I long ago accepted that the Conservative party has lost its mind on immigration but until recently I still hoped it retained its decency. Alas, such charity seems ever more sorely misplaced.
Responding to a question from Andrew Green, the MigrationWatch campaigner inexplicably elevated to the peerage by David Cameron, in the upper house yesterday, Lord Bates, a Home Office Minister, suggested immigration needs to be further restricted because too many foreign-born women residing in Britain are having babies. Damn their ovaries, damn it.
This is a remarkable thing to say. Not the least because it suggests the government – or at least Lord Bates – agrees with Lord Green who commented that “The impact of migration is not only the migrants themselves but their very high birth-rate, which will play out in the future”.
Whatever else this may be – and it is plenty of other things – this is hardly subtle. But then rancidness rarely is. The implication is plain: not only are these foreign-born breeders a problem in themselves, their children will be a problem too. They should, according to some mysterious new rule, be reckoned migrants too. Certainly they’re less British than those born to native-born mothers. Not proper. Not pukka.
What a repellent way of thinking. How sad that such thinking remains so widespread. How shameful that (almost) every time a minister is given the opportunity to say something decent about immigration – acknowledging the stresses it can, in some circumstances cause, sure, but also reminding his audience that, you know, on the whole, it’s a good problem to have (to the extent it’s a problem at all) – he or she prefers to pander to the nastiest common denominator. If the Tories are struggling to slay UKIP it’s because too often their message boils down to this: UKIP are right, don’t vote for them.
As it happens, by what I take to be MigrationWatch’s standards, I’m not properly British either. Like Boris Johnson and many, many others, one of my parents was born overseas. Now, I happen to think MigrationWatch a laughable collection of cranks so their peculiar rules of who counts and who don’t ain’t no great concern of mine. But they are of very real concern to many more people – the kinds of people whom MigrationWatch and those of their ilk really think a problem.
Decency aside, cosying up to people who think like this is dreadful politics. Sure, it might whistle a vote-winning tune this year but in the medium to longer term it is a disastrous policy for the Tories. The more astute kind of Conservative recognises this; the problem is much of the party does not. The still bigger problem is that too many Tories aren’t just cosying up to these people, they are these people.
Again – and this cannot be repeated too often – how you say something is just as important as what you say. You have to earn the right to be heard. If you want people to think you’re a party for people like them you have to respect people like them. And show that respect too. It’s not enough to claim it or boast about your bona fides, you need to earn them.
So let’s imagine how this plays with, say, people married to someone born outside the UK. Or to the people who are the children of people born outside the UK. How do you think this stuff makes them feel? Do you think this kind of rhetoric makes them more or less likely to vote Conservative?
It’s not a difficult question to answer.
If people think a party has a problem with people like them they’re not likely to vote for that party even if, on a policy-by-policy analysis they should, notionally, be more likely to support you than the other team. But if you defecate on their lawn don’t be surprised if they remember this and hold it against you.
You might think we’re talking about relatively few people here. Except it’s not just immigrants – whether from the old dominions, the other Commonwealth countries, old europe or eastern europe – that sense these things. It’s their friends too. Pretty soon, you know, you’re needlessly pissing off millions and millions of people. And quite a number of these people will be more reluctant than might otherwise be the case to support a party that seems so ill-at-ease with modern Britain. The Britain they know. The Britain they think is a rather wonderful place.
If the Tories want to be a party for old men that’s their right but it’s not a sensible long-term strategy. Not if they want to be a truly national party – across boundaries of class, generation, geography and race – it ain’t. They know this and yet they still can’t help themselves.
One of the truly great things about Britain is how easy it is to become British. It’s a baggy, capacious, identity that actually depends upon being so accessible, so, yes, polychrome and polyglot.
Macaulay once wrote admiringly of a British world in which “the Hindu and the Hibernian, the Gael and the Gurkha, the Sawney and the Saxon” were each “equal before the law”. A different time and a different world, of course, but, thanks a series of fits of absent-mindedness, modern Britain has come close to actually achieving something of this ideal. Of course problems remain, some of them serious, but in general and most of the time for the vast majority of our people, we are getting there.
A better, a more decent Conservative party would reckon this a virtue not a cause for despair. Cameron once seemed to want to lead that kind of Conservative party. What a shame he seems so disinclined to insist upon such things now.
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