Brown's "new jobs" boast is down to immigration

Chuck Unsworth

Nice piece. Of course most of it will be ignored or go over the heads of many parliamentarians. But the voting public is by instinct far shrewder than that.

JimBob

The tories should shut up about immigration and tax cuts if they dont want a 'nasty' party narrative going

Ian C

Your emotional attachement to immigration is very touching Fraser. But the reality of 21st century Britain it needs more people inhabiting these islands like the proverbial hole in the head. We have to find a method of maintaining our economic competitivness while restraining popultaion growth.

It must be possible to calculate what this means in terms of how many children we want the existing population to have, what rate of economic growth, immigration and productivity improvements this requires.

All of this can then be converted into evidence based policy. The politics would then be about the assumptions not the principles.

Admittedly, the biggest initial headache is to get the benefit dependents into useful work. This is a 20 year project involving considerable but necessary restrictions of freedoms to those who are.

TrevorsDen

Why on earth do you think immigration is a good thing?

Is emigration from Scotland into England (ie England's immigration) a good thing for Scotland?

Is casting and keeping British people onto bogus benefits (as well as the numbers on genuine unemployment benefit) a good thing? That jobs are available for these people is indisputable since they are being filled by Poles etc.

If we have a shortage of Doctors (ie skills) then it might be seen as beneficial - in the short term.

But

Immigration good ?? It highlights a complete and utter failure of this government's economic, social, educational and training policies.

A good thing ??? !!!

Nicholas

Yes, JimBob, that's it. Shut up about two of the most significant issues facing Britain today in case the idiots of the Left tell lies about you.

I think that after 11 years of New Labour "government" (I use the term loosely) any doubt about which party is truly nasty has been well and truly settled.

Tiberius

A very important issue, but dealing with the numbers of future immigrants will be a subsidiary concern to addressing the problems caused by immigrants already in Britain who have not integrated.

Michael

You refer to welfare rolls goingup by 80% in the Thatcher years only at the end of the article - but to my mind this was the flipside of the Thatcherite miracle and our sink estates have never recovered from that era (i grew up on a Council estate - it;s deterioration from 81-83 in particular was marked). You underplay the benefits of immigation too - many Poles (for example) in particular have superb educational background and have progressed from warehouse work to more responsible positions throughout in many businesses. However, should you visit an MPs surgery you are more than likely to see them dominated in the major towns and cities by asylum seekers - Zimbabweans, Sudanese, Somalians and the like. These folks are now swelling the welfare rolls as the Govt gets tough on benefits claimants just as the economy turns sour. Immigration is a mixed picture - but Blairnstincts on welfare reform were consistently hampered by big Govt Brown. Truly, the man has been disastrous.

Austin Barry

Immigration may be good, it may be bad. Is Muslim immigration good when compared with East European immigration? Will your average Jihadist from Kashmir assimilate more readily than an Australian? Of course not. To think that all immigration is ipso facto good is just daft - a legacy of sixth form, Pollyanna, right-on, everyone-is-lovely thinking from about the 1969 summer of love. And the consequence of this sloppy let's-love-everybody, let's embrace every culture however objectively absurd and brutal, will be, indeed is, blood on the streets.

Charles

Perhaps you could calculate GDP per head of private sector employees (ie, the productive part of the economy).

It might also be interesting to note that we could have been in recession for the past two years as private sector employment levels rose faster than GDP growth.

I'd be interested to see these figures.

David C

'The migration debate may yet go sour'

In spite of nearly universal 'sensitive' reporting, judging by the rise of the BNP, the debate is already on the turn.

Ian C: Thatcher achieved economic growth with no net immigration ( I remember this from a BBC piece on Labour policies on immigration, and was somewhat surprised).

C Powell

The immigration debate will only really be worthwhile when it deals with the question of who should be allowed to come here and not just numbers, as Austin Barry says. Allowing in a highly qualified engineer who has a job, speaks English and is prepared to integrate while here is good; I fail to see, however, what advantage to Britain there is in allowing an illiterate woman from a remote part of Pakistan who does not speak English or of allowing in Somalis - 80% of those here are on benefits. How can that sort of immigration be good? And there is considerable evidence that allowing these sorts of immigrants in causes harm: 7/7 (& the various plots since then) is proof of that. People were able to make the connection between immigration/failed multiculturalism and blood on our streets, even if the political class try to pretend otherwise. We should not repeat the mistake now and be prepared to face down the inevitable squeals from those who pretend, in the face of all the evidence, that all cultures are equal. Our immigration policy needs to be based on what is good for Britain, must take account of cultural factors and, above all, it must have the consent of those who live here.

We should also be much more discriminating in who we give asylum to - and if that means withdrawing from the relevant Convention so that we make the decision so be it. Our current asylum policy is neither effective nor fair nor humane.

Jeremy Poynton

No the Tories MUST discuss immigration as it is a vitally important topic. And anyway - New Stasi are WAY ahead in the nasty party stakes these days, and the electorate know it. Witness Crewe and Glasgow.

HJ

Fraser - You say that: "The Thatcher years were, of course, ones of painful deindustrialisation"

This really is a myth that is commonly repeated on the pages of the Guardian. It is fairer to say that employment in manufacturing industries declined rapidly (and, of course, this produced much pain), but the output from manufacturing industry grew pretty steadily, if unspectacularly, due to fast-rising productivity.
For example, in the ten years to 1997, industrial output increased by around 20%, whereas since 1997, output has been almost completely flat (in fact there was a rise for 2-3 years after 1997 and since then it has generally declined). Employment in manufacturing industry had started to rise again by 1996, but since 1999, over a million jobs have been lost in manufacturing. By contrast, manufacturing output has risen over 30% in the US in the last 10 years and there has also been a big rise in every other G8 country (except Italy). The poor performance of the UK in this respect largely accounts for the trade deficit.

So it would be more correct to refer to deindustrialisation under New Labour

Fraser Nelson

HJ, you have a good point. But in the Labour years it was less painful because the service industry jobs created outweighted the mnfr jobs lost. With Thatcher there was a (yes) painful lag. Under Thatcher, the IB problem started - Labour's sin was not to use the boom years to address it. Both have culpability for the 5.2m on benefits today.

Neopeitha

Fraser,

The way for the Tory party to address the issue of immigration is through the related matter of population. Everyone can feel that class sizes, infrastructure, housing stock, etc., are being squeezed by population growth, and steering the debate towards this enables immigration to be divorced somewhat from race. After all, there's little point in the government setting targets for new housing build without concomitant targets for population growth.

Moreover, population is a natural extension of the environmentalist debate which Cameron has rightly tried to reclaim from the Left. For instance, most people are now familiar with the 'hockey stick' chart of CO2 levels, but if this is resolved into the two components of population and per-capita emissions, it is clear that the former is by far greater contributor. It is thus absurd to spend such effort on climate change and *not* simultaneously talk about population.

Verity

Austin Barry - I don't agree with your analysis. I believe it is much more malign and destructive than that.

Verity

Jim writes: "The tories should shut up about immigration and tax cuts if they dont want a 'nasty' party narrative going."

I agree! It's always a good idea to give in to verbal bullying! That is what speech fascism is for!