While we’ve had the Tories tying themselves up in knots so as not to have to admit to anyone employing foreign staff in their homes, Ed Davey and Vince Cable have an entirely different attitude. Ed’s au pair is from Hungary and Vince Cable’s cleaner is from Poland, as the Telegraph reports:
The willingness of Mr Davey and Mr Cable to disclose details of their help at home contrasts with the vast majority of Conservative ministers, who have declined to say if they employed a foreign cleaner or nanny.
Mr Davey told The Telegraph: “Having myself worked in France, Sweden, Belgium and Taiwan and knowing how many hundreds of thousands of British people work and live abroad, I am pleased that the UK allows people from other countries to work here as it would be grossly hypocritical to do otherwise.”
Mr Cable added: “I have a multinational family and have employed British and foreign staff throughout my working life. I have and always will defend the right of people from the EU to come to the UK, work hard and pay their taxes.”
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5 Comments
Any chance of serious differentiation on actual policy?
That’s fine but we’ve got to actually deal with the real issue. I’ve no doubt there is a nasty nationalist element to some of the Ukip support but there’s more going on than that. I spoke to a man in his late 50s recently, someone who was completely disgruntled with politics but he said ‘I might vote Ukip.’ I didn’t hear any explanation as to why he might but I know this about his work situation. He had a stable job but lost it about 10 years ago. As with most people redundancy hit him hard. Since then he has averaged about a job a year. He has a new job now after a few months out of work. It would appear he gets no respect or dignity from his employer. They’ve basically found a way around paying the minimum wage. He is under constant threat of being dismissed should he make a mistake. Given how difficult it is for people to find work at his age, I’d assume he’s reluctant to complain. I’d assume he entered the workplace in the 70s when there was major unionisation and long term job security. All this has been taken away from people.
You can say they are wrong to blame immigrants for their situation but someone at least has to make the argument. A bunch of middle class people saying how they want to work abroad so it would be hypocritical not to allow foreigners here won’t cut it. Something must be done to help the poorest/least secure at work. They think immigrants reduce their bargaining power and make them more expendable. If the Lib Dems don’t want to deal with these peoples’ concerns, fine. Unlike 50 years ago most voters aren’t working class. But it’s just another section of the voting public Clegg will have to write off. He doesn’t have many left.
I am a huge supporter of free movement of workers across the EU and I am thrilled that our senior party members have encouraged EU citizens to move here for work. This is exactly the way things should be in the EU. Of course, as a party, we do need to get our presentation right here. Actually, I doubt the readiness of Messrs Davey and Cable to publish details of their home helps will go down very well with the traditional British working class. They keep telling us they have seen the areas they live in changed for the worse in recent years, their jobs taken and their wages kept down because of cut-price workers from overseas. Apparently, there is no truth in these contentions so, as the traditional British working class are rarely LibDem supporters, I doubt that we should consider them a significant issue at this time.
an adversarial fptp elecoral system simply doesn’t allow a political party to write-off chunks of the electorate if it wishes to gain power, theresa.
this attitude is electoral poison for any political party that has ambitions to be more than a sideshow that appeals to a minority of the committed.
Good for them – but as others have mentioned about the big picture isn’t about which cabinet members employ EU nationals, it’s the overall movement. The figures I’ve seen quoted that have struck me most are 2.3m British ex-pats in the EU, compared to 2.4m EU immigrants in Britain. A powerful argument against the overcrowding concerns – although we clearly need to get the infrastructure provision right, hopefully we’ll be as bold on new Garden Cities as we are on the EU itself at the moment.