Writing in the New Statesman, Tim Farron says we should direct our focus on solving this country’s housing shortage and wage inequalities problems, rather than blaming immigrants for our problems:
Looking at poll after poll shows that many communities are worried about the impact of immigration. I do understand their concerns. But it would be hugely disrespectful to the British public if we looked at those polls, and the problems they highlighted, and weren’t honest about the underlying drivers. If we had the housing stock we needed, better wages and a stronger economy, I sincerely doubt that immigration would be top of these polls repeatedly. We need to do something positive about the problems communities face, rather than dishonestly blaming immigrants for all our country’s challenges.
You can read the full article here.
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16 Comments
A very good piece.
Where do we get these people incapable of thinking from?
The report he cites, doesn’t show that “immigration is a net benefit”, it shows that whilst immigration from the EU has been a net benefit to the Treasury, non-EU immigration has been a massive drain on the Treasury, mor than cancelling out the benefits gained from the EU immigrants…
Also in his comment ” If we had the housing stock we needed, better wages and a stronger economy, I sincerely doubt that immigration would be top of these polls repeatedly.” he totally over looks the fact that because we have better wages and a stronger economy, many people from less stable and developed countries want to come here. Also as I’ve pointed out previously, our housing need is largely driven by our population and since circa 1997 the main driver for population growth has been – immigration. Likewise all the projections show that immigration and the offspring of recent immigrants will be the main drivers behind the further growth of our population. Hence immigration, whether you like it or not, is the major factor in whether we do or do not have “the housing stock we need”.
I think Tim is also missing the point, many people (including UKIP supporters) dn’t actually blame the immigrants themselves but the weakness of successive governments in Westminster to actually do something sensible.
Migration is a two way affair with about 2.2 million UK citizens living on the Continent.
We ignore history at our peril. We are in a sustained period of austerity. The far right, orchestrated by a demagogue and supported by a sustained campaign by the right wing press, have identified scapegoats.
Austerity is nothing to do with being “far right” or “identifying scapegoats”, it’s about trying to find a solution to the fact that we’re borrowing lots of money and piling up government debt, on which future generations will have to pay a huge interest bill. That can only be done by cutting spending or raising revenue by increasing taxes.
It’s not some kind of conspiracy. It’s reacting logically to facts staring us in the face.
The best way to solve any problem is at it’s source and in the case of migration that is at the migrants home country. We need to make that country better so that the migrant does not want to leave in the first place. That’s just one reason that the aid budget is so important (it does require better targeting).
Refugees are a different problem.
@RC – I suspect that BrianD is conflating two things : austerity manifesting as things like bedroom tax, frozen wages for the public sector and tuition fees; and QE manifesting as asset bubbles that (as Mark Carney and Janet Yellen have recently acknowledged) increase the nominal value of the assets of the rich. This huge difference in how the financial crisis has played out for the rich versus the rest makes a mockery of the idea that “we’re all in this together” or “fairer society”.
And that surely creates a breeding ground for groups that offer simplistic solutions to complex problems.
Rereading Tim’s piece in the New Statesman, what is irritating is whilst he clearly states his point: “We need to do something positive about the problems communities face, rather than dishonestly blaming immigrants for all our country’s challenges.”, which I do not disagree with; the only course of action he proposes is to follow other politicians by running “away to the hard, divisive rhetoric and avoid making policy that serves the country.” and bang on about how wonderful (inward) migration is.
Please Tim, kindly explain how inward migration is doing “something positive about the problems communities face”? Because the risk you take by banging on about (inward) migration as some form of solution to the problems , is to further convince people you have your head in the sand and don’t actually understand what is happening in the country. I say this because yes in addition to the economic and housing woes, our communities are facing challenges around: social cohesion, sense of community, culture and happiness, and in your pitch I see nothing that shows that you are even aware of these issues.
Talking with a friend’s experience of giving birth in an inner city hospital where being white and British put her in small majority and then listening to her experiences of her local environment where white British are a minority is a rather different experience of life compared to Farron living an upper middle class experience in Cumbria.
What rubs he salt in is the contempt for traditional white British culture by left wing middle class people , something which Orwell pointed out. It is time left wing middle class people who are employed in some way by the state try work in the construction industry, live in inner city Britain and send their children to the worse schools in the borough and then try to obtain social housing . How do white working class Britons feel , whose grandparents fought in WW2 , endured The Blitz and whose grandchildren find themselves in schools told to respect all cultures and stopped from having a knowledge of their own then having to compete for social housing? The white working class still provide the vast majority of the armed forces , especially the combat troops yet Labour ignore mass grooming of mostly white working class girls by mostly pakistani muslim men. Orwell pointed out that the left wing intellectuals despised physical courage and patriotism, a main reason why Britain was in poor state to fight in 1939.
The rise of UKIP is largely because the faults of the left wing liberal classes identified by Orwell are still present and actually grown in size. Where Orwell described the left wing intellectuals as belonging to a rentier class( living on dividends due to the labour of their fore bears ) , living on an island and protected by the Royal Navy are largely true. The left wing liberal rentier class still does little or no productive work but is employed in some white collar capacity the state: they survive on the taxes paid by the white working class they despise rather than on dividends .
A Left wing liberal party which was lead by the types such as E Bevin, Attlee, Gaitskill, Callaghan, R Mason, Don Concannon , J Barnett rather than upper middle class metropolitan arts/social types typified by E Milliband would have controlled immigration and managed in a way that was NOT detrimental to those earning the average salary, living in social housing , within deprived areas and working in industries such as construction, agriculture and service/catering where there is intermittent employment
Farron has no experience, nor any interest in putting himself in the shoes of the shows of a working class British tradesman who is trying to provide for his family: nor do most of the political and chattering classes apart from the likes of F Field, K Hoey and Anne Cryer. The push by left wing liberal upper middle people of cultural issues rather than ensuring the materialistic aspects of the of the needs of white working class were met ( and also many immigrants who came here in the 1940s to 1970s ) has meant that that vast numbers of people do not vote Labour or LD but now look upon UKIP favourably. The contempt of the left wing liberal middle class can be shown by the indifference towards wounded military personnel.
1. When the senior RSM of the Army , a man with special forces experience had to complain about the abysmal treatment of injured service personnel, including being insulted by Muslims at Birmingham Hospital.
2. Johnson Beharry VC was so incensed by the contempt of the treatment of army personnel that he wished to assault Gordon Brown. At a recent talk Beharry VC spent many minutes describing his contempt for Gordon Brown and left me absolutely astonished: I cannot imagine J Callaghan or D Healey earning this contempt.
Farron writing in The New Statesman typifies this lack of perception: perhaps he ought to consider The Jackers Journal . The Statesman is very rarely seen in the canteens on construction sites or read by people working in the agricultural or catering industries.
It would be great to read that a Liberal Democrat instead of trying to convince people of the benefits of immigration recognises that the concerns of people’s concerns about the problems caused by immigration. However in the New Stateman’s article Tim Farron does both.
Wouldn’t it lovely if we could tell people on their doorsteps that if they voted Liberal Democrat we would build over 1.5 million houses during the next Parliament, that it was one of our red lines. That we would ensure that the minimum wage would increase by more than 15% above inflation during that Parliament. That we would increase public spending or use the increase in the monetary supply to create growth that is targeted to areas of the country with higher than average unemployment. That we would ensure that every unemployed person after a year unemployed would get a job that they wanted to do.
Could we even go further and say we would increase the minimum wage to reduce in work benefits? That we were committed to ending the state subsiding wages. That we would reduce the housing benefit bill by making employers pay their worker enough to pay their rents, and would build enough houses to bring rents down.
Amalric
Outside of London, in occupations requiring unskilled labor , are your suggestions viable for the businesses? Clients in the City of London can probably pay for their cleaners but what about employers in the poorest part of the UK operating in business using unskilled labour ? Much of the immigration has increased the competition for un and semi-skilled labour which has kept salaries down .
Growth in high value manufacturing can only come about when a workforce has been trained to the relevant skill levels which takes years . There are 10,000s of people living working in businesses related to motor sport around Witney and Silverstone and supported by universities such as Imperial, Kingston and Warwick and it has taken 70 years to achieve . It has taken Sillicon Valley 50 years to achieve it’s position with the support of Stanford University.
As Bevan pointed if we do not build quality , there will be problems in 10 years time. There is a major shortage of adequately construction workers , architects and engineers: any rush will produce the poor quality we say being built in the 1950s to 1970s.
Immigration has been and is used to hide the problems of not training enough people in the skills we need. Government has a poor record in planning businesses but it could operate with business and produce the education and training we need. Proof of past success in includes : The officer training of the Royal Navy up to Nelson, The Royal Military Academy at Woolwich ( Faraday lectured ) which trained artillery and engineer officers, Imperial College, UMIST and Royal College of Technology at Glasgow, and CATS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_of_Advanced_Technology_(United_Kingdom).
A major problem is that much of the un and semiskilled workforces’ ability to earn more is their lack of education and training. Yes paying a little more would help but moving into skilled employment would make the major improvement.
@ Charlie
I don’t understand why anyone would want to support low wages and the need for the government to subsidise them with welfare payments. If the business is not viable paying wages that don’t need subsidising then they shouldn’t be in business unless there is a national interest for them to be in business, when they can receive a business subsidiary.
We have had five years of training being the answer. The work programme has a success rate that is the same as doing nothing. It does not provide meaningful skills training. If there was a job guarantee for the long term unemployed to provide them a suitable job then the government would have to provide the funding to ensure that the unemployed have the skills needed to keep the guaranteed job and be an asset to the organisation employing that person.
Most immigration from the EU is not skilled people coming here to do the jobs our people lack the skills to do. They are well educated people doing unskilled or low skill jobs.
Charlie, you sound like BNP, not like UKIP. 🙂
Paul in Wokingham 6th Nov ’14 – 10:33am
..”…. austerity manifesting as things like bedroom tax, frozen wages for the public sector and tuition fees…… …..,,.,This huge difference in how the financial crisis has played out for the rich versus the rest makes a mockery of the idea that “we’re all in this together” or “fairer society”.”
Absolutely right, Paul. I have more than once commented in LDV that “austerity ” has left the Royal Famiy and the MoD virtually untouched. Bread and circuses with the Windsors has been a priority for spending over the last four years and we have had plenty of money for wars in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq. (And if Clegg had got his way Syria would have been added to that list in 2013).
Under the Tory/Clegg Coalition “austerity” has been pointed one way only, at the poor. An increasing number of people have gone to the food bank whilst a very small number of people of privilege laugh all the way to the tax haven.
“Fairer society” ? Who do they think they are kidding?
Igor – I assume you mean the modern BNP and not the legacy BNP from the 80’s and early 90’s?
From some recent research, I was surprised by the change in the politic’s of the BNP – although given the legacy and recent change in leadership, I do question whether it is skin deep or just a passing fad.
I would caution against trying to simply dismiss the sentiments expressed by Charlie by trying to attach a politically emotive label, because they do contain some rather hard hitting and uncomfortable home truths – it is largely down to the actions and inactions of Westminster over the decades has made immigration into the hot potato it is today; and instead ask how do the LibDems engage with those, such as the white working class, who have been getting a raw deal. Because as you imply, the BNP certainly are engaging with the white working class and currently seem to have the field to themselves…
Perhaps Nick Clegg, Tim Farron need to start getting articles in trade publications and news media that are often read by people working in the construction , agricultural and catering industries?
I think many citizens don’t blame the immigrants they blame the politicians who never made sure resources met the increased population or protected minimum or living wage
Maybe that’s why the polls show people not happy with the major parties, or the major parties not allowing the electorate to have a referendum when it was good enough for Scotland
Makes me think anyway