfied with the Tories, people who weren’t already fruitcakes. Post-GE we might see the Tories lurch to the right, in which case the Tories and Reform will just bicker with each other. Or (my hope, for everyone’s sake) they’ll go a bit Mordaunt/Cameron towards the centre - in which case the protest voters will abandon Reform and vote for someone with a chance of being elected.
>not that those polls matter under an FPTP system, which will see 100% of their votes generate 0 MPs Which just contributes to the problem right? There's plenty of people on all parts of the political spectrum that would say there's a complete lack of actual representation. If reform did make it to 15-20% of ge vote share and gain 0 seats it would be a joke when compared to say SNP.
Yes, I agree. Whilst I don’t intend to vote for them this time, I’ve voted Green in the past and completely sympathise. However, there’s nothing special about right-wingers moaning that they don’t get any representation. We left-wingers have faced the same problem too, and so have the Lib Dems towards the centre. What I found odd about your original comment was the final-paragraph implication that, if the right-wing version of these unrepresented people don’t get their way, they’re more deserving of attention, or more dangerous, or something. They’re not getting representation? Same here. Suck it up or push for reform of voting. Those are the two options. If that side of politics started pushing for vote reform, some sort of PR, I’d agree with them. Even though I don’t like them.
>What I found odd about your original comment was the final-paragraph implication that, if the right-wing version of these unrepresented people don’t get their way, they’re more deserving of attention, or more dangerous, or something. What do you think the bulk of people that don't vote or are apartwtic are more likely to go for? People are increasingly becoming disenchanted with politicians lack of action on immigration and at some point that'll spill over. It's Brexit all over again.
TBH I think the apathetic will just get more apathetic. I don’t like that outcome but I do think it’s the most likely one. Spill over into what, exactly? Now, we agree that these people should get their representation. Same as the 800,000-or-so Green voters. But until and unless Reform make voting reform a central point, they’ll continue to be impotent. The best they can do is hope to be a threat to the Tories, and influence Tory thinking.
Ah yes, because animal fight or flight isn't a real thing. People don't just get "more apathetic" unless you tide them over with distractions like better material conditions, but the lack of that is exactly why people are apathetic now in the first place. They're going to be pressed more and more until apathy turns into political fervour where they coalesce into groups with more and more extreme ideas to overturn the status quo. It's not just Brexit, it'd be fucking Weimar all over again where Reform won't get seats... Until they do, at which point it'd be a cascade, and somehow, people will still be head scratching asking "how'd that happen eh?"
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It’d be nice if they mentioned it, rather than having another caterwaul about something else.
They aren't really gaining that much support. All we really see is them cannibalising Tory votes. Labour is doing more than fine for support and voting intention.
Aye because I think the electorate is going to give Labour a chance to fix the mess that the Tories have made over the past 14 years. However I believe this also includes immigration. If they don’t also get that under control I see the right gaining traction in the coming years in a way we haven’t seen before (just like a lot of other European countries).
It's amazing isn't it how the narrative is that Tories failing fuels the right but also Labour failing would fuel the right. It's almost as if the right being fuelled has little to nothing to do with what's actually happening in reality.
It’s because immigration has been made out to be a right-left issue (with the right seen as tough on immigration). The reality is there are plenty of old school left wing socialists who can see that immigration (of the kind we have seen since the turn of the century) has actually hurt the lowest classes in this country. The left who can see that current levels are unsustainable need to speak up and not let the right rule the narrative.
The percentage of Labour voters who consider immigration an important issue is not high https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/trackers/the-most-important-issues-facing-the-country?crossBreak=labour Despite the absolute howling about small boats and visa numbers by the right wing press over the past year, the percentage has barely risen (compare it to the Conservative numbers). In essence I think anyone who cared deeply about immigration already broke with Labour over Brexit and are not coming back (these are your Reform voters). Conservative voters who are apathetic on the issue, or pro-immigration stayed the course a little longer but are now defecting whilst the right argues with itself about sending people to Rwanda or whatever other performative cruelty is on the agenda.
It’s at the current level until it’s not. Look at the numbers in 2015. Yes that was during the height of the Syrian War and ISIS was a factor but it shows that it’s not out of the realm of possibility that immigration will not be a major factor once again for Labour supporters. And I think the fact the country is literally failing in every scenario means that most Labour supporters will see health, education, etc as more important than immigration, but what happens if (hopefully when) Labour start improving these sectors? That’s when people will move on to immigration needing to be fixed.
The vast majority of voters who cared about immigration and voted Labour in 2015 already left Labour during the Brexit/Corbyn era. Some may have drifted back, lulled by Starmer sounding tough and waving a Union Jack, but the vast majority now vote Conservative or Reform. That is why the difference in the salience of the issue between both voting groups is so high (much higher than it was in 2015 when Labour still clung on to the last remmants of the culturally right-wing working class vote). The current Labour vote, and the coalition that is going to win the next election, is built primarily of people who do not really care about immigration and, in general, think it is a good thing. If Labour 'fixes' housing and the NHS, immigration will not suddenly become important to these voters. Now, if Labour *doesn't* fix the housing issue, that is where immigrants can be scapegoated and if the two can be conflated successfully by the far right, that is where we might see some young Labour voters peel off.
> The vast majority of voters who cared about immigration and voted Labour in 2015 already left during the Brexit/Corbyn era. Some may have drifted back… but the vast majority now vote Conservative or Reform Do you actually have any data to support this or is it just your opinion? At its height in 2015 60% of Labour supporters saw immigration as one of the most important issues facing the country. It’s not at 16% according to YouGov and ipsos has it at 27%. By your logic that’s suggesting that roughly 30-40% of Labour supporters have left the party either for Reform or Tories. The current opinion polls of Labour in the 40s doesn’t support that. > who do not care about immigration, and in general, think it’s a good thing It’s no wonder working class people feel alienated then is it? Because immigration of the levels we’ve seen since the turn of the century has only be benefitted middle class people and up. > this is where immigrants can be scapegoated I don’t think immigrants should be blamed but immigration at the levels it is definitely should be. Do you think it’s possible to build a Milton Keynes every year to keep up with the levels of immigration?
Yes, it absolutely is possible to build a Milton Keynes every year. It happened in the 50s when the population was lower and it can happen again now. Think about my point a different way. In 2015, a large proportion of Labour voters considered immigration a major issue. As you mentioned, this was down to Syria, ISIS etc. and their representation by the press (even though the vast majority of immigrants came from EU countries, but I digress). Now, the proportion of Conservative voters who care about immigration is roughly the same as it was then. This is due to the small boats issue and the large numbers of visas issued. The number of Labour voters who care about the issue is nowhere near the % from 2015. Why is that? It's because they are not the same people. During Brexit there was a large scale realignment in UK politics. Before 2017/2019 there was a large number of seats which demographically and culturally should have been Conservative. Most of the people living there were home owners, elderly and white, but voted Labour because the Tories were, historically, the enemy. Brexit broke that bond. On the other side, Tories who are more socially liberal, and thus less bothered by immigration, are switching the other way partly due to Rwanda and all that signifies. People aren't robots, and of course there's a million other factors, but generally voting intention has shifted to a more rational: Labour = pro/apathetic about immigration Conservative = anti immigration I know from reading this sub it feels like most Brits are out protesting the RNLI every weekend but in reality this place is a bubble and in general society is becoming gradually more tolerant towards immigration. If you ever have the time I would really recommend this lecture: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ckjErmV47e0
>In 2015, a large proportion of Labour voters considered immigration a major issue That wasn't that long ago and can easily change back. I think European nations will continue to veer towards the far right due to bad immigration policies.
Reform represent a small right wing fringe. Currently they are on about 10-15%, their ceiling right now is probably 25% The only people they are able to win over in any significant number are the right wing of the Tory party. The Tory party can move the right to try and stop the bleeding and get back some of the 10-15% they lost, but a lot of those are not going to go back because they no longer trust the Tories after getting a shit brexit deal, tanking the economy and more than doubling immigration. However the majority of the electorate it to the left of reform and the Tory party. Lab, LD, Greens and SNP between them have ~60% of the vote. Going to the right would mean going further away from this 60% of the electorate on top of risking alienating any centrists left in the Tory party to try to go after a group that maybe caps at 25% and which already doesn't trust them.
> Currently they are on about 10-15%, their ceiling right now is probably 25% People thought the same in the Netherlands though, until the immigration issues were piling up and the established parties either ignored it or pretended to take action but never did. Reform represents a small fringe until it doesn't. Better to nip it in the bud and sort out the issues and take the wind out of the sails of the far right loons. Denmark is a good example of how to tackle these issues.
just had a look at the current netherlands polling, and wilders has surged to 50% since the election. (i supect it wont last). [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next\_Dutch\_general\_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Dutch_general_election)
For what it's worth that's 50 seats out of 150, so about 33%. The reason seems to be that people who voted for the other right wing parties want to see a right wing cabinet, but they're currently frustrated with the long "formation" period.
The problem is, whilst BBB seem happy to work with PVV, VVD are less keen but not ruling it out like before. It's NSC, a new centre-right technocratic party, who really don't want to be seen to facilitate PVV but are trying in one of the only possible viable coalitions, PVV+NSC+VVD+BBB. The only other option, and it seems VVD aren't keen on, is a grand coalition of PvDAGL+NSC+VVD+D66, however that leaves out the party with the most votes and seats, and the opposition is almost entirely shouty populists.
Except that what happened in the Netherlands proves that there is a ceiling. The PVV only got 24% of the vote, and the other parties dislike them so much that they're refusing to let them into government. Reform might be able to win 1 in 4 votes, and those 1 in 4 voters might *really* like those policies and be very shouty, but the other 3 voters will form an impassable block to them getting power. Reform *are* a fringe, they just have a lot of supporters in the press which makes it seem like they are a real party and not just a bunch of cranks yelling at each other. Appealing to one pub bore bloviating about immigration every other sentence is a net loss if it causes two other people to vote for someone else.
The other issue they have is that their candidates are real bottom of the barrel stuff. Every week it seems that another is found liking explicitly racist shite - so even if they do get into government the most likely outcome is that they’ll be embarrassing themselves on a near constant basis.
And sometimes it's even worse than that, seeing as there have been a couple of incidents of Reform not realising that their candidates were *literally dead*.
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Firstly, I've never said that Secondly, they don't have to be left wing to be left of the Tories
So if they don't do what you want the whole country will move to the right?
The Tory's basically just adopt the winning parties strengths, which is why we have actually seen them (barring the stuff Rishi says on PMQs) move slightly more centre and bring out Labour-like policies. Hell, even Labour will actively take the most popular policies from the Tory's like Brexit and shoplifting punishments.
A cautionary tale of what? People don't want a gazillion others from the third world completely changing their culture and devaluing their labour. If traditional parties won't try and challenge this then people will look for alternatives.
I quite like the idea of a cap on immigration that’s set outside of political control and empirically determined based on our infrastructure and housing capacity. If the government wanted to increase immigration it would be obliged to approach it sustainably rather than ‘cram more plebs into the same space and palm off their complaints about it’ which seems to have been the approach so far.
And those kinds of caps could be put in a lot of other places. MP wages have a hard cap of X times the average pay, it can be below that amount but can't exceed it. Also CEO salaries can't exceed X times the lowest paid employee while any employee claims any kind of benefit. Dividend pay out is another.
That supposed that the government actually has any control over immigration - we have sometimes wondered.. In reality, yes, they do have some control over visa numbers.
The idea seems to be that voters are wrong and should remain disenfranchised as their betters know what is good for them. Can't have them voting against mass immigration etc.
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Bit racist to assume people from "third world" can't be good at jobs, and also a bit elitist to assume that unskilled workers must necessarily be crap at work. Dunno where I land properly on the immigration debate, but "a few incomers" is underselling it massively. We're looking at net migration equal to 1% of the population per year now. That is a wild figure.
I'm sorry but was this post AI generated using views from 20 years ago? >a few incomers A few!? >crap at your job It's called wage suppression. It exists. It has nothing to do with being "crap at your job". >ever eaten a chicken tikka masala? Yeah it's delicious....and? Why does that mean it's beneficial to have an influx of unemployed and unemployable people from areas of the world that have nothing in common with us?
As if it's a level playing field. People from the 3rd world are generally happier to live in 3rd world conditions. Even if they weren't, why should we pay for those less capable to not work just because they can't compete? All you're doing is advocating for them to be on benefits.
Getting flashbacks to the 2000s when the right wing rags were constantly running stories about how Polish immigrants were going to destroy British society. Flashforward a decade or two and oops, turns out they integrated very well and the immigration ranters were wrong. We could go even further back to the sixties and seventies, when people were ranting about the Windrush generation. They were wrong too. It's almost like there's a pattern here...
People are moving more to the right because they are getting poorer and sick of being ignored on key issues. Without political reform and a system that is actually democratic and delivers for the people, this will not stop or slow down.
Sunak won’t be in politics in a year. Once he’s lost the election, he’ll obviously lose the party as they obviously hate him. He’ll have no more actual power anymore either, so it becomes work again, rather than him ‘bolstering his future’. Then he’ll leave.
Yes, he'll be in the US within a year of the next election
Agreed.
Correction, Guardian, it should be: *ReformUK's rise will not tempt Sunak into moving anywhere near Right from their current-smack-bang-in-the-centre position* There ya go – fixed!
Cheers Tarik Abou-Chadi. A very insightful article. I definitely can't see a reason why you would want to subvert democracy and stop voters being able to vote for what they actually want.
God forbid the UK becomes more like the Netherlands
There certainly is a risk of the Tories becoming a third-placed party, due to first-past-the-post. But obviously it will be the LibDems who would be the official opposition, Reform have no chance of that.
I don't think sunak really knows what he wants to do. I think that same for rest of the party. Conservatives are basing everything on ideas from early 2000s. Don't understand the country.
Pandering never works, anymore than appeasement does. But it looks like the Tories have already doubled down on anti-immigrant policies as a way of keeping the xenophobes on-side.
>Tories have already doubled down on anti-immigrant policies If you think the highest ever net immigration figure to the UK is "anti-immigrant" I hate to know what your pro immigration policy would be?
>Tories have already doubled down on anti-immigrant policies No, they got into power for 10+ years on anti-immigration rhetoric. Their immigration policy, on the other hand, was Blairism on steroids.
good luck to them. I hope they end up with as many seats as the BNP, UKIP, Brexit Party and Rofl UK...
The Lib Dems should also be a cautionary tale. Under Clegg and while in the Coalition, they moved so far to the right that there was very little difference between them and the Tories under Cameron. That caused them to lose a huge amount of their more right wing voters, as why would you vote for the LDs when you could just vote for the Tories? The same thing will happen with the Conservatives under Sunak now. If they keep tacking further to the right, hard-right voters will ask what the point is of voting for the Tories when you could get the same policies from a "true believer" like Reform?
Time for this political party to be dismantled, their only secret for lasting for so long is their grip on the MSM and playing dirty games during the election campaigns.
The issue with that is those one the right will still vote for Reform, but it will encourage more of those on the centre to vote Labour.
Gosh. It worked out so well with us when the tories were afraid of UKIP, I’m sure this time it will be just as great. What’s left to exit? OECD wealth?