As a political issue, it’s a bit unpredictable when immigration becomes ‘newsworthy’. It festers away for ages, until something happens, like there is a fiasco by the Borders Agency, or Gillian Duffy interrogates a hapless Gordon Brown on a walkabout. Bloggers and expert commentators are prone to think ‘what’s new?’ with every policy announcement from a think-tank about immigration, but most largely agree it’s an issue that Labour should at least have a view on it.
It’s very easy to formulate the issues in terms of the macroeconomics of multi-national companies, and the economic contribution of specialised and non-specialised workers and employees within the economy. It’s also intellectually possible to enmesh with this a large warning about globalisation and insecurity, as the academic powerhouse ‘Blue Labour’ have tried to do. It’s less easy to explain why immigrants can sometimes be perceived to ‘leapfrog’ ‘home-grown’ citizens on a housing ballot because of their points amassed by having children or living in hostels. It’s far less easy to put somebody else from voting BNP in a run-down council estate where there is a genuine problem with poverty or prostitution and to explain coherently why their Tory, LibDem or Labour councillor has never bothered to visit.
The immigration debate is unnecessarily complicated by a legalistic need to observe free movement of workers under European law, but law is perhaps helpful in stopping multi-national corporations from employing cheap immigrant labour under the minimum-wage. It is difficult for Ed Miliband to explain his view of immigration without somehow being accused of being hypocritical or racist by his enemies. It is undesirable for Ed Miliband to wish to be seen to ‘profit’ from the issue, but it is a ‘doorstep’ issue in the same way it apparently is brought up daily with Labour councillors in surgeries, like the economy or the NHS.
The way Ed Miliband has approached this is entirely in keeping that change politically in the UK tends to be slow to be effective. I feel clues can be found in fact from Ralph Miliband and the ‘New Left’ movement, but Ed Miliband’s mission is not apparently an intellectual one but a pragmatic one. Miliband has spoken not only about the possible economic contribution of immigrants, in the sense of the Polish shopkeeper running successfully a small business employing people, but has deliberately tried to avoid the notion that all immigrants are from Eastern Europe and/or are ‘benefit scroungers’. The tightrope of standing up for immigrants and being overtly racist is an awkward one.
I feel that Miliband’s emphasis on building communities is central here. Sure, Miliband wants to be able to look a voter in the eye and say if necessary his or her own job is not being stolen by cheaper immigrant, but it is most intriguing how Miliband has in fact emphasise social capital, the value to be attained from being cohesive communities in the UK. This is possibly because Miliband is fully aware of the power of unions as a social capital, consistent with his notion of ‘responsible capitalism’. However, I feel strongly it is no accident at all that Miliband has tackled head-on one of the main reasons why his father rejected Labour in the 50’s that of rejection of the supremacy of the capital markets. This could explain also Miliband’s ideological rejection of ‘crony capitalism’ that lies at the feet of News International and Barclays. Miliband in final hustings at Haverstock Hill Comprehensive School, prior to being elected as leader, said that he desired the Unions to be no longer viewed as the ‘evil uncle’ of Labour, and it is clear that we wishes to put the Unions at the heart of building the UK in time. He clearly cannot do so at the moment because of the media’s obsession with the unions being disruptive and striking.
Make no mistake, Miliband’s strategy is fundamentally a subtle one, but a very clever one which embraces a lot of strands of coherent pragmatic ‘New Left’ policy. I’m pretty confident that as a programme it will ‘grow on people’. People voted for Nick Clegg as an abreaction to Gordon Brown, to a large degree, but Ed Miliband presents a programme which is far from a ‘quick-fix’. For this, many people wish him to succeed on the progressive left, and time will tell. It is a much more convincing approach than the knockabout of George Osborne, with accusations in the Spectator which he cannot substantiate in public. Whilst the public tire of the hate campaign of Osborne towards Balls, Miliband is free to develop a healthy ideological agenda for Labour as a party to govern the UK. And, yes, you’re correct, this New Left movement is ideologically the opposite of New Labour.
Ed Miliband’s speech: “Ed Miliband: Labour got it wrong on immigration” June 2012
