Brown lays the ground for recession rage

The prospect of a “British Jobs for British Workers” controversy will have haunted Gordon Brown long before he came up with the soundbite. He will have known, way before Fleet St did, that immigrants had taken (or created) 81 percent of British jobs. He’ll have known – as he paid for the bills – that at least 5m Brits have been on various out-of-work benefits since 1997 despite his claim to have tackled unemployment. While morally deplorable, this situation was politically manageable as long as there were enough jobs for those who want them.

But in a recession, when Brits start to compete with the 6.2m immigrants for these jobs, then it hits the fan. There is a basic political formula that works world over: mass unemployment + mass immigration = political explosion. Brown will have known this, known there was an unexploded bomb buried in his economic model and that, when the economic tide went out, there might be real controversy over immigration.