Woolly nothingness then.

Left-wing spin on a right-wing speech.

What would you folks have liked to see more of?

The Guardian is overflowing with comments from right-on lefties condemning Miliband as a borderline racist who has surrendered to the Daily Mail with this latest policy. I just don’t understand.

Here we have a progressive leader saying ‘Immigration can be both good AND bad, and we need to ensure that the working class are not unfairly impacted by it.’ And somehow this puts him to the right of Hitler in some people’s eyes.

As for the accusations that this is all ‘woolly thinking’, what Ed M has accepted in this speech (unlike New Labour and the Tories) is that immigration is complex and very difficult to control and therefore, nation-states can only do their best to make sure that the negative impacts are kept to a minimum. That’s the most realistic approach to this situation you’re likely to see from any party leader.

I doubt anyone will have a serious rebuttal to him since the only two sides of the debate you ever hear from are elitist private-school educated lefty darlings who think anyone who is worried about mass immigration is a racsit, and the EDL bunch who think North Korea’s autarkic policies are the way to go.

Also, the large number of people who are condeming Miliband because his dad was a Jewish migrant seem to have confused ‘refugees’ with ‘economic migrants’.

“I am the son of immigrants and I am hugely proud of it. So as I set out my party’s policy on immigration, I will be true to my heritage, to my Mum and Dad….

…but no other family members.”

With Lee Griffin @1

Difficult to penetrate what he’s really saying and if I could, I would be a fool to believe anything said by a politician in Opposition.

I made the mistake of trusting Blair in 1997 and so ended our family’s 97 year loyalty to the Labour Party.

“He that deceives me once, shame fall on him; if he deceives me twice, shame fall on me”.

stripped of touchie-feelie stuff designed to placate lefties, this is still an anti-immigration speech looking at closing the door used by the ancestors of Mr Miliband, Michael Howard, Sunny Hundal, the Queen (whose ancestors came here to take the job which already had a qualified candidate) and others, including me.

It’s an anti-immigration wolf in sheep’s clothing, Mr Hundal should be ashamed. We already know Mr Miliband is incapable of feeling shame.

What would you folks have liked to see more of?

A higher national minimum wage.

The bar’s set too low so it’s sufficient if you are single and sharing cheep rented accommodation – as many temporary immigrant workers do – but insufficient if you are trying to raise a family here, and paying a mortgage, etc.

The problem is with transient labour, not immigrants per se. Transient labour undercuts wages, permanent immigration does not since permanent immigrants face the same long term costs as the indigenous population.

A higher NMW would benefit both the indiginous population and immigrants who wish to settle here – and who are therefore also British – alike.

Sunny: More of something, anything. This isn’t anything but a status quo speech. Sure, maybe Labour (somehow) had a reputation of being too “nice” to immigrants despite the realities, and maybe this signals they are ready to stand side by side rather than toe to toe with Tories on the issue of liberalising our stance on basic humanity.

But mainly I just take issue with those main points you put…

Imposing maximum transitional controls on the future accession of countries such as Croatia or Turkey to the European Union, limiting the numbers of people who can come to work here for seven years after accession

This is, essentially, just a Tory policy in a specific area. I’ve said before how much I hate this kind of stance, it takes no care over the benefits immigrants can bring, and it’s hypocritical (Would the same speech be made about limiting who could move from Wales to London?)

Better protection of workers against having their wages or conditions undercut by illegal practices with measures such as stricter enforcement of minimum wage laws and doubling fines for those who break the law from £5,000 to £10,000

Yay…enforcing the law! Oh yeah, they should be ensuring this happens anyway.

Strengthening the regulation of employment agencies so that they are unable to operate exclusionary practices, either formally or informally.

A nice woolly idea, but ultimately something that’ll never be delivered, the resources and requirements to be able to measure such things would be insane.

The introduction of an early warning system so that job centres, local authorities and national government can identify employers, sectors and regions where the workforce is dominated by low wage labour from other countries.

I’d hardly call this an early warning system, if it’s already a case where foreign nationals are dominating the workforce. And what do we do once we’re warned? I can see the tornado, I’ve warned people…what next?

And ensure government cannot hide behind excuses for failing to tackle problems in skills and standards

Woolly nothingness, how will they ensure this? By being in government and promising not to do it? So when they say skills and standards aren’t improving, they’ll have legitimate reasons rather than excuses? It’s all just a matter of perspectve (i.e. it’s never excuses when you’re in power).

Immigration policies by parties like Labour and the Tories are a joke, I won’t go as far as to say they are racist, but they are protectionist and discriminatory. So back to your question, what would I rather?

I’d rather that Labour dropped the populist nonsense and did more to make people realise the benefits that immigration brings. I’d want them to strongly denounce recent announcements that threaten family life of immigrants, and put an unfair condition on who certain people can freely fall in love with if they wish to spend their life with them. I’d want them to get rid of the idea that only immigrants that earn a significant amount of money already are worthy of joining our nation.

Ultimately I want Labour to grow up and realise the answer to immigration tensions lies not in trying to control immigration, but in doing much, much better on public services, infrastructure, regulation of the rental market and refocusing of economy and businesses away from London.

Basically, what Lee said. Ed’s proposals aren’t too awful, to the extent that they have any substance at all, which isn’t much. But his acceptance of the completely-free-from-any-factual-evidence narrative that immigrants cost local jobs is depressing.

What would you folks have liked to see more of?

How about something along the lines of…..

Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one; and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress. Even confining ourselves to the industrial department, — in which, more than in any other, the majority may be supposed to be competent judges of improvements, — it would be difficult to induce the general assembly of an association to submit to the trouble and inconvenience of altering their habits by adopting some new and promising invention, unless their knowledge of the existence of rival associations made them apprehend that what they would not consent to do, others would, and that they would be left behind in the race.

Instead of looking upon competition as the baneful and anti-social principle which it is held to be by the generality of socialists, I conceive that, even in the present state of society and industry, every restriction of it is an evil, and every extension of it — even if for the time injuriously affecting some class of laborers — is always an ultimate good. To be protected against competition is to be protected in idleness, in mental dullness; to be saved the necessity of being as active and as intelligent as other people: and if it is also to be protected against being underbid for employment by a less highly paid class of laborers, this is only where old custom or local and partial monopoly has placed some particular class of artisans in a privileged position as compared with the rest; and the time has come when the interest of universal improvement is no longer promoted by prolonging the privileges of a few. If the slop-sellers and others of their class have lowered the wages of tailors and some other artisans, by making them an affair of competition instead of custom, so much the better in the end. What is now required is not to bolster up old customs, whereby limited classes of laboring people obtain partial gains which interest them in keeping up the present organization of society, but to introduce new general practices beneficial to all; and there is reason to rejoice at whatever makes the privileged classes of skilled artisans feel that they have the same interests, and depend for their remuneration on the same general causes, and must resort for the improvement of their condition to the same remedies, as the less fortunately circumstanced and comparatively helpless multitude.

The state cannot protect the uncompetitive, nor should it seek to.

The Guardian is overflowing with comments from right-on lefties condemning Miliband as a borderline racist who has surrendered to the Daily Mail with this latest policy. I just don’t understand.

Here we have a progressive leader saying ‘Immigration can be both good AND bad, and we need to ensure that the working class are not unfairly impacted by it.’ And somehow this puts him to the right of Hitler in some people’s eyes.

I think this is basically correct. The non-Hitler response to immigration is that it is always and everywhere an unmitigated good. To even think about it in terms that suggest otherwise is racist.

It’s just a lot of words from Miliband I’d say. The damage (if that’s what it is) is already done. I knew this five years ago when I saw ”a gang” of workers from some Balkan country in the huge City Link parcels depot in the Black Country working through the night moving cages from one truck to another, all under the supervision of one of their number who spoke English.
I never asked them what country they came from, but I guessed Albania.
This depot hub has 120 truck loading bays and is working at maximum capacity in the middle of the night.
I thought of all the local young unemployed tucked up in their beds who can’t be bothered to do such low paid and tedious work. The young people who rioted last year.

For years people on the left have been insisting that it makes no difference how many people come to the UK, or from where. Even if it pushes the population up towards 70 million.

Life’s too short to be taking much notice of what Ed Miliband says his party might do in some distant time in the future. The decades will pass and you’ll be old.

in the end he pandered to the right and went on about dirty foreigners committing crimes, wants british jobs for british workers and wishes to treat migrants differently from british people regarding the allocation of social housing.

as a ‘liberal’ site you should be screaming about this.

” when I saw ”a gang” of workers from some Balkan country in the huge City Link parcels depot in the Black Country working through the night moving cages from one truck to another, all under the supervision of one of their number who spoke English.
I never asked them what country they came from, but I guessed Albania.”

We should of course be making immigration policy based upon experiences like this, rather than patiently examining the evidence.

Planeshift:

yup because we all know albanians by sight – i think it’s the national dress that’s a give away.

And what does “patiently examining the evidence” mean?

It means, “completely ignore what British people think they want and go ahead with what we in our wisdom know to be the correct choice; then, retrospectively, hire experts who will explain to us why we were right all along”.

Lee Griffin, you really do write some guff sometimes.

it takes no care over the benefits immigrants can bring

It does, right there at the top. I quote it. He even points out he’s the son of immigrants FFS!

(Would the same speech be made about limiting who could move from Wales to London?

this is idiotic, unless you believe national borders are irrelevant. Its really not that difficult to say you would like some immigrants from Eastern Europe, just not so many so quickly as the economy can’t absorb them quickly.

Ultimately I want Labour to grow up and realise the answer to immigration tensions lies not in trying to control immigration, but in doing much, much better on public services, infrastructure, regulation of the rental market and refocusing of economy and businesses away from London.

Er, which is exactly what the speech does.

Incidentally, very cute of you to denounce both Labour and Tories on this. Have Libdems said anything critical of the much more idiotic Tory immigration policy and said they wouldn’t support it?

You’re just coming at this from a blatantly partisan point of view, like Libdems are holy and Tories / Labour are evil people who are too populist.

Then you make a series of points that have already been addressed in the speech, which boggles the mind even further.

But his acceptance of the completely-free-from-any-factual-evidence narrative that immigrants cost local jobs is depressing.

I’ve addressed this in the other thread.

They DO cost jobs, even if the net effect may be zero depending on how you look at it. But most of the negative impact is on poorer workers in crap conditions – precisely the people Labour is supposed to stand up for.

DisgustedOfTunbridgeWells – that text you posted… instead of copying and pasting try reading that aloud as a speech you’d make to an audience of ordinary people on the street.

Then you may realise how silly it sounds.

Then you may realise how silly it sounds.

Well that’s 200+ years of economics down the drain, on the upside they’re sure to put your face on the back of £20 note.

It does, right there at the top. I quote it. He even points out he’s the son of immigrants FFS!

‘I’m not racist, I have plenty of black friends’.

I’m sorry, if his stance is to blanketly limit anyone from coming in, purely on an arbitrary measure of their nation of origin and a set timeline, then he is IGNORING benefits and simply making rules to appease people that believe (wrongly) that they’re all just “coming and taking our jobs”.

this is idiotic, unless you believe national borders are irrelevant.

I do

Its really not that difficult to say you would like some immigrants from Eastern Europe, just not so many so quickly as the economy can’t absorb them quickly.

But if the population of wales wanted to up sticks and move to London, you’d be cool with that? Or would you force the welsh to stay where they are and only get filtered in too? One assumes that the only reason that anyone moves is because there are jobs there, so the economy is surely ready to asborb them quickly because they’re a necessary tool of the markets.

But your stance here is to say companies should not be free to hire who they think is best to serve their purposes. The problem is a lack of global worldwide jobs (after all, why is anyone coming here if they have a readily available employment stream where they are in the skills/interests/abilities they have).

I guess that’s why I hate this stance of yours so much, it says “Go be unemployed elsewhere” even though as a nation we may be one of the best equipped to try and do some good on the global needs of job creation.

Er, which is exactly what the speech does.

Bollocks. He mentions housing once, and doesn’t say anything about how that issue is to be solved in this speech. I’ll accept that he may in the future go on to say something about strategy on services and infrastructure, but right now he’s set his stall out that the primary focus is right-wing control of borders alone.

Incidentally, very cute of you to denounce both Labour and Tories on this. Have Libdems said anything critical of the much more idiotic Tory immigration policy and said they wouldn’t support it?

Yes.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/8457110/Nick-Clegg-reignites-immigration-row.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cabinet-split-as-baroness-warsi-attacks-racist-curbs-on-immigration-7873596.html

“This is being floated by David Willetts, the Conservative Universities minister, and Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, who are said to be arguing that students should not be counted because the vast majority only stay in Britain temporarily. ”

Granted they’re not being as brave as they were in opposition, but they are at least consistently chipping away at this kind of stance.

My view isn’t partisan by the way, my view would be exactly the same if all three parties were trotting this line out, and I would happily applaud Labour if they truly turned around and had a more Lib Dem style stance (though, as you’re aware I would preface it with a complete lack of trust for them to do what they say ). My view is my own, and has been the same regardless of which party has or hasn’t supported it, same as the death penalty, same as web snooping, same as prisoner votes, etc, etc.

Then you make a series of points that have already been addressed in the speech, which boggles the mind even further.

He made not one reference to the right to family life, the the absurdity of only letting people of a certain wage in. Far from trying to focus on opportunities out of London he clearly focuses on London in a “we must solve this for Londoners” way. He doesn’t even say the cap is bad, he leaves it hanging there like it’s something he would totally get behind if it could be a) proved to help britons in the way it’s intended to and b) was actually feasible.

So I’m not really sure where you’ve heard these other bits being addressed, maybe you’re remembering something else.

HOW IRONIC:

Born in London, Miliband is the younger son of Polish Jewish immigrants. His mother, Marion Kozak, a human rights campaigner and early CND member, survived the Holocaust thanks to being protected by Roman Catholic Poles. His father, Ralph Miliband, was a Belgian-born Marxist academic, who fled with his parents to England during World War II

It’s not a bloody class issue. I very much doubt anyone high in Labour’s ranks understands class anymore. We all know what most opposition to immigration is about and it’s got naff all to do with jobs, housing or services. Those are rationalisations.

@16

yup because we all know albanians by sight – i think it’s the national dress that’s a give away.

It was my guess, that’s all. And of course you you can often tell. These guys, about a dozen or more, were obviously agency workers who spoke little English.
They certainly weren’t from any EU country I could think of, so then I wondered by what means were they allowed to work. As former asylum seekers maybe I thought.
It was the way they will have been hired that was more significant than their presence in the country. There is a possibility that they were hired by a gangmaster or some dodgy employment agency. Or even if totally legal, there may still have been something not quite right going on.
Like the employment agency woman who has been on the news tonight saying how employers were asking for eastern Europeans specifically. And not bothering with local unemployed.

There is one immigration related issue that no-one yet has mentioned.

One of the reasons for high immigration is the lack of training—both by empolyers and the state.

Or to be more precise, the lack of appropriate training, I recently saw some statistic that we are currently training about 5 times as many people per year in hairdressing/beatician etc related courses as there are jobs available, but half or less in construction related professions.

Employers, by and large—there are some exceptions—simply do not train, so they rely on poaching from those who do. This is what leads to the “Polish Plumber” issue: it’s not that Poles are intrinsicly better plumbers, it’s that there aren’t enought ttrained British ones.

We need to do two things. First align the training with the jobs available. This will mean drastic cuts in some courses (Media stidies is another one that comes to mind) and expand others. Then, a training levy should be imposed on those industries who use skilled staff (most of them), deferable totally or in part for those who do train.

What Ed has proposed will have no effect on the numbers, it is just empty posturing

I very much doubt this post recognises how important it is for younger folk to have the freedom to go anywhere they want. It is bureucrats and their chums that build barriers.

It is also an ageist issue, and Sunny and Dave are on the wrong side of it. This planet ought to be open to anyone that wants to move, and can, at the very least, show that they would be a good thing, wherever they went.

Utter nonsense.