It seems typical of Labour’s reaction to being removed from office after 13 frustrating years in power that it should have decided to disown one of its braver, better, bolder decisions: the decision to permit unfettered movement from Poland and other EU-accession countries to the United Kingdom. It takes a special kind of malignancy to disown your most benign moment in power. But this is where Labour are; trapped in equal measure by their search for populism and their weakness for authoritarianism.
First it was Ed Balls, then it was Yvette Cooper and then Ed Miliband himself. Each apologised for decisions that did their party – and their country – credit. And in its place nothing but a dreary parochialism based on fear-mongering, dubious economics (whatever that nice Mr Liddle says) and a great abandonment of principle. Then again, Labour is not a liberal party so little of this should surprise anyone.
Labour’s decision – whether thought through or not – to honour our obligations to the new EU member-states did it great credit. If Britons should be free to work in other EU states so citizens of those states should be free to work in the United Kingdom. And since EU expansion was a long-standing British foreign policy goal, insisting that some kind of Pass Laws apply to new members of the Union was both wrong in principle and a betrayal of British ambitions.
Furthermore, if one believes in free trade and in completing the single market, it is perverse to argue that protectionism is wrong for goods but fine for labour. These are some of the points Jonathan Portes, now director of the National Institute of Econmic and Social Research, makes in this splendid post. As he puts it:
[First] The UK had long been the most vigorous proponent of membership for the countries of the former Eastern bloc; they were seen (correctly) as likely allies for the UK’s generally liberal positions in EU debates. So the decision was seen as a way of cementing our relationship with them, and in particular the Polish government.
Second, the economics. The UK labour market was in good shape; and all the analysis suggested that immigrant workers – particularly the reasonably well educated and motivated ones likely to arrive from the new Member States – were likely to boost the UK’s economy without doing much if any damage to the prospects of native workers.
And third, the practicalities. Free movement is an absolute right within the EU, so we couldn’t stop the new citizens coming here; we could only stop them (for a while) working legally. The assumption was that if we did so, they’d still come, and still work, just not legally. This hardly seemed like an attractive alternative.
Quite so. And where, pray, does it all end? If the free movement of people between countries – one of the greatest advances in human liberty, opportunity and prosperity in decades, incidentally – is a terrible thing then, logically, one might think the free movement of people within an individual state might also be considered a problem to be regretted. That is, were hundreds of thousands of Scots to decide to move to London would this too be thought a dreadful matter for which the government of the day should apologise? (Hello Mr Wilkes, how nice to see you again!) Would it be terrible if 200,000 Yorkshiremen moved to Cornwall? Perhaps it would be considered so but the principle of the thing seems broadly comparable. The same might be said of the Irish or Australians temporarily in Britain. So where do you want to build your walls? How high must they be? And whom are they supposed to keep out?All of these arguments were correct at the time. And on the economics in particular, the analysis has been vindicated.
On the contrary, the opportunity to leave and the chance to work elsewhere is one of the hallmarks of a civilised society (one of the many reasons why China fails this test); the ability to welcome workers from overseas one of the qualities of an open, modern society at ease with itself.
Of course immigration, like other social change, can discombobulate people and it’s not unreasonable to note and take that seriously. Nevertheless, leadership is, in part, about making the case for measures that, even if they be widely misunderstood, are in the national interest. Labour, on the other hand, now seem determined to disown the better aspects of their past, surrendering them to the vindictive judgement of a tabloid press they claim to hate. That’s their prerogative for sure but it’s not something that should impress any liberal.
Allowing, indeed welcoming, immigration from Poland and other parts of eastern europe was a test for Britain and one this country actually passed. That should be a matter of some pride, not something to be abandoned as quickly as possible. It was a mark of British confidence and, more than that, the right thing to do. That would have been the case even if the economic arguments about immigration conclusively supported the restrictionists*. But they do not and so Labour’s policy had, perhaps unusually, the advantage of being pragmatic and principled. It was a reminder that Britain was and is a trading nation open to the world. That used to be considered a good thing and it is odd to see this suddenly denied.
*Even if this were the case, a utilitarian argument would, I think, still support the free movement of peoples.
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