Guido – or Harry Cole, actually – asks Where’s the Outrage? about Maurice Glasman’s declaration that all immigration to these fair islands should cease forthwith. Ed Miliband’s advisor or intellectual guru or whatever he’s termed these days believes immigration makes Britain little more than “an outpost of the UN” and we should cease being so generous to beastly foreigners and concentrate on oor ain folk.
Of course Harry is right in one respect: if a Tory thinker had come out with this stuff the BBC and Guardian and the Labour machine would have denounced him and called for his defenstration or permanent exile and so on. So, yes, there’s a double standard of some sort at play. But the Tories aren’t making a fuss because, deep down, many of them agree with Glasman. And if one party doesn’t make something an issue then the media is rather less likely to make it a proper story either.
And, frankly, Glasman does speak for many people on this. I consider this regrettable but for all the talk that the Open Borders brigade are somehow supposed to be running Britain it is a fact that a) they are not and b) liberalism has been defeated on this issue. Again, I think this short-sighted and foolish but accept that the battle has been lost and there’s not much that can be done, at least in the short to medium term to change this.
Or, to put it another way, I agree with everything Chris Dillow writes here but don’t expect a majority of readers to do so, far less that there’s a great short-term future for what Chris and I might term enlightened liberalism on these matters.
Nevertheless, Glasman’s remarks are another indication that Labour – while not going so far as the noble Lord – look to be shifting towards a neo-Poujadist brand of populism. This is something Cameron and Clegg are ill-equipped to rebut but, happily for them, a campaign Ed Miliband is equally ill-suited to lead.
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