The rich can afford to be liberal about immigration; the poor can’t

The invasion of Iraq and everything that followed caused grave difficulties for the government. But at least it created a sense of purpose and perpetuated the illusion that Tony Blair is a strong Prime Minister. The primacy of domestic issues over the last few weeks has reminded us how vacant New Labour really is. Politics has suddenly lurched back three or four years to the era of government by gimmick, the cringe-making early Blair period when Downing Street was dominated by a frenzied desire to create newspaper headlines.

Contemplate last week. The Prime Minister launched his plan for random drug-testing in schools on Sunday. By Monday his scheme was in trouble and by Tuesday it was halfway to collapse. Over at the Treasury Gordon Brown was not to be outdone. A flurry of newspaper stories about obesity met the Chancellor’s eye. A tax on obesity was invented, floated, proposed and junked, all within the space of a 20-hour news cycle.

The most interesting front-bench convulsions have been on immigration, where Downing Street exercises no steadying influence or sense of command — a state of affairs which enables writers of newspaper headlines to determine government policy. This week’s crisis has been germinating for years. There is a grotesque inequality of wage rates between Britain and the central European countries which join the European Union in the spring. This is certain to lead to economic migration when borders open. The Conservative party pointed this out when the accession treaty was ratified, and proposed interim protections which were airily dismissed by government ministers.