Britain is Closed
Or, at least it will be if your face doesn’t fit…
News from Home Secretary, Priti Patel, that Britain will be operating a points-based immigration system from next year was not entirely unexpected. After all, the Brexit referendum and the recent general election were largely won by exploiting people’s fears that individuals from overseas — primarily the EU — were ‘coming over here’ and ‘stealing our jobs’. We have been told that countering this influx is crucial to our need to “take back control” and be in charge of our own borders. We need only the “brightest and the best”, and not the influx of low-skilled, EU-based, economic migrants that have been ‘ruining’ our economy by driving down wages.
You have to agree that rhetoric like this is powerful and undoubtedly successful.
Look at the mantra ‘Get Brexit Done’ and what it achieved for Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings in December. Its success often lies in an unwillingness to dig beneath these headline-grabbing sound bites at the truth underneath. Sometimes that suits us. But if we are to have learned anything from the last decade’s flirtation with fake news and the decline in the trustworthiness of those who deliver it to us, we owe it to ourselves to be more discerning when it comes to accepting what those in charge are saying.
With this in mind, it’s worth looking a little deeper behind this latest policy. Is the immigration problem really about the economy? Or, is it simply the political survival of the Conservative party? A look back over the last ten years, or so, may help deliver answers.
Undoubtedly, immigration is a divisive question.
We are happy to be expats in, say, France or Spain, but what if they want to come here, especially when the economy has taken a dive? At first, the financial crash of 2008 was seen for what is was: a problem created by a toxic financial system, driven initially by the sub-prime mortgage sector of our friends across the pond. After several years of austerity, brought in by David Cameron’s government to counter the shock waves set in motion across the country, the memory of this true cause of the problem began to slip from the collective consciousness. Cutbacks followed: the police, the NHS, wages. Decades old companies disappearing from our high streets taking jobs with them. It had to be someone’s fault, but we had conveniently forgotten just whose fault it was.
Then along came someone to tell us: good old ‘man of the people’, Nigel Farage.
The principle of freedom of movement between member states of the EU was heralded as the problem. Forget the financial crash and the years of austerity that followed in its wake; the problem was clearly down to that old familiar scapegoat, immigration. And so, running scared from the political threat posed by this populist upstart and anti-European members of his own party, Cameron called the referendum. This coincided with a migrant crisis, not actually from the EU, but caused by unrest and fighting in the Middle East. Daily, our televisions were bombarded with images of displaced people, ready to risk everything to escape very real dangers. Somehow that got all mixed up with the ‘awful immigration threat’ from the European Union.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Garnering people’s fears is a formidable tool. Get them to believe that there is a threat from a particular sector in society, and you can achieve much. After all, isn’t it odd how the party of wealth and privilege, headed by old-Etonian cover-boy, Boris Johnson, managed to convince so many died-in-the-wool opposition supporters to vote for him? But, having won those votes, he has to maintain that political power and he is all too aware that the rhetoric did its job. Appeasing those who want us to close our doors to unwanted immigrants was one of the corner stones of his victory, so he has moved quickly to ensure that happens. And here we are.
But, hang on, let’s believe for a minute that it is about the economy and not about politics.
There will be winners from this policy: tech companies, the financial sector, academics — and I’m not arguing that any of these is unimportant. But what about those industries that rely on migrant labour from the EU? Gone are the days when UK students would happily spend their summers picking fruit and vegetables. We are in the middle of a social care crisis, but it is immigrant labour that is propping up that sector, too. Then there’s the hospitality and food industries, construction, or even cleaning our underground stations and public buildings. Patel may call for the “economically inactive” to fill these inevitable chasms, but she conveniently forgets that the majority of these are the elderly, the long-term sick or in full-time education.
This may be heralded as a new beginning for Britain, but who will build it, clean and feed it?
The effects of the policy remain to be seen and it may not be as bad as is feared, but let’s not pretend that this is about creating a bright, new, economic future for our country. It is about one thing, and one thing only: political survival.
Think about that next time you vote.
