The politics of stupid

 

I had a conversation on social media recently that went a bit like this (and I’m paraphrasing):

‘I want massive reductions in immigration’

‘But how? Stopping firms or the public sector’s hiring Labour, or collapsing a number of universities? How much poorer do you think people will be prepared to be?’

‘Figure it out or Reform will’

‘You want a large reduction in immigration so you tell me how it will be achieved and at what cost’

‘I'm not a immigration policy expert. What I'm saying is either Labour does it or the populists will.’

I feel that, since the success of Reform at the last General Election and Trump’s victory, a good deal of public discourse is a bit like this. It is dumb politics. Never mind the facts or the consequences, we need to do what the populists want, or repeat what they say, otherwise their march to victory will be unstoppable.

The fear is real enough. Trump did win, and in a recent poll 28% of people had a favourable view of Nigel Farage, higher than any other party leader. A majority of people voted for Brexit. But the lesson of Brexit is not that Cameron should have screwed the economy by even more than he already had in an attempt to hit his immigration targets. The only way Cameron could be sure to hit his immigration targets would have been to stop free movement, which would have meant Brexit, so Brexit to stop Brexit!

One consequence of Brexit is that the government can now largely control immigration numbers if they want to.

The chart above shows numbers have been unusually high because of people coming to study or work, so all the government has to do to get the numbers right down is to stop issuing work visas and tell universities to stop teaching overseas students. Suppose the government did just that. The negative consequences do not need spelling out, but does anyone seriously think that Farage would say that was great, my job is done? He would just go back to pointing at asylum seekers arriving by boat.

The politics of stupid is believing that the way to deal with Farage or Trump type populism is to do what Farage or Trump happens to be shouting about at the time. Concern about immigration is real enough, but it is important to ask why there is concern about immigration. To put it very simply, there are probably two types of reasons why voters find populists going on about immigration attractive. The first is that these voters don’t like foreigners. Immigration numbers don’t matter to these people when there are already plenty of foreign looking people already here. The second type are voters who mistakenly think that problems like finding it difficult to see a doctor or buy a house are because of immigration. Cutting immigration is only likely to make those problems worse, by stopping doctors or construction workers coming to the UK 

The last twenty years or more in the UK is a clear illustration of why populist appeasement doesn’t work. For example, in an effort to reduce immigration numbers the last government effectively closed down almost all safe routes for refugees to enter the UK. So now refugees risk their lives to cross the Channel in small boats. The last government spent extraordinary amounts of money on the Rwanda scheme to deter asylum seekers crossing the Channel that was never going to work. It did them no good whatsoever. The scheme was stupid, and the government was stupid to invest so much political capital in it. If you are genuinely worried about refugees arriving by boat, provide safe routes.

The most glaring example of the futility of appeasing the populists is Brexit. Leave the EU, the populists cried, and everything will be great. We left the EU, and pretty much everything is worse as a result. Has the failure of this populist cause done its main protagonist any harm? Clearly not. However it has made people poorer and more discontented, adding fuel to the populist fire. Following the populist path with Brexit has only encouraged populism.  

If believing that doing what right wing populists ask for will reduce populism’s appeal is dumb, then aping what they say is worse still. Describing immigration policy under the previous government as running an ‘open borders experiment’ is as misleading coming from Starmer’s lips as it is from Farage. The immigration system put in place after Brexit involves clear rules about who can get visas, excluding immigration into most unskilled (effectively low paid) jobs. That is not open borders!

Repeating that kind of nonsense does great harm. It misinforms the public, which is bad enough, but it does so in a way that helps the populist! Imagine if, when Trump said that he had heard immigrants were stealing pets and eating them in Springfield, Harris had replied that if she was elected she would put a stop to that. No one is going to vote for politicians because they start acting like Farage or Trump, when they can already vote for Farage or Trump.

For those who find Farage appealing because they don’t like foreigners, I doubt there is much you could do to reduce his appeal beyond exposing aspects of his behaviour (like his attitude to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the NHS) that are less attractive to those voters. This inability is particularly the case when the right has a media machine pumping out stories about ‘criminal immigrants’ and ‘invasions’. However, the outlook is less bleak for those with mistaken beliefs about the economic consequences of immigration. These misunderstandings must be engaged or they will continue. The first step in reducing the populist’s appeal to this group is to talk about the jobs immigrants come here to do. Such discussions are also the best way of both understanding immigration, and in some circumstances to perhaps potentially reducing it.   

I often say that asking people if they would like lower immigration is a bit like asking if they would like lower taxes, or if they want more money for the NHS. I use this example, because it shows that it is possible to move public discourse to routinely look at the consequences of actions. It has become second nature for journalists to ask politicians proposing extra spending to ask where will the money come from. (Although unfortunately less routine to ask the same question to those proposing tax cuts.) It could become equally routine to ask how cuts to immigration would be achieved, and what the costs would be.

If we don’t start doing this, public discourse on immigration will remain dumb, and in those circumstances only the populist wins.