I have talked before
about why triangulation over austerity did not work for Labour, but
why triangulation over Brexit seems to be more successful. Tony
Blair’s latest intervention
suggests it is worth asking the same question about immigration. (The
report
that he launched is well worth reading.) It is a question that lies
at the heart of many Labour MPs views on the politics of Brexit.
One of the lessons
from austerity is that it is very dangerous to triangulate on an
issue where you appear, as a result, to admit fault or blame. If the
deficit is a problem (in 2011, say), why did you let it get so large
on your watch? This was why ‘too far, too fast’ failed: you
acknowledge a problem, and therefore implicitly admit guilt. Getting
over the idea that there is a delicate balancing act between reducing
the deficit and protecting the recovery is difficult, particularly as
it is also an incorrect idea.
It is an obvious
point, but exactly the same was true for immigration. Just look at
the headlines.
The parallels with immigration and the deficit are clear. In office,
Labour did the right thing in ignoring the deficit in 2009, and they
also did the right thing in allowing substantial EU immigration
before then. In both cases the instincts of many voters is to do the
opposite: the government should tighten its belt in a recession just
like the rest of us, and the country should be able to control and
limit who comes in. In both cases, the moment a government that in
the past appeared to ignore these voter instincts starts to appear to
suggest the instincts are valid, they trash their own record.
You could argue that
while this is clearly right for Miliband and 2015, it has less
salience for Corbyn rather than Blair today. You could go further and
say that what works for Brexit will work with immigration. Just as
triangulation gets you the votes of those who sort of want Brexit but
worry about the economic consequences, so too could triangulation
over immigration get you the votes of those who want to control
immigration but are worried about the economic consequences of May’s
obsession with hitting targets.
Here I think we need
to look at a second problem with triangulation, which is that the
nature of the political debate is influenced by it (is endogenous to
it). With Brexit it means that neither of the two main political
parties is making the case against Brexit, so the (non-partisan)
mainstream political debate tends to ignore the anti-Brexit case. One
of the unfortunate consequences of the way the BBC and others
interpret impartiality is to see it in terms of the two main
political parties, rather than (in this case) the population as a
whole, so the views of half the population get largely ignored.
You could argue that
this may be of secondary importance for an issue like Brexit, because
the anti-Brexit case is still fresh in the mind from the referendum
campaign. But that is much less true of immigration. Immigration is
now well and truly defined in the media as a ‘problem’, and it is
very rare to hear a politician (or anyone else) sing its praises.
(Jonathan Portes does his best, but when a well known BBC commentator
says
his views will not win many votes, you get a clear idea of what is
going on. [1]) May is quite safe from the media when she says
immigration reduces wages and access to public services. The
implication of all this together with a large partisan print media is
politicians fear talking about the benefits of immigration because
that may ruin a carefully triangulated position.
The reality is of
course very different. Study
after study
after study
(from academics, not partisan think tanks) shows how much we benefit
from EU migration, and how it has virtually no impact on wages.
Immigration increases
the resources available to provide public services by more than it
uses those services. Yet this knowledge is not reflected in the media
discourse. The reason is straightforward: the political right wants
to use immigration as both an excuse (for the impact of austerity)
and a weapon (to achieve Brexit, for example), and the left by and
large keeps quiet because it is triangulating.
People in the media
may object by quoting polls that suggest the public overwhelming
wants to control immigration: they are just reflecting that opinion.
(But see footnote [1].) But polls also say people want less taxes. If
you dig deeper public attitudes are far more nuanced than the public
debate suggests. Here is some data, from an international study,
by IPSOS-MORI:
“British people have become more positive about the impact of
immigration over recent years. Forty-five per cent say immigration
has been good the economy, up from 38% a year ago and from 27% in
2011, and 38% say immigration has made it harder for native Britons
to get a job, down from 48% a year ago and 62% in 2011. However,
Britain is one of the countries most worried about the pressure
placed on public services by immigration, with 59% concerned –
although this too is down from 68% a year ago and from 76% in 2011,
when Britain was the most worried of all the countries surveyed.”
In other words, as I have emphasised before,
the thing that most worries people in the UK about immigration is a
myth. Yet triangulation, together with the way the media creates what
I call
‘politicised truths’, means that voters are unlikely to find out
what the facts are. [2]
The way this ambivalence is often articulated is through the issue of
skill. 75% of people want
skilled migration to stay the same or increase, while the consensus
is that we should have less low or semi-skilled migrants. Yet if you
name some categories of semi-skilled migrants, it turns out a
majority want the same or more care worker, waiters, construction
workers [3] and fruit pickers. As Rick says
“apart from the care workers, construction workers, waiters and
fruit pickers, what have low skilled* EU migrants ever done for us?” Skill has just
become a way of people reconciling their wish for lower immigration
in abstract with a recognition that immigration is good for the
economy. It is like wanting lower taxes achieved through improving
the efficiency of public services.
So how can something
that people are ambivalent about become a major political issue that
helped push us out of the EU? One answer is the sheer weight of
numbers, and for some particular regions not previously experiencing
inward migration that seems
to be true. (It also reflects the inertia in public service
provision.) But the rise of anti-immigration sentiment elsewhere in
Europe where recent flows are not
exceptional suggests other forces are at work. In part it is
far-right parties exploiting fears about terrorism. But much more
importantly in the UK, it reflects the deliberate exploitation of
immigration as an issue by the Conservative party.
This predates the
increase in immigration from Eastern Europe. In 2001 William Hague
talked
about Tony Blair wanting to turn the UK into a ‘foreign land’.
The political temptation on the right to play the immigration card is
strong, but until Brexit it has always been duplicitous. The wiser
heads in the Cameron/Osborne government never wanted to hit their own
targets because of the economic damage it would cause, and as a
result they did not even bother to use all the controls that were
available
with free movement. As Chris Dillow says,
immigration was the only scapegoat left to deflect concern about
austerity and stagnant productivity. Immigration scapegoating became
part of what I have called
neoliberal overreach. [4]
This is I think the
main reason why triangulation over immigration is not an effective
strategy. By trying to appeal to those who are moderately concerned
about immigration, Labour falls into a right wing trap, which is to
implicitly validate their scapegoating. You can only convincingly
argue that scarce public services are due to austerity rather than
immigration if you can argue at the same time that immigration brings
more resources to the public sector than it uses. You can only argue
that economic policy is responsible for stagnant wages if you also
say that it is not the fault of immigrants. Labour should go with its
members
and argue for the benefits of immigration, and in particular free
movement with the EU. [5]
[1] This simple
exchange illustrated so clearly to me why the BBC’s so called
mission to inform and explain is often no more than a joke. Rather
than regard popular beliefs that are incorrect as something the BBC
has a duty to try and reverse, they are instead used to dismiss
expertise.
[2] This is not just
a UK phenomenon: around the world
politicians use immigrants as scapegoats.
[3] I’m often told
that economic studies of the benefits of immigration ignore ‘existing
capital like housing’. Yet we need migrants to help build more
houses for natives as well as migrants. The only thing that migrants
cannot bring to the UK is more land, but with an effective regional
policy which we desperately need anyway we have plenty of land.
[4] Some have asked
why I called it overreach, when most just talk about the collapse of
neoliberalism? For a start, using immigration as a political weapon
is not a natural consequence of neoliberalism, and instead comes more
from the social conservative part of right wing parties. Also while I
think neoliberalism encouraged austerity, I can quite imagine those
with neoliberal views forsaking it.
[5] There is an
argument that free movement should be opposed because it is unfair to
non-EU migrants. Yet you could make the same point about any trade
agreement between two countries: it is unfair on all other countries.
Arguments about equity that make some people worse off and no one
better off give equity a bad name.
