Comment by mytailorisrich
13 days ago
> a polycrisis of far-right immigration agitation
I think an important issue in the UK political landscape and public is the polarisation that makes people label immigration a "far-right agitation".
Immigration is a serious and key issue, which impacts everything else, too. As long as the left of centre denies that it is an issue at all (because only "far right" people have a problem with it, apparently) Nigel Farage and the like will only keep increasing their share of the vote. The other aspect of Reform UK's rise is that the Conservatives only paid lip service to the issue so lost the support of many on the right and were destroyed at the last general election (still very visible in the polls).
Perhaps this, like Brexit before, also highlights another issue in the UK/England, which is that London tends to live in its own bubble.
Xenophobia is a tool of demagogues, not a rational policy.
So while it's an issue, it's not even in the top ten of of the UK's most important practical issues.
And the racism it generates - including Brexit, and currently the collapse of income from foreign students, which was a huge earner for the university sector - does huge and lasting harm.
It's a political shiny penny used for distraction, not a realistic solution to anything. And the people who make careers out of promoting it are provably cynical, corrupt, incompetent, and disinterested in solving real problems.
The problem with this argument is that for essentially my entire lifetime, the UK population has wanted less migration. And what they have got instead is gross migration running at 1 million per year. If they are just fundamentally wrong on this and have been for 50 years, it seems like democracy is a bad idea. Alternatively, if you feel you have to accept democracy, then maybe it would be good to give people what they consistently say they want on this issue.
> And what they have got instead is gross migration running at 1 million per year.
LEGAL migration of 1 million per year. For one year only during Boris Johnson's term. Mostly it's in the 100,000s.
Most migration is legal. People crossing the channel in boats is minuscule in comparison (tens of thousands). And, whilst people crossing the channel in small boats is certainly a problem (for their lives, if nothing else), it is not something that should be taking up so much political air. It's a side issue in the big scheme of things.
Governments should certainly have more strategic plans for dealing with the legal migrants, like infrastructure building, and if they're unable to deliver the infrastructure, limit the legal migration. But the rest of it is often driven by political opportunists and bigots.
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You're tied up in centuries of empire-building consequences and think "no brown people please" is a legitimate point of view?
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No we haven't.
Labour pivoted way to the right on immigration and it didn't get them any more votes. There's nothing they can do to get that part of the electorate and it's a waste of time to try to cater to them.
Hmm, their manifesto said "A fair and properly managed immigration system"... That's the absolute minimum lip service and a platitude, not any sort of pivot, which they cannot do considering the various power groups within the party.
Since then it's really only foreign students who have had issues, so the group that probably makes the least sense to 'hit' (although there was abuse of the system that needed to be addressed)but the easiest politically, again because it's the least resistance path within party and party supports while allowing to say that they are acting.
> Immigration is a serious and key issue, which impacts everything else, too.
No, other things are serious and key issues, and immigration is the scapegoat that gives people someone to blame for their problems, distracting from actual solutions that don't fit in a one-sentence slogan the way the non-solution "kick out all the Xes" does. This has been an electoral tactic of right-wing populists for a long, long time.
It's just amazing how simple people can be when things like economic inequality, lack of affordable healthcare and housing, climate change, social security, public services etc. can all be labeled as leftist (and thus bad) issues, and focus turned just to immigration (which itself is also a complex topic).
"I'd vote for the left, but they do nothing about the brown people." I wish these people just stayed at home on the voting day.