This is long overdue – very important stuff. I did snigger a bit to read that 3% of those sympathetic to the EDL plan to vote Liberal Democrats.

Why doesn’t someone say something about the BNP being an left wing party when you ‘actually’ read their manifesto? I like it when Tories try to get racists to vote for their party, ‘you don’t want to vote for the BNP, Norman Tebbitt says they are actually left wing.’ Then post a link to show a Tory saying how left wing the BNP actually are.

” The report also destroys the myth that EDL supporters are ex-Labour supporters who have left the party; most betray right-wing sympathies: ”

It may be a myth. However, do you think that citing their future voting intentions destroys the myth? If they were ex-Labour would that not mean the number of voting intentions for other parties exclusive of Labour would go up? An ex-Labour voter is hardly likely to be saying that they will be voting Labour in the future. The clue being in the ex.

The report also destroys the myth that EDL supporters are ex-Labour supporters who have left the party

That cannot be inferred.

The survey asked about voting intentions among supporters, not about previous patterns of voting. You know full well that the EDL (and the BNP) thrive in white working class communities and that these are Labour’s traditional constituency.

That fact may be uncomfortable for you, but it is dishonest to try to spin the report in an attempt to disguise it.

Obviously, as people have pointed out, the future voting statistics show absolutely nothing about past support for Labour.

But what is more fascinating is the mere fact that Sunny wanted to pretend otherwise. What’s the point in pretending that EDL have never won support from Labour? Is it meant to suggest that Labour never lost votes to the right, only to the left? Is it meant to imply that Labour should only try to win over middle class liberals? Is it an attempt to close down debate on immigration policy?

I just don’t get what the point of it is.

The report also destroys the myth that EDL supporters are ex-Labour supporters who have left the party; most betray right-wing sympathies:

They were asked: Who would they vote for?

My God. Is it really up to me to point out the bleeding obvious – this question shows who they would vote for. We want to know who they used to vote for. That is the only question that will tell us whether they are ex-Labour supporters or not. Who they will vote for is irrelevant.

Oldandrew @5:

“I just don’t get what the point of it is.”

He’s hoping to avoid guilt by association. Saying that the Tories are all closet racists is one of their opponents’ favourite attacks, and its effectiveness might be diminished somewhat if it turns out that lots of Labour supporters are also racist.

I reckon someone should say something about Labour abandoning the white working classes, and how the man in the pub won’t be voting Labour anymore because it doesn’t represent the working classes anymore.

So Much For Subtlety sucks cocks in hell.

All BNP and EDL sympathisers I work with and know will vote Conservative in a Con/Lad/Lib contest and most have never voted Labour or Lib in their voting lives.

Actually I think Sunny has just got the question wrong – it was how people had voted in 2010 rather than future voting intention. That’s why the public figures are for the last general election rather than latest polling figures.

Also:

“BNP – 34%”

Isn’t the BNP’s support largely made up of disillusioned ex-Labour voters? So the fact that lots of EDL members plan of voting BNP isn’t really evidence that they aren’t ex-Labour.

The biggest myth of the EDL is that they are representative of “the white working class” or just the working class. I would assume the ‘ex-labour voters’ myth is a lazy extrapolation of this particular myth based on the idea that Labour had a monopoly on working class votes. (which given how massive a proportion of the population belong to the working class, white or otherwise, would mean that Labour should really enjoy pretty much total dominion of British politics)

@4: spot on. The author is simply confusing cause and effect. Who EDL people might vote in the future is no proof about who they were voting in the past. It is quite clear that many are feeling let down by Labour in Britain and traditional social democratic parties in other European countries. That they won’t be considering voting socialist parties in the future is telling you that the socialist parties have done something wrong.

As this CiF article says – ”The heart of the EDL army is online, not on the streets.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/30/edl-heart-facebook

Of course EDL sympathisers will be pretty disgusted with the Harriet Harman style Labour party. It’s far too contrived, and in the view of the peole I’ve seen who do turn out on their demomstrations, far too ”politically correct” and controlling. They are more likely to say ”F off ….. what about this?” …. and then go on to explain some story they read about in the newspaper about people taking the mickey out of their country.

“Saying that the Tories are all closet racists is one of their opponents’ favourite attacks, and its effectiveness might be diminished somewhat if it turns out that lots of Labour supporters are also racist.”

That assumes that it is effective in the first place. Telling voters that the Tories are being racist has never been one of Labour’s strongest cards (even when the Tories *are* being racist).

The biggest myth of the EDL is that they are representative of “the white working class” or just the working class.

Well, they sure as hell look more representative than the Labour Party. But tell us, just who is more representative of the white working class? Perhaps you could rank the major parties in term of their representativeness.

which given how massive a proportion of the population belong to the working class, white or otherwise, would mean that Labour should really enjoy pretty much total dominion of British politics

Dunno about that. According to the MRS, Britain is split 50/50 into working class/middle class. See, e.g., mrs.org.uk/publications/downloads/occgroups6.pdf

I’d not heard the ‘myth that EDL supporters are ex-labour supporters’ although I do know that the BNP’s electoral base is concentrated in Labour areas and their council wins have almost all been from Labour (ie ex-Labour areas).

Having gone through the report I want to back up what commenters are saying in that it says nothing about EDL supporters’ previous political affiliations (and to be clear how someone voted in 2010 tells us very little about whether these are people who became disillusioned with the Labour government). This article is just wrong.

It’s a very interesting report and people should take the time to read it, but I’m a little concerned that this article is based on a misunderstanding of that report which means we’ll end up talking about that rather than the useful and interesting stats that Demos have dug up.

The report also destroys the myth that EDL supporters are ex-Labour supporters who have left the party; most betray right-wing sympathies:

They were asked: Who would they vote for?

BNP – 34% (public: 2%)
UKIP – 14% (3%)
Conservative – 14% (36%)
Labour – 9% (29%)
Lib Dem – 3% (23%)

If you asked M. Phillips or P. Hitchens “who would you vote for” and they replied with a right-wing party it wouldn’t “destroy the myth” that they used to be left-wing. The key words are “used to be”.

I’m not saying it’s true that EDLers used to vote for Labour – hell, I’d guess that many of ‘em weren’t old enough to vote before 2010 – but this doesn’t “destroy” the notion.

@17 All three of the major parties memberships are more representative of the working classes than the EDL or BNP.

“Isn’t the BNP’s support largely made up of disillusioned ex-Labour voters?”

There’s not really much evidence for that supposition.

Probably the best poll on this, which was by YouGov and looked in detail at the 2009 European elections, with a sufficiently large sample to draw meaningful conclusions about the BNP vote, did not ask about previous general election voting, but of those BNP Euro voters who did not intend to vote BNP at the 2010 general election, more than three times as many intended to vote Conservative as Labour.

That was not surprising as most of them placed themselves well to the right on the political spectrum, had a more positive view of the Conservative Party than the Labour Party, and preferred a Labour rather than Tory government given a “forced choice”, though I’d also note that in general they weren’t too positive about the Tories either and would mostly vote UKIP in the absence of a BNP candidate.

A study of aggregated data from four polling companies for politicalbetting.com, also in 2009, suggested that around two thirds of BNP voters did not vote for any major party previously and most of them did not previously vote at all.

Anthony Wells suggested that most of the BNP support came from what used to be “working class Tories” and I think that’s probably about right, though no doubt many might have voted Labour at some point and many probably did in ’97.

Isn’t the BNP’s support largely made up of disillusioned ex-Labour voters?

Also exposed as bollocks plenty of times. I’m not surprised many people are trying to rubbish the above – it goes against what they’ve been trying to pretend for years.

4 richard w thanks, silly headline ,not based on facts

@17 Now that I’m able to access that PDF, I notice that approximately 77% (Minus out the petite bourgeoisie from the 28% of group C1) are made up of working class, the Middle classes largely occupy band B at 20% with those who own and control the means of production taking up the final 3%.

There is no mention of ownership of assets in the survey–it’s coded according to occupation.

Middle class: ABC1: 51%
Working class: C2DE: 49%

C1 includes basic office workers – they’re working class, as I would argue are junior management, who are basic shift supervisors and thus hold no real disciplinary power, usually requiring a middle manager to intervene. The owners of small establishments however are not of the working class, such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon of the EDL, for example. Working class =/= just manual workers, it means ALL workers who are not middle management or above.

Well, that’s certainly not how NRS understand the decomposition.

And of course, if you redefine working class idiosyncratically, then you can obtain any relative proportions that you like.

@27

Well, that’s certainly not how NRS understand the decomposition

An administrative assistant at the DWP earns £12,590 – £14,270 a year and occupies group C1 (“and all others in non-manual positions.”), are you willing to argue that they are in fact Middle class, while I, a fork-lift driver on 17k+ a year, occupying group D am working class?
I contend that we would be both working class, but the nature of our work is different. Regardless of what the National Readership Survey pulled out of their arse 50 years ago.

To return to what started this conversation, why do you think the EDL is representative of the working class?

Cylux is absolutely right. There is nothing ‘idyosyncratic’ about it, those are terms of class that Marx would recognise, hardly an idyosyncratic source. You may not agree with that but then I thought the right-wing story was that class doesn’t exist?

Cylux is also right about all three main parties having more working-class support than the EDL/BNP. Their supporters are racists, football hooligans, criminals (coke-dealing petit-bourg Yaxley Lennon is all three.) I dare say a few of them are naive misguided working-class types who could eventually be won back to a Labour party which spoke clearly and straightforwardly for their class, and hurrah for that. But the EDl and BNP are an unrepresentative minority, led by a hardcore of hard-right racists, and ‘engaging’ with the ill-informed yobbish, bigoted shite with which they have been fed is no way whatsoever to ‘re-connect’ with the working-class. You do that by supporting the millions of people in communities across Britain currently fighting against austerity and cuts, and making the rich and bankers pay their share. Obvious, but true.

Arthur Seaton,

AFAIK Cylux didn’t say that the three main parties had more working class support, and so it couldn’t have been disputed by me, were I even of a mind to dispute it. (Which I am not, for obvious reasons).

Cylux,

Well, quite. I could just as easily say: I’m moving the whole of C2 up to middle class, which brings it to about 70% of the population. Anyway, I agree that this is largely a pointless argument. I know what I mean, and you know what you mean. We will both just have to suffer the horror of using the same words to describe slightly different things. I’m sure Marx is spinning in his grave.

As for the EDL, I wrote that they seemed more representative of the white working class than the Labour party, or other main parties. I know quite a few people who are angry about immigration, about the division of welfare, about their prospects, etc. Perhaps they are not the smartest tools in the shed, as a rule, and perhaps a world in which they had more of a say would not be a particularly nice world, but nevertheless, they seem like they exist, and they do not seem to be represented by the main parties.

That is simply a matter of personal judgement. If you disagree, then maybe you have access to different television stations–the ones I watch feature politicians who are basically a bunch of metropole liberal over privileged ciphers, and who certainly don’t bear any relation to the kind of people I see when I go to Ashton or Oldham, nor do they do anything to further their interests.

Really, if anything there’s a myth of a myth of the EDL. The generic argument is just a never-ending circular argument of de-legitimisation. Obviously, the people who support the EDL are racists. No one agrees with them anyway. Therefore, no one should listen to a word they say. If you agree with them, then you must be a no one too. But these are precisely people who are supposedly already represented by the main parties!

The fact is that a great many people do not like the pace, and even the fact, of immigration–that’s really the bottom line. But no one is allowed to discuss the issue like adults, so instead they discuss it like children. Hence, the EDL.

@Sunny – “I’m not surprised many people are trying to rubbish the above – it goes against what they’ve been trying to pretend for years.”

Hey Sunny, long time no speak. Dude, they;re not trying to “rubbish” the above, they;re just pointing out the question is about “future” voting intention and not “past” so can’t be used to argue your point that former Labour voters support the EDL or BNP.

Frankly though, I don’t understand what the voting pattern or personal political journeys of BNP or EDL supporters are anyway. As someone said, the chances are many of them have only had perhaps one opportunity to vote in a GE and maybe twice in local elections anyway, and you’ll probably find that there are a range of previous voting patterns amongst them.

On the other argument about class and whether the EDL are representative of the “working class” (whatever that actually is these days?), I’d say the EDL/BNP are more the inevitable result of group-based identity politics and activism of the sort that Sunny is a fan and I am not, after all they “tick” all the proverbial boxes.

There aren’t many of them making them a minority grouping; they base their activism (re: pointless chanting and Neanderthal kickings) on a sense of identity very fluidly defined around the equally fluid concept of “Britishness”; they also define themselves, in the most part, on being Caucasian, which lends them an ethnicity argument; they wholeheartedly believe they’re being oppressed in some way even though they’re not most of the time; they think this often non-existent oppression is being directed by an institutionalised society that wishes to promote other groups ahead of them because they’re all evil bastards.

“Frankly though, I don’t understand what the voting pattern or personal political journeys of BNP or EDL supporters are anyway” in the above should say “Frankly though, I don’t understand why the voting pattern or personal political journeys of BNP or EDL supporters matter anyway” – fat fingers,editing a comment as you go FAIL.

@30 The EDL obviously has working class members, as does the Tory party, the Labour party and the Liberal Democrat party, (even if such members may not become MP’s) however for neither of the three main parties does someone then make the jump that said group speaks as the whole of the working class like they do for the EDL. That is the myth – that the demands and desires of the EDL are in fact the demands and desires of the whole of the white working class, which becomes all the more questionable when you can easily point out that “Tommy Robinson” is in no way a member of the working class. (He owns a tanning salon) He is however a racist thug. We can only hope what isn’t going on is “thugs=working class”, which is what is heavily implied by this myth.
Besides if your going to use the NRS guidance you might as well say the EDL are representative of the white middle class, since I strongly doubt they won’t have a significant number of office workers in their ranks.

Isn’t the BNP’s support largely made up of disillusioned ex-Labour voters?

Also exposed as bollocks plenty of times.

I remember this argument. The last time we went round this, we discovered that most BNP supporters have never supported any other political party, but that of those that had, most were ex-Labour supporters.
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2009/10/28/dont-believe-your-eyes/

A thread memorable for Sunny diasgreeing with his own citations.

“but that of those that had, most were ex-Labour supporters.”

What I would find interesting is whether that “ex-labour” actually translates into “ex-militant” as a great deal of the rhetoric employed by edl supporters online reminds me of the mannerisms of militant.

Cylu,

But you’ve shifted the goalposts. I never said that the EDL speak for the whole of the working class. That proposition has the distinction of both being wrong, and also impossible. What I actually said was that the EDL are (key phrase) more representative of the white working class than the three main parties.

Does this mean that more white working class people are in the EDL than are members of the three main parties? No! Does this mean that more white working class people vote BNP than Labour? No! Does this mean that I think that the EDL is more representative of the white working class than the three main parties? Yes! That’s what I said.

Now, whether the EDL’s batty leadership are former miners or current investment bankers seems to me to be largely irrelevant (or consider, for contradiction, the set of middle class radicals). The reason that I don’t think they represent white middle class opinion is that I have literally never, ever, ever–not once–personlly heard a white middle class person venture an opinion that resembles the EDL’s platform.

Of course, this is not to say that there are not white middle class people who are members of the EDL. I’m sure there are. But they don’t seem very representative of the white middle class in this country. The white middle class of whatever political persuasion are basically progressive idealists of one form or another, in my experience. Though, of course, yours may differ. Personally, when I think EDL I think foootball hooligan rather than civil servant–but perhaps this is just my own nascent class prejudice surfacing.

Sunny @ 22:

“I’m not surprised many people are trying to rubbish the above – it goes against what they’ve been trying to pretend for years.”

Yeah, that’s totally the reason, and not at all because the OP is rubbish.

@vimothy #30:

The fact is that a great many people do not like the pace, and even the fact, of immigration–that’s really the bottom line. But no one is allowed to discuss the issue like adults, so instead they discuss it like children. Hence, the EDL..

I entirely agree that discussion about immigration in this country is generally conducted at pre-kindergarten level. But could you explain exactly what you mean by “no-one is allowed to discuss the issue like adults”? Who/what prevents that discussion, and who do you see as having an adult approach that is being prevented from discussing it?

I find it hard to believe that you don’t know what I mean, Robin.

If everyone’s opinion was weighted equally, then we this wouldn’t be an issue, because there would never have been significant levels of immigration to argue about (or not, as the case may be) in the first place. So just partition the country up into two sets on that basis.

It’s clear that one set is populated by the better paid and educated than average, is in favour of continued high levels of immigration, is not in favour of seriously debating whether or not it is a good thing, and is very much in favour of celebrating its effect. Why? Well, for one thing, because they believe that a serious debate will unleash the fascist lurking within every jingoistic, Daily Mail reading little Englander and, before you know it, there’ll be blackshirts goose stepping up and down the Strand.

For another thing, they realise that they are outnumbered by the majority who are rather uncomfortable with the idea of gradually becoming strangers in their own country. Fortunately, this is the group that occupies all the positions of power: Basically, the bureaucratic class. And so it goes!

As for people who discuss the issue like grown-ups, I read MigrationWatch UK’s output, and in the States, CIS–especially labour economist George Borjas. But they’re few and far between.

” is in favour of continued high levels of immigration, is not in favour of seriously debating whether or not it is a good thing,”

You are right that there is one group of people not in favour of seriously discussing immigration; but it isn’t the group you identify. It is the group that constantly exaggerates stories, makes up stories about immigrants getting free cars, shows a complete ignorance of the actual immigration rules (open borders? really?), supports the imprisonment of children claiming asylum, and frequently fills up comments boxes with demands that immigrants and british people of asian origin get forceably removed from homes their families may have lived in stretching back generations. Whilst not all people concerned about immigration hold the above views, a significant number do and feed those concerns with lies. I don’t see how anything constructive can come from continued engagement with this group; anymore than I would regard debating with Arkan’s paramilitary units as likely to be able to persuade them not to ethnically cleanse bosnia.

Planeshift,

First you write:

You are right that there is one group of people not in favour of seriously discussing immigration; but it isn’t the group you identify. It is the group that..

It’s not obvious who you mean exactly, but it seems to be the tabloid newspapers–a group with about as much policy influence as my pet cat. But anyway, you then go on to state,

I don’t see how anything constructive can come from continued engagement with this group; anymore than I would regard debating with Arkan’s paramilitary units as likely to be able to persuade them not to ethnically cleanse bosnia.

Ignoring the absurdly hyperbolic attempt at establishing some kind of equivalence between people who favour less immigration and… paramilitary genocidaires (ahem, what?!), you’ve just completely contradicted your opening statement. So which is it–do they refuse to discuss the issue with you, or do you refuse to discuss the issue with them?

The reason that I don’t think they represent white middle class opinion is that I have literally never, ever, ever–not once–personlly heard a white middle class person venture an opinion that resembles the EDL’s platform.

You and I must mix in very different circles then, every white middle class person I’ve ever had, ahem, ‘the pleasure’ of meeting has ventured forth opinions that resemble the EDL’s platform, when they weren’t whinging about health and safety or the EU ruining the country anyway. Presumably I have the luck of meeting middle class Mail readers.
The best line I’ve ever had from a middle class tosser was, when jokingly asked if he would be joining in with an EDL march that took place locally during the spring “You must be joking! They’ll tear me apart! I may be anti-black, but I won’t risk myself marching with them nutters.”
I was struck silent for a good few minutes processing that one, I can tell you.

You mean that those simply dreadful EDL people honestly think that ‘British’ Muslims would be happier back home in Trashkanistan, playfully throwing grenades into one another’s mosques, as would the British people bidding them a safe journey and farewell?

What a ghastly thought!

@vimothy #39:

I thought that was what you were saying, but wanted to see you admit it, to be sure.

I cannot remember a Home Secretary since Milksnatcher’s Willy who has done anything other than kowtow to the ,em>Daily Mail tendency on immigration. I therefore don’t recognise a “group that occupies all the positions of power” that uses that power to suppress “adult” expression of the case against immigration. The case against immigration is heard regularly and loudly and at a level that I described, perhaps a touch harshly, as pre-kindergarten.

You kindly referred to Migrationwatch as “people who discuss the issue like grown-ups”; a claim which is true only if “like grownups” is to be given a pretty strained meaning. Looking at the Briefing Papers on their site, there is a marked lack of any consideration of why immigration is happening, and whether it is or could be a good or bad thing, beyond the standard unevidenced “the natives are being made to feel like strangers in their own country” and “all these immigrants are pushing public services to destruction” claims.

The paper “What can be done?” starts with the paragraph: “The central aim must be to stabilise the population of the UK as closely as possible to the present level.” One looks in the paper in vain for any adult discussion of this proposition, which seems to stand simply as an article of faith. It may well be that takign eveyrthing into account, that is indeed a valid proposition – but Migrationwatch doesn’t even start that process. There is no discussion of why immigrants want to come here, whether they bring a net benefit, even of whether they are encoruaged to come here by the constant drumbeat from anti-immigration politicians that “the streets of Britan are paved with gold for immigrants”.

Can you defend the twin claims that:

So who on these bulging lists actually gets a council house? Currently, it is decided on the basis of ‘need’ which, in turn, is heavily influenced by family size.

As a result, white working class people were indeed being leapfrogged by new arrivals with large families.
(from http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/pressArticle/64)

In order to understand the misapprehension (deliberate or otherwise) involved here, you need to realise that the larger the family, the larger the property needed; that in general means the less chance of getting social housing within any given timespan, because larger properties are like gold-dust. Just as importantly, a larger family has no impact on priority within bedsize, so bringing over your family won’t jump you ahead of someone previously ahead of you in the queue – it’ll put you at the back of another queue that is moving more slowly.

Finally, the piece ignores the fact that most allocation schemes give priority within bands to those who have been in the scheme longest.

Still, he got an impressive list of dogwhistles into the piece, didn’t he?

Irrespective of the level of debate to be expected from Migrationwatch, if they are being prevented from entering the debate, why is Sir Andrew Green given so much airtime on the BBC and column space in the print media?

Re Billy #43:

“Trashkanistan” seems to be the new “Bongobongoland”.

Robin @ 44:

“I cannot remember a Home Secretary since Milksnatcher’s Willy who has done anything other than kowtow to the ,em>Daily Mail tendency on immigration.”

I presume you’re excluding the Home Secretaries under New Labour, then, under whom immigration was considerably increased to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”.

Headline to be changed to ‘Report on EDL destroys Sunny’s reading comprehension myth’?

Would seem to be the only appropriate response to Sunny failing to acknowledge the rather key point raised by most of the early commentators, that the report does nothing of the sort. At best it may indicate that the EDL draw from groups that traditionally voted (if their past voting patterns can be identified by their present ones…) in a number of different ways.

To be honest, anyone who claimed the EDL (whose roots are football, not politics, are they not – or have I fallen for another myth?) is ‘ex-Labour’ is presumably doing Labour a favour (they’ve lost the support of those idiots…) but is also probably making things up. Sunny is probably correct that is a myth, or perhaps better an unsubstantiated statement (or guess) – it just happens this report doesn’t really help correct it.

Robin,

It’s strange that you seem to think every govt ever has kowtowed to the “Daily Mail tendency”–whatever that is (complaining about the distribution of benefits, I guess). Whoever they have kowtowed to, the effect has been record levels of in-migration. Do you dispute this? It seems that you must, since you believe that the reactionary jingoists are in charge and have been since day one. I won’t link to the data–they are so easy to find–but perhaps you could provide a source that proves the reverse, i.e. that this never happened, and that it all really is in the imagination of the Daily Mail, little Englanders, et moi.

If, on the other hand, you don’t dispute this fact, then really, what are you going on about? Perhaps you just mean rhetorically, in that the class of people in power tend to ape the Daily Mail tendency, while in practice opting for the opposite. Well, that strikes me as a rather weak argument, but I dunno about that either. When I perform the following search in google, I get 141,000,000 results:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=diversity+week

Are there any comparable celebrations for the results of not allowing immigration? Channel 4′s National Homogeneity Week, perhaps? The BBC’s Celebrating Sameness Week? Do your local schools have festivals celebrating homogeneity, whiteness, jingoism, reactionary pride, etc, etc? Really? Clearly, we inhabit two very different universes.

The case against immigration is not heard at all, a fact that is clearly recognised by public figures on those rare occasions when they deign to discuss it amongst themselves. Moreover, it is completely irrelevant, since no one intends to do anything about it, beyond a few words hear and there to placate the all powerful yet strangely impotent Daily Mail tendency (what is up with that?). Which is why we have such high levels of immigration in the first place, and why we will continue to have such high levels of immigration from now until Britain ceases to be an attractive prospect relative to other countries. (But don’t worry, open borders fans: there’s a lot of ruin in a nation, as Adam Smith observed). Is your theory predictive? Presumably, just as we aren’t living through a time of massive in-migratory flows, they’ll soon stop not happening, the British govt being so keen on kowtowing to the like of MigrationWatch and the Daily Mail.

Thank God we live in such a country, eh wot!

@XXX #46:

I presume you’re excluding the Home Secretaries under New Labour, then, under whom immigration was considerably increased to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”.

No, I’m including the NuLab Home Secretaries whose objective was to ensure that there wasn’t “a cigarette paper” between their policies and the Tories’ (Jack Straw 1995).

@vimothy #48:

Stop beating up that strawman – I’m over here. Your petulant reference to a purported claim on my part that “every govt ever has kowtowed to the “Daily Mail tendency”” is tending to the pre-kindergarten. Willy Whitelaw was Home Secretary in the 1980s; not 1189.

I don’t deny that immigration increased – but I am saying that it increased against a background of tightening controls on immigration. To suggest that NuLab Home Secretaries were in favour of immigration (in principle) simply because immigration increased on their watch is like suggesting that Erwin Rommel was an Allied double agent because the Atlantic Wall didn’t stand against Overlord. The effect of NuLab immigration policy is to reduce immigration below what it would have been in the absence of their policy changes.

What I don’t see on Migrationwatch’s site is any explanation of why net immigration should be zero; any discussion (beyond the most simplistic) of the costs and benefits of immigration at various levels; any addressing at all of the evidence that net immigration has been a net benefit (to the tune of billions) to the UK economy; any consideration of why the immigration has happened.

And what’s this:

Are there any comparable celebrations for the results of not allowing immigration? Channel 4?s National Homogeneity Week, perhaps? The BBC’s Celebrating Sameness Week? Do your local schools have festivals celebrating homogeneity, whiteness, jingoism, reactionary pride, etc, etc? Really? Clearly, we inhabit two very different universes.

about? We are and always have been a mongrel nation; Homogeneity was a lost cause millennia ago.

Robin @ 49:

So what, are you disputing the idea that immigration increased significantly after 1997? Or do you think that significantly increasing immigration somehow counts as pandering to Daily Mail readers?

I believe that what I am saying is fairly straightforward. But let me see whether I can do any better.

Whatever the feelings of politicians–and, just as importantly in my opinion, the people who run and staff our major public institutions–immigration exploded in the last couple of decades.

Now, this is good or bad or indeterminate depending on your views on immigration. But clearly, if you are “pro-immigration”, then the fact that we have just had a historically unprecedented burst of immigration should be a Good Thing. Therefore, compared to the balanced migration counterfactual, the pro-immigration crowd must be relatively pleased and the anti-immigration crowd must be relatively displeased.

So, although you claim that the debate has been monopolised by the anti-immigration pre-schoolers (seemingly meaningvthat tabloids complain about immigration), whatever the case, they have turned out to be, in practice, totally and utterly ineffective! Worse, immigration has never been as high as it is–and this has been going on for decades!

Strange kind of influence, isn’t it, that produces the exact opposite effect than the one that you’re seeking? Continuously? For years and years?

Oh, but I see that you’ve half pre-empted this argument with a rather strange one of your own. You basically claim that what the people in power want or intend has nothing to do with what obtains in practice. The government don’t control the border–although, in fact, we would and should have had even higher immigration if they weren’t all such unreconstructed Tory bastards. The flow of in-migration is some kind of mysterious exogenous variable that we can try to manage but are ultimately as powerless before as we are the weather.

But this is extremely silly. If the government wanted to, they could set immigration to zero. They don’t, because they choose not to. The UK controls its own borders, you see–that’s part of what being a sovereign is all about.

But clearly, if you are “pro-immigration”, then the fact that we have just had a historically unprecedented burst of immigration should be a Good Thing. Therefore, compared to the balanced migration counterfactual, the pro-immigration crowd must be relatively pleased and the anti-immigration crowd must be relatively displeased.

I don’t think you understand the pro-immigration side if you think their goal or desire is to have as many people as possible migrate over.

BTW, this,

We are and always have been a mongrel nation; Homogeneity was a lost cause millennia ago.

Is completely wrong. Don’t you think, if this were the case, it would have made it into the history books?

Not that this is relevant to my argument, but you might like to look at Blood of the Isles by Brian Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at Oxford.

He finds that (from Wikipedia),

The genetic makeup of Britain and Ireland is overwhelmingly what it has been since the Neolithic period and to a very considerable extent since the Mesolithic period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Sykes#Blood_of_the_Isles

What “this” was about, was actually the fact that all of our major institutions constantly celebrate the effects of immigration. It’s basically a national pastime. You claim that the discourse is dominated by the anti-immigration crowd. But I find no evidence of it anywhere. Do you have any links that support your assertion? Streams of ministers saying that “immigration has been bad for Britain”? The BBC devoting weeks to the disaster of immigration? Etc?

I don’t think you understand the pro-immigration side if you think their goal or desire is to have as many people as possible migrate over.

I don’t think you understand what I wrote if you think that’s what I think.

People who think that immigration is good for Britain must therefore think that the immigration that has happened has been good for Britain. It’s practically a frickin’ tautology.

@XXX #51:

So what, are you disputing the idea that immigration increased significantly after 1997? Or do you think that significantly increasing immigration somehow counts as pandering to Daily Mail readers?

It is this kind of argument that I would characterise as pre-kindergarten level.

I know that absolute numbers of immigrants increaaed after 1997. I understand however that immigrants increase immigration; ministers don’t. Jack Straw didn’t indulge in some kind of mass kidnapping exercise so as to increase the number of immigrants.

For better or for worse, we have generally had criteria-based immigration controls. Over the last 30 years – and throughout that period – the criteria have been progressively tightened, under pressure inter alia from what I’ve been describing as the Daily Mail tendency. One such change was the introduction in 2005 of the “Who wants to be a British citizen?” test.

The effect of tightening criteria on the actual level of immigration, however, depends upon the number of potential immigrants who meet those criteria. If you tighten the criteria so that only 50% of those previously qualifying now qualify, but applicants triple, you end up with a 50% increase, not a 50% reduction, in absolute immigrant numbers. You also have a lot more rejections – but no-one counts those…

It is this kind of argument that I would characterise as pre-kindergarten level.

Charming.

Observed patterns of migration from countries with crappy and stingy public goods provision to countries where public goods are relatively many and of high quality are as obvious and natural as the osmosis of solvent molecules to regions of higher solute concentration. Er, herro–this isn’t rocket science.

The border is not beyond the control of any competent state. It’s practically the first order condition for sovereignty. This is the government’s responsibility–it can be nobody else’s! If they try abdicate responsibility saying, well, you know us, we’d far prefer to keep Britain free of all these nasty immigrant types, but we just can’t seem to think how it could be done (while never actually saying it, of course, but just assume they’re beaming it to the nation via telepathic jingoist mind rays), this does not make it so. It just means that they are either, 1, inept, 2, lying, or 3, both.

It’s still the government’s responsibility to control the border and migration policy, and still a trivial and routine task to do so–the fact that they choose not to notwithstanding.

If they wanted to, they could even ban anyone from entering the country full stop. Seeing as how, you know, the state controls this little piece of territory. Immigration drops to zero in an instant. Finally, after all these years of controlling the agenda, the Daily Mail gets what it wants! The Tories rides a wave of popularity into office from now until perpetuity. When do think this will happen? Or has it already? The mind, it boggles, it really does…

@vimothy #52 & 54:

<blockquote.But clearly, if you are “pro-immigration”, then the fact that we have just had a historically unprecedented burst of immigration should be a Good Thing.

At the risk of being insulting, I would describe this argument as pre-kindergarten. There is a very distinct difference between the pro-and anti-immigration positions, just as there is between the pro- and anti-abortion position.s Being pro-abortion doesn’t mean that one believes that everyone should have an abortion; it means that one doesn’t have a principled (or unprincipled) objection to abortion as a concept. Similarly, if I am characterised as pro-immigration, it is because I do not oppose immigration as a concept, but see that in a number of ways it has been to the advantage of this country and would want to see the debate conducted at that adult level. It is not the fact that there has been a recent burst of immigration that has been a Good Thing; it is the advantages, economic and otherwise, that that immigration has brought to the country that are Good Things.

Not that this is relevant to my argument, but you might like to look at Blood of the Isles by Brian Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at Oxford.

Beside my bed, part-read… And he does not find that the British population (excluding recent immigration) is homogeneous – far from it.

Robin –

Similarly, if I am characterised as pro-immigration, it is because I do not oppose immigration as a concept, but see that in a number of ways it has been to the advantage of this country and would want to see the debate conducted at that adult level…

Doesn’t that render the terms meaningless? I mean, aside from the kind of nationalists who keep battered copies of Mosley’s My Life, does anyone think immigration qua immigration is an undesireable concept, or that it hasn’t, in a number of ways, been advantageous? It’s just that there’s leaves acres of room for disagreements as to how much and what kinds of immigration are desireable and should be allowed.

Okay. Since we’re being so generous to all concerned, that strikes me as a rather unnecessary semantic argument. Why don’t you engage with the substance instead of sneering at everyone?

Robin @ 56:

“I understand however that immigrants increase immigration; ministers don’t. Jack Straw didn’t indulge in some kind of mass kidnapping exercise so as to increase the number of immigrants.”

No, what he did was allow greater numbers of migrants into the country, which isn’t at all what the Daily Mail readers generally wanted. It’s a pretty odd kind of pandering, which results in the opposite of what the people being pandered to actually want to happen, wouldn’t you think?

And that whole “immigration increases were just because there were more immigrants applying to come here” argument won’t really wash. There was a deliberate and conscious decision to increase levels of net immigration:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23760073-dont-listen-to-the-whingers—london-needs-immigrants.do

Whilst this discussion on immigration IS very interesting, the EDL is ostensibly only opposed to Islamic extremism.

Cylux,

Have a read of the Demos report.

One of its key findings:

Immigration is the biggest concern among EDL supporters

Although the group’s leaders claim Islamic extremism is the EDL’s primary raison d’etre, supporters appear to care more about immigration: 42 per cent consider immigration one of the top two issues facing the country, with 31 per cent citing Islamic extremism.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23760073-dont-listen-to-the-whingers—london-needs-immigrants.do

Interstingly, this article opens with the following sentence:

“Amid the sound and fury over Nick Griffin, there’s a sad but unnoticed fact: it has taken this fiasco to make politicians talk about the impact of immigration.”

Weird, isn’t it. This dude seerms to think that no one has been talking about the imapact of immigration. But that can’t be right can it? What about Team Daily Mail and the never-ending mindbeams of reaction? He must inhabit the same alternate reality as me. Statistically, I’m beginning to suspect that most of us do…

@63 Well a group largely made out of football casuals that claims to only be concerned with fanatical Islam probably WILL be very concerned about immigration. Though not for the concerns you highlight. I strongly suspect funny accents and different skin colour might actually be top of their concerns.

@ 65 Cylux

“I strongly suspect funny accents and different skin colour might actually be top of their concerns.”

Depends on your EDL member, really – I’m under the impression that they’re mainly disenfranchised working class people, who might well have a more reasonable objection to immigration (namely that jobs in the local area are going to immigrants). Whether that objection is based on fair data or not isn’t the point – I’m pro-immigration, but I’ve got a lot more time for antis who are angry about jobs than those who just don’t like non-whites.

Depends on your EDL member, really – I’m under the impression that they’re mainly disenfranchised working class people,

They’re mainly football casuals, or football hooligans if you prefer, which is why they often scrap with themselves over various team rivalries during their marches.

who might well have a more reasonable objection to immigration (namely that jobs in the local area are going to immigrants). Whether that objection is based on fair data or not isn’t the point – I’m pro-immigration, but I’ve got a lot more time for antis who are angry about jobs than those who just don’t like non-whites.

Er, you have been paying attention to what they actually march about haven’t you? There’s even been reported instances of hardcore groups of EDL members attacking trade union meetings and SWP meetings, wtf do they have to do Islamic fanaticism? Plus EDL spokesman Guramit Singh has been booed by the membership before he’s even said a word at some rallies, despite being EDL himself, now why might that be?
Now it’s very nice how far you’re willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, but to be fair, once you’ve decided that the EDL is the way forward the chances that your objections to immigration will lie on the reasonable side are pretty vanishingly small.

@ 66

I’m under the impression that they’re mainly disenfranchised working class people

On what grounds? (That’s a genuine question, I’m wondering whether there’s been a demographic study done I’ve missed).

Without some hard data, my gut instinct is that they’re likely to be an organisation that’s very cross-class. As Cylux points out, they spring out of (some) football firms. And football hooliganism has traditionally crossed class lines to a major extent. That’s very common among subcultures and I’d argue that the EDL are as much of a subculture as they are a political movement.

From the report:

Education and employment

A significant percentage of supporters are unemployed – although when this is broken down by age and compared with the national average, what sets EDL supporters apart is the high levels of unemployment among older supporters. Among 16–24-year-old EDL supporters, 27.5 per cent are unemployed, compared with a national average of 19.7 per cent for the same age group. Among 25–64-year-olds, 28 per cent of EDL supports are unemployed, compared with a national average of 6 per cent; 20 per cent of EDL supporters are currently students, although it is not clear at what level (n=804).

That’s interesting data, but it doesn’t tell us directly what the class make-up of the EDL is.

The unemployment figures are significant I think. Educational level, not so much so, in the context of this question. I have no idea what educational level Yaxley-Lennon is, but he’s certainly a small business owner.

There are three choices: either the EDL are more working class than the population, less, or the same.

What the Demos data tell you is, 1, that the EDL are not a representative sample of the population, i.e. the third choice is ruled out. And it tells you, 2, that they are less educated and suffer higher unemployment than average. So it doesn’t sound like they are wealthier than the general population, does it? That leaves the first option.

If you think about this, then it’s pretty obvious. Why would they belong to a violent hate group if their lives were going so swimmingly?

@ 71

Or what it may suggest is that the EDL are drawing a significant base of their support from the unemployed, but also from the self-employed and small business owners. That would make sense- historically those two groups have been a significant part of where support for far right groups comes from. Obviously, historical precedent isn’t enough to draw a conclusion from. I’m not necessarily saying that you’re wrong. Merely that I don’t think, at the current time, we have enough data to know either way. And, without that, I think it’s unwise to assume the EDL are definitely part of the disillusioned working class, as that’s something they like to put out for propaganda purposes.

If you think about this, then it’s pretty obvious. Why would they belong to a violent hate group if their lives were going so swimmingly?

That doesn’t follow. Alan Lake is an obvious counter-example. As, for that matter, is Nick Griffin. Hatred and bigotry isn’t confined to any single class. If you look at BNP support in rural areas specifically, their supporters there tend to be relatively well off (unlike in places like Oldham).

I agree, but I don’t really characterise the EDL according to their hatred and biigotry. I mean, obviously, that’s present, but like you say, it isn’t confined to a particular class of people. It’s the violence, incoherence and illiberalism that marks them out as not being as middle class as the rest of the country for me. How many EDL members read the Guardian or buy organic food? Not many, I’m willing to bet. Their culture is different. At least, this is what I see.

As a point of fact, there’s plenty of hatred and bigotry amongst readers of the Guardian, too. If you doubt this, just ask one about readers of the Daily Mail.

In other words, if you are a rich and highly intelligent person, frustrated by immigration or “Islamic extremism”, do you join the EDL? I think not.

@74 I imagine someone who is rich and highly intelligent has far more important things to be worried about.

I agree, but I don’t really characterise the EDL according to their hatred and bigotry. I mean, obviously, that’s present, but like you say, it isn’t confined to a particular class of people. It’s the violence, incoherence and illiberalism that marks them out as not being as middle class as the rest of the country for me.

I like the value system you have going on there, by making peacefulness, coherence and liberalism as being specific middle-class virtues, and violence, incoherence and illiberalism as being not-middle-class vices. You might want to ponder on that one.

Anyway here’s a useful word to describe what portion of the population the EDL is most likely to be representative of – Lumpenproletariat or the “refuse of all classes”.

There’s nothing inherently anything about anything, as far as I’m concerned.

People who are less well educated tend to be less coherent when they start trying to make political demands. Ever seen the youtube video of the EDLer complaining about the “Muslamic infidels”? Probably grew up in a nice middle class household in one of those Beatrix Potter-esque villages you have down south, surrounded by books, and later went to a red brick university to read PPE with all of his school chums. Yep.

If you take a group of people who are poorer than the average (i.e., than the representative household or individual), then, statistically speaking, they will tend to be less well educated. That’s just how it goes on planet Earth. Since they are less well educated, they tend to come out with stuff that doesn’t play too well with the overeducated segment of the middle class that run the country. Consequently, they don’t get many invites to parties, or write too many op-eds in the broadsheets.

Basically, when I say “working class”, what I really mean is, “bottom half of the income distribution” (and “top half” for middle class). You can call them lumpenproletariat if you like. Statistically speaking, that may be more accurate than working class. Who knows?

The other two points can be justified by a similar argument. In this world the poor tend to be less liberal and more violent than the rich. That’s just how it is. But I’ve had a long day deriving bordered Hessians and testing functions for quasiconcavity and I’m too exhausted to make them, fortunately or unfortunately for you.

Anyone who knows anything about anything knows that being poor correlates with a lot of other unpleasant things. Possibly, there are some stupendously rich people for whom this would come as quite a shock. But since neither of us is one of them, why pretend otherwise?

@ 77

I’d argue instead that working class racists are more likely to come in direct conflict with the objects of their hostility. The reason for that is pretty simple. The portrait you paint here

Probably grew up in a nice middle class household in one of those Beatrix Potter-esque villages you have down south, surrounded by books, and later went to a red brick university to read PPE with all of his school chums. Yep.

is of someone who is highly unlikely to live in an area that significantly racially mixed. Overall, working class areas (at least urban ones) are more likely to be racially diverse than middle class ones. And mixed race relationship are more common among working class people than middle class ones, partly because of there being more opportunities to mix with people of other races socially.

So it’s not that middle class people are less likely to be racist. It’s that working class racists are more likely to live near people of other races.

But it’s questionable whether that is pertinent to the EDL. Obviously, one defining feature of the street level EDL activists is that they go into areas they don’t live in the vicinity of in the hope of winding up Muslims. (Which is a MO you’d expect from people with a football hooliganism background).

We have the problem of the fact that the EDL don’t have formal membership as well. What we do know is the identity of some of their leadership. That’s obviously flawed as way of extrapolating wider data, but from what we know of them, it’s fair to say the EDL are pretty mixed in terms of class.

@77

Basically, when I say “working class”, what I really mean is, “bottom half of the income distribution” (and “top half” for middle class).

You do realise that for examining class distribution, that sort of categorising pretty much makes any results you might reach completely worthless don’t you? I won’t even get into the farce of “Middle” representing the top half of anything.

So it’s not that middle class people are less likely to be racist. It’s that working class racists are more likely to live near people of other races.

I think that there’s some truth in that. And note that the middle classes don’t really suffer economically from the over supply of un- and semi-skilled labour either. What, taxis are getting cheaper? That’s great–why wouldn’t it be?

But another important factor in my view is that there is an entire cultural technology, massive in scope, devoted to teaching middle class people not to be racist. Not being racist is the sine qua non of the modern liberal person’s belief system–the central tenet of their secular faith. Racism caused the Holocaust! Racism caused the Israel-Palestine conflict! Racism is, like, the worst thing ever. To the extent that poor people are less well integrated into this, then it is hardly surprising that their views track those of the pre “modern liberal” generations more closely.

‘BenSix #58:

Doesn’t that render the terms meaningless? I mean, aside from the kind of nationalists who keep battered copies of Mosley’s My Life, does anyone think immigration qua immigration is an undesireable concept, or that it hasn’t, in a number of ways, been advantageous? It’s just that there’s leaves acres of room for disagreements as to how much and what kinds of immigration are desireable and should be allowed.

In an adult world you’re absolutely right. The problem is that I don’t see any discussion from say Migrationwatch, vimothy’s advocate of choice, that addresses those issues. They start from the proposition that there should be no net immigration, and I’ve not seen any discussion on their site that shows how they get to that position.

@XXX #61:

And that whole “immigration increases were just because there were more immigrants applying to come here” argument won’t really wash. There was a deliberate and conscious decision to increase levels of net immigration:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23760073-dont-listen-to-the-whingers—london-needs-immigrants.do

Thank you for referring to that news story. I acknowledge that here we have an Immigration Minister making an adult contribution to the debate (in contrast to her contributions to the asylum seeker debate); making the argument for a managed (not mass) migration policy. I don’t agree that this was about a decision to “increase levels of net immigration” – even Neather, despite his obvious spin, doesn’t say that this was its main purpose. This piece from rather closer to the time puts it rather better:

http://www.newstatesman.com/200010230012

Essentially the argument she was putting, and the purpose of the managed migration policy, was that we are running into labour shortages at all levels and we need to manage immigration to deal with that problem for our economic benefit.

Remember that I came into this thread when vimothy made the claim that the pro-immigrant lobby sought to shut adult debate down, and that the anti-immigration arguments are never heard. The piece in the New Statesman about the speech shows how misguided that claim is. Take this snippet:

As the recent, viciously attacked report for the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain puts it: “The immigration debate in the UK has always been conducted on the assumption that immigration is a problem, not an opportunity. In contrast to the situation in other countries . . . no detailed economic and social studies have been carried out in the UK into the effect of, or the need for, immigration.”

and this:

Is the electorate ready for this new debate on immigration? Hasn’t the lesson of the past year been that the xenophobic rants of the Daily Mail can all too easily light a racial fuse? And aren’t her superiors at the top of government a tad too willing to bow to that Daily Mail agenda?

“I don’t see any discussion from say Migrationwatch, vimothy’s advocate of choice, that addresses those issues. They start from the proposition that there should be no net immigration, and I’ve not seen any discussion on their site that shows how they get to that position.”

How they get to that position is the same as how you get to yours. They look at the effect of the current policy regime and levels of net in-migration on population growth, health, housing, community cohesion, the economy, employment, education, etc, and conclude that they are Not A Good Thing, and therefore balanced migration should be the long term objective of the govt. Shouldn’t it? I mean, disregarding all else, simply from a dynamic systems perspective, how is anything else stable?

@vimothy #83:

They look at the effect of the current policy regime and levels of net in-migration on population growth, health, housing, community cohesion, the economy, employment, education, etc,

Could you refer me to the discussion papers and studies on their site that analyse these issues, and deal with the studies that show the net economic benefit of immigration?

The briefings papers are here:

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefingPapers

For a summary, see also,

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/outlineProblem.php

And,

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/whatCanBeDone

As for the NS interview, well, it proves little. It’s just the opinion of one individual, and is no more definitive than mine.

The labour shortages argument is rather silly, to be frank. What does it mean to say that the economy is short of labour? The economy is a dynamic system: it adjusts. One of the reasons that wages have been stagnant at the bottom of the income distribution is that the economy has indeed adjusted to the large in-flows of labour, and, rather than lifting the wage of the poorest to compensate for under-supply, has instead suppressed it.

Roche’s analysis is basically self-seving justification for tipping the balance of the national income from the poor and unskilled towards the rich and skilled. We can all guess on what part of the curve she sits. And New Statemen laps it up, of course, because it’s motivated in support of open borders, and almost anything can be good and true if it advances the cause of open borders. I’ve seen numerous hardcore Marxist types come over all neoliberal as soon as the issue turns from free trade or the free movement of capital to the free movement of labour. Here we see The Staggers squarely advancing the interests of Capital. Cute.

I also note with wry amusement that the article is dated 2000, which is nearly a decade in to the new migration regime. According to the quoted report, even after all this time, no studies had been undertaken to see if it was benefiting the economy or the polity. We were just assuming that was, I guess. With what results, etc.

Further, let me just observe that the vast majority of the population are highly sceptical of the benfits of immigration. Any politician who wants to keep his job must of course pay lip service to the public. Consequently, you do tend to get this kind of boilerplate–e.g. see the Conservative Party’s website. But this is not the same as an adult debate. I want to see members of the broadsheet op-ed writing, university lecturing, civil service managing ruling elite debating whether immigration per se is a good or bad thing, including immigration in the abstract, regardless of its economic impact (though that too, of course), with people writing editorials in the FT taking the side of “no, immigration is not good, and what has happened over the last couple of decades has been both a disaster and a fait accompli–woops, sorry about that.” I won’t hold my breath, though.

@84. Robin Levett,

Apparently (and ironically), linking to MigrationWatch is not allowed at this site. But if you go to their website and look at the “briefing papers” page, you’ll find a large number of papers organised addressing these themes.

Robin -

I think that much is unfair. (Unless someone’s prepared to tell my why Migration Watch are worthy of no-platforming I’ll think it pretty darn disreputable if the link vanishes.)

My link to the same section hasn’t arrived as yet. I’ll charitably assume that it’s a glitch but if the comments don’t appear I’ll be irritated.

Anyway, I think that’s an unfair criticism of MigrationWatch. Their studies, including responses, are available under “briefing papers”, accessible via the front page.

(Charitability thereby validated. What’s going on with the comments?)

@BenSix #89:

Anyway, I think that’s an unfair criticism of MigrationWatch. Their studies, including responses, are available under “briefing papers”, accessible via the front page.

It is indeed partially unfair, and I withdraw that specific criticism; I’d started poking around again after sending the email and seen the briefing papers, but you and vimothy got in first. I’m pleased to see that they are attempting to put something more out there than the headline dostortiosn I’ve already referenced.

Having said that…

I still can’t see support for the claim that there should be no net inward migration. Take the latest report under the “Economic” heading. The conclusion reached is that migration has negligible net impact on GDP growth per capita. That is supported by reference to a MAC report of November 2010. The money quote from the MW report is “Taking the second question, the MAC calculated that after one year of a fall of 10,000 in net migration the result would be that GDP per head would be 0.027% lower, equivalent to £6. This is entirely negligible.”

There are however many more than 10,000 Tier 1 and 2 visas granted annually; the 2009 figure was 50,000. MW wants net immigration to fall from 200,000 to zero. taking out all Tier 1 and 2 visas will only get a quarter of the way there; and you’ve already thereby lost close to 0.15% annual per capita GDP growth – from productivity alone.

The main reason, at least publicly, seems to be arguments on infrastructure pressure; yet if the figures show even a slightly beneficial effect on net GDP pc growth and therefore fiscal returns, immigrants are actually lowering per capita infrastructure costs for the rest of us, given that more use of the infrastructure spreads fixed costs over a greater number of taxpayers.

But all this does get away from my main poiint; which is that adult conversation on the benefits or otherwise of net inward migration is closed down not by the fiat of the ruling class, as vimothy contends, but by the ruling class’s fear of the vitriol of the tabloid press, typified by the Daily Mail.