Clegg condemns Brown’s ‘British jobs for British workers’ dog-whistle

By Stephen Tall | Mon 2nd February 2009 - 9:08 am

As wildcat strikers adopt Gordon Brown’s dog-whistle slogan of ‘British jobs for British workers’, the Lib Dem leadership has made clear that it sees no point in getting in to “a blame game” with other European workers.

Vince Cable, the party’s deputy leader, commented at the weekend:

We’ve got to be very careful – on the one hand we’ve got to listen to workers who are angry, we need to help them to find some way forward. But it would be very, very dangerous and foolish to fall into this beggar my neighbour game with people in one country fighting people in another over jobs – that only ultimately makes the problem much worse.”

Meanwhile Nick Clegg has condemned the Prime Minister and Labour ministers for seeking to deflect worker discontent onto the EU.

The truth is that twice as many British people live and work in the EU than EU citizens work here. Any attempt to ban EU citizens from jobs in Britain would be a massive own goal. If every EU country followed suit, we would have to cope with a massive influx of British people who work overseas.”

5 Comments

Andrew Duffield 2nd Feb '09 - 9:20am

Presumably, if the workforce for the Lincolnshire oil refinery were all from Lancashire or Lanarkshire that would be fine by the Unions? Or does “British Jobs for British Workers” pander to a more parochial and protectionist mob mentality than even Gordon Brown envisaged?
Matthew Huntbach 2nd Feb '09 - 10:08am

Let’s be a bit more careful before condemning.

An Italian company is subcontracted to do some work, and the Italian companmy turns out only to employ Italian workers? Isn’t there a bit of “Italian jobs for Italian workers” here?

Isn’t there the possibility that, as ever, it’s the Brits that are playing fair and the others are not?
Andy H 2nd Feb '09 - 10:26am

Interesting article today in the Indie by Andy Grice on what he calls ‘Clegg’s town hall offensive’.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/meet-the-people-cleggs-town-hall-offensive-1522978.html
David Allen's Candid Friend 2nd Feb '09 - 10:33am

Andy H: DA finds Nick Clegg very offensive, being as he is a neo-Stalinist Thatcherite entryist.
Andy H 2nd Feb '09 - 12:08pm

David Allen’s Candid Friend: Dave Allen the mordant, Irish & (unfortunately) dead comedian doesn’t like Nick Clegg? I’m not going to lose any sleep worrying about that.