Cracking article. You’re about to get roasted by everyone who thinks globalisation is unquestionably bad, though, and by everyone else who thinks Labour actually has answers to the above. It’s worth remembering that Labour’s response to the structural unemployment generated by globalisation was to stuff the mouths of the worst off with banker’s gold, and then blame the bankers when it ran out. Rather than, you know, actually try to solve the problem.

I have to ask – Labour blames immigration for what?

I don’t hear many in the Labour Party saying they lost the election because of immigration and because they didn’t resonate with public attitudes to immigration. Likewise Labour’s national campaign didn’t blame immigrants for social ills, while only one or two local campaigns did anything equivelent – and Labour itself is pretty appalled at the likes of Woolas because of it. (perhaps in part because it doesn’t work anyway)

If you mean Labour in terms of working people – then there is an issue here. And as I’ve said on other threads – most working class white people moan about immigration only because others have framed debate in that context. Others being the tabloid press mainly.

A quick conversation gets them into what they really care about like housing, schools and hospitals – and the notion that immigrants are to blame for shortages of any of the above falls by the wayside.

As for working class people being “shafted” – I agree that Labour was not ambitious enough – but the minimum wage – rapidly improving schools in poor areas – investment in better vocational studies – and higher rates of working class people going to uni – are not exactly “shafted”

These people rightly want more done to ensure they can thrive in a changed world. Immigration is just a terminology for every complain about everything because that’s how our press frames every complaint. (along with the tories before Cameron came along and changed the tone)

Interesting points, but I think that you are missing the point when you suggest that the Tories only want to support their own. If you base a campaign on them being ‘the nasty party’ then you will get nowhere because the vast majority of those who voted Tory are not nasty, they just think differently.

Btw, we are still the 6th largest manufacturing economy in the World, with manufacturing being a higher percentage of our GDP than France’s…

The gist of the analysis is sound. But the bit that’s missing is the massive enriching of the corporate classes and their courtiers (including the politicians).

Any solution to the terrible position of working people must begin by looking for ways to bring the wealth created by the country back within the control of government, and for progressive taxation to be used for redistribution and investment – in energy-efficient infrastructure and relevant skills.

How impossible they all cry. Well, when hundreds of thousands are homeless, millions flat-out broke, kids of 30 are at home with their spouses (including all those graduates), people will be ready to listen to much that now seems revolutionary.

@margin4error

“I have to ask – Labour blames immigration for what?”

Phil Woolas, when he was immigration minister, blamed immigration for unemployment.

“Phil Woolas told the Times immigration became an “extremely thorny” subject if people were losing their jobs.

“It’s been too easy to get into this country in the past and it’s going to get harder,” he said.”

Also – “I don’t hear many in the Labour Party saying they lost the election because of immigration and because they didn’t resonate with public attitudes to immigration.” Were you not watching the leadership campaign?

1) Andy Burnham launched his leadership campaign saying that Labour lost the election because they were out of touch on issues such as immigration.

“Andy Burnham will join the race to replace Gordon Brown, saying Labour “had our fingers in our ears and our hands over our eyes” over election issues including immigration.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/19/andy-burnham-labour-leadership-immigration

See also http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23837229-andy-burnham-labour-was-in-denial-over-immigration.do and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1280705/Labour-tried-stifle-debate-immigration.html

2) Ed Balls said that Gordon Brown had gotten out of touch on immigration: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jun/06/ed-balls-immigration-labour-leadership
‘”To be honest, I think Gordon’s answer to Mrs Duffy showed he’d not been having the conversation, because what she said was the kind of things being said by Labour supporters, and in some cases former Labour supporters over the last year and a half. [This] was: ‘Look, we’re not racist, and we support our EU membership and we know that immigration’s important for the NHS, but look what it’s doing to my community, to my child’s job prospects, to our housing queues’.”

The criticism is the strongest by any of the four former cabinet ministers contesting the Labour leadership. Balls has repeatedly said Labour lost touch with its voters on immigration, but he had not, until today, accused Brown of ignoring advice offered by himself and others.’

See also http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23835530-ed-balls-set-to-throw-hat-in-the-ring-for-labour-leadership.do

3) Ed Miliband presumably shares Burnham’s thesis on why Labour lost the election, or he wouldn’t have given Burnham responsibility for electoral campaigning.

See also this from Don Paskini on Ed M’s stance on immigration: http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/05/15/the-unfairness-of-ed-miliband/

Hope this clarifies the issue for you.

I don’t write for a position of expertise, but I would have thought that a possible solution would be to invest in science and technology, education and the right kinds of industry in order to build up the countries skilled manufacturing base where we can actually compete. And to funnel money away from financial services, which only seem to offer very short term gains, to do it.

It also seems bizarre to be panic cutting in order to deal with a defecit that isn’t going to get any smaller if the economy is stuffed, and which if allowed to continue will only force us to make the kinds of cuts we’re already making.

Cory

taking Andy Burnham’s list of things labour was out of touch on (and it was out of touch on a lot) – and focusing on immigration alone as being the one he blamed – is weak analysis at best, and deliberately disingenuous at worst.

Likewise simply read Ed Balls’ comment that you youself posted and you’ll see that while he makes mention of public talk about immigration, he stresses that they don’t oppose immigration, that they appreciate the benefits of it, and that their concern is jobs and housing.

Also – the Ed must agree with Burnham comment is utterly fatuous. I’m fairly sure Cable doesn’t agree on everything with John Redwood for example. But they agree on enough that they serve the same over all aim.

So don’t be so utterly fatuous.

More importantly

Is there anything there (lets ignore Woolas for a minute, as Labour itself largely considers him a coward and a blight) that shows Labour blaming immigration for society’s ills?

Is there anything there showing Labour decided to hold up immigration as a scapegoat to direct the public towards?

Indeed Is there much there at all other than comments that the public raise the issue (true) and that it this needs addressing (also true)?

Because I can’t help but return to Ed Balls’ comments in particular among those you posted – though Burnham did much the same throughout the leadership contest too – stressing that actually the core of the problem isn’t immigrants themselves but people worried about jobs and housing. (among other things)

Which is exactly what I found and confronted in East London throughout the election.

Richard

That is the solution. Investing more heavilly in education and training and infrastructure that can support greater growth and inclusion of the wider public.

Most parties know to say that is the answer. Labour followed that direction in office but was not ambitious enough. The jury is out on whether the current govt walks the walk following its recent promising talk.

John Gray (not a leftie – what is he this month? A green “we’re all DOOMED!” merchant I think) on why the Marxist socialist Ralph Miliband might have been right about Labour all along and the dilemmas this presents his sons (written before Ed was elected leader).

Also a useful corrective to those who believe New Labour can still stagger along after the economic crisis – those, in all parties, who believe we can return to a status quo ante of the ’90s and early noughties are a bit like those who believed we could return to the Edwardian era after August 1914.

“If one of the Miliband brothers wins the Labour leadership and becomes prime minister he will confront in an acute form the constraints on the power of the state his father astutely identified. Rather than controlling or reshaping capitalism, a Miliband government would find itself struggling to preserve Britain’s social democratic inheritance in the face of capitalism’s renewed disorder.

Ralph Miliband seems never to have lost the Marxist faith that history would eventually open the way to a truly socialist society. He would surely have appreciated the curious dialectic through which it has fallen to his sons to defend the social democracy he so fiercely attacked”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/06/ralph-miliband-brothers-john-gray

Title should be amended: ‘working class betrayal’ makes it look like the working class did the betraying. Should be ‘betrayal of the working class’.

This is a bit hard to evaluate – presumably you’d say that if we had “sacrificed the massive economic gains” in order not to screw the working classes, they’d be better off on net. Otherwise it is possible that sacrificing massive gains to protect the working classes could have left them worse-off, in which case not clear it was a betrayal not to do it.

I presume you’re thinking of things like trade protectionism, price controls etc. as the things that could have been done to not screw the working class but at great economic sacrifice. I don’t know the extent to which sins of policy omission or commission screwed the working class, versus things like globalization and tech change. Am I right in guessing that the respect in which you think they’ve been screwed isn’t so much the level of real wages (because you mention lower prices) but things like the share of national income, the nature of available jobs, and less tangible things like status? (I’m not disputing, just asking).

I wish I had a better idea of what policies might un-screw the working classes. The big question imho is what would increase the supply of better paid better condition jobs at the lower end of the distribution, absent explicit government job creation and wage controls. What I mean is, if you imagine two economies both without explicit job creation and wage controls, why would one have better jobs at the low end than the other? I’d love to understand that more. I’m not quite as convinced that education is the magic bullet but maybe it’s the best we’ve got.

@Margin4error

I don’t think it should be so easy to ignore Woolas’s comments. He was Minister for Immigration for 18 months, and was made shadow for that position by Ed Miliband as well. You can’t just sweep his views under the carpet. And when he was immigration minister he blamed unemployment on immigration. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore it.

I also don’t think I’m being fatuous. You asked where Labour politicians had said that concerns over immigration lost them the election. And in all of the cases I linked to, all contenders said that concern over immigration (admittedly other issues too, but immigration seems to be foremost in their minds) was a key role. In one of the articles I linked to, Burnham says “it was the biggest doorstep issue in constituencies where Labour lost.” What more is there to say?

Yes, they are speaking in favour of immigration, and yes, often concerns over “immigration” are actually down to factors eg housing. Sadly, in government Labour talked of asylum seekers “swamping” Britain (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/apr/25/immigrationpolicy.immigration). Again, this goes back to the points earlier: Woolas is an extreme example of a very nasty streak in New Labour’s governance.

The reason I made the Burnham/Miliband link is that Burnham had made it quite clear that he was going for a more populist campaign, talking about immigration and dismissing electoral reform as a concern for “Guardian readers”. Presumably Ed Miliband must have thought reasonably highly of this campaign for him to appoint Burnham election co-ordinator? It doesn’t mean they agree on every issue, but Ed must approve the type of campaign Burnham would run? And lo and behold, Burnham says Labour won’t campaign for AV (a manifesto pledge) in May. Again, I hope this point didn’t seem fatuous, but reappointing Woolas to a shadow minister role and putting Burnham in charge of the election campaign looks like Labour resorting to the same populist tone in immigration as they were doing in government.

Am I right in guessing that the respect in which you think they’ve been screwed isn’t so much the level of real wages (because you mention lower prices) but things like the share of national income, the nature of available jobs, and less tangible things like status? (I’m not disputing, just asking).

Yes, pretty much. And also the consignment of many less skilled working class people in low-income areas to permanent unemployment.

Cory

I don’t like it but I’m not ignoring it. I wanted him out of Labour and out of Parliament following his campaign. Ed Miliband couldn’t really avoid giving him his shadow cabinet post back as he couldn’t really be seen to pre-judge the case – but he’s gone now and one exception hardly makes a rule.

Again you extrapolate that immigration was “foremost” in the minds of Andy Burnham and Ed Balls with no indication this was the case. Neither spent very much time talking about immigration in their leadership campaigns at all. (I would suggest, based on what they talked about, Balls had economics and the cuts ‘foremost’ in his mind – and Burnham had working class reputation in Westminster ‘foremost’ in his.)

As for the link – I think the comments of another unpopular extreme like Blunkett, in 2002, hardly represents Labour blaming immigration for social ills or the election loss in 2010. We could equally point to Frank Field’s who has whittered on about immigration for a decade – but since he’s now basically a tory and is utterly unrepresentative of labour thinking it hardly seems the best guage of the party’s behavour.

And I don’t see how Burnham being opposed to AV shows he is blaming immigration for anything. Indeed if you followed the campaign you’ll note that he spent most of it campaigning for greater working class representation in politics. His key proposals were things like banning unpaid internships (a method of making politics a closed shop for the home counties’ middle classes) and requiring each Labour MP to take on a local intern – paid – so as to help provide a chanel for working class youngsters to engage with politics.

Indeed one could extrapolae from that that he was the candidate who most focused on “working class betrayal” having focused so heavilly on the need to better represent working class people in politics (a founding principle of the labour party) – and again – none of his comments on immigration ammount to criticism of immigrants or immigration or holding immigrants up as a scapegoat.

I should stress as well, as you’ve picked out Burnham, I have a lot of friends who were involved in his campaign. Ironically two of them are immigrants. And there was no part of his message to members that attacked immigration. He has remained pro-immigration for years. He, like others in the Labour party, feel we need to better make the case for immigration and recognise that working class concerns about immigration are actually concerns about other things like housing and schools. (recognising that worked well in east london, where Labour took on the BNP, Respect, the Christian Alliance, and more conventional foes like the tories – and increased their vote)

@margin4error

1) Right at the start of all this, you said: “I don’t hear many in the Labour Party saying they lost the election because of immigration and because they didn’t resonate with public attitudes to immigration.”

Andy Burnham said immigration “was the biggest doorstep issue in constituencies where Labour lost.”

It wasn’t the cornerstone of Burnham and Ball’s campaigns (I agree with your analysis of them) but I think Burnham’s comment rebuts your point.

2) Woolas and Blunkett are merely two of the most extreme examples of Labour dog whistle politics on immigration and asylum. The point with dog whistle politics is that you never EXPLICITLY blame immigration for anything, isn’t it? And what was “British jobs for British workers” if not dog whistling? Any lefty government worth its salt would promise “Jobs for worker”. Or just “jobs”. “British jobs for British workers” sings from the BNP hymn sheet, doesn’t it?

3) Labour does need to better make the case for immigration, but never really bothered to in government. If it had bothered, why would they have appointed Woolas as minister for immigration?

Cory

Again you pick out that Andy Burnham quote – but he hardly blames immigrants or immigration for the defeat. He blames Labour for failing to address public concerns, which, as I have said elsewhere, tend to have been best addressed by going just one level deeper and realising that while they talk about immigration, what they are really concerned about is housing and schools and so on. Burnham himself made big play of that at one of the hustings I saw – as did Ed Miliband, by coincidence. Burnham’s entire campaign was, in effect, a counter-point to the working class being “betrayed” by the middle and upper classes that make up the political establishment (including Labour, though less so than the other parties).

Brown’s “British jobs for british workers” was indeed the point at which I gave up hoping he’d ever have the courage to be a good leader. It went utterly against anything he actually believed but he went with a bland and frightened response to a simplistic argument. And I wouldn’t say there was much “dog whistle” about Blunkett and Woolas. They were upfront and wrong. But they were not the norm.

On 3 though – I partly agree. In government Labour did make the case for immigration. But like other things it lacked ambition on the issue. One can hardly argue that it didn’t make the case that immigration benefits the country when it opposed a temporary block on new EU member state migration – while its main opposition and almost all the press was screaming blue murder about the polish and lithuanians flooding the country. But likewise one can hardly argue it made the case for immigration forcefully or well.