Far be it for me to go over old ground but when it comes to migration, it has to be done. My loyal reader will know that my objection is not necessarily to migration itself but to the fact that ordinary people are never asked about it. The current debate about the EU referendum should really be about prosperity and peace (I know this is not what the ballot paper says, but that’s definitely how I see it) but instead one side, the Leavers, debate just one subject: migration. And it has tapped a nerve. Rightly or wrongly, people are concerned about migration, they fear the effects of migration in terms of a culture clash or in negative economic terms, like “taking British jobs” or “driving down wages”. The response of politicians is always this: we know best.
The right wing Brexit argument – and I know Brexit is not entirely a right wing issue – is that all migration is bad. They lie about migration, they employ false figures, they say one thing and then mean another. They blame the EU for migration but conveniently overlook the simple fact that most migrants come from outside the EU. The ‘outers’ have no shame, either. One of their ‘front’ groups has been set up to address the so-called Muslim ‘community’, saying that if we put a stop to EU migration, more migrants will be able to come here from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Get shot of the Polish plumbers and Eastern European fruit pickers and we can bring in more people from the Commonwealth, so vote leave. The sheer brass neck of it.
But the anti-migration argument of the right, that all migrants are bad and damage the economy is countered but the left argument that all migration is fine, so don’t worry about it. And if you complain, you are a racist. This is of little comfort to people who perceive – rightly or wrongly – that the country is being swamped. Do we ignore the evidence of our own eyes, of areas in their towns and cities that look like a foreign land, or that some employers use, almost exclusively, foreign workers? When I had the misfortune to work for Tesco, almost the entire nightshift was eastern European. They were good people who worked flat out all the time. I got friendly with some of them and it turned out they lived together in large numbers, sometimes as many as many as 10 to 12 people in one rented house. They earned slightly more than the day rate, but no one would suggest they were well paid. They saved some of the money, they sent some money home. None of the ones I knew wanted to buy a house, save for a mortgage and so on. It was not the same as local workers who did want to get on the housing ladder. What follows is anecdotal, backed with no evidence or research.
Their local colleagues strongly believed that the night shift was driving down wages and if they were not here, Tesco (it’s probably the same at other supermarkets) would have to pay far higher wages to recruit and return workers. In my previous life as a civil servant, I met many, many people who felt the same day about migrants. They didn’t dislike them personally but they were in doubt that migrants were affecting their lives and not in a good way.
And that’s it. The perception and the fact. It’s all a big blur and it suits the politicians. There is no debate for the public, just statements passing as facts tossed into the ether. This is taking us into a very dark place.
The reaction of the media, particularly some newspapers, is becoming truly frightening. The Daily Mail, which of course supported Hitler and Mosley before World War Two, leads pretty well every day on an anti-migration story, painting a lurid picture of migrants being scroungers, rapists and murderers. The Sun is not far behind. I have more faith in the readers of the Mail and the Sun than I do of its owners and journalists, but they do read the headlines and the content. It is utterly relentless, crushingly so. It’s not government propaganda. It’s probably even worse. It’s propaganda from fabulously rich unaccountable and unelected tyrants. With a press that has an unmistakably far right, anti-foreigner agenda, we are, for now, lucky in the far right politicians that we have.
In Nigel Farage, we have a Pound Shop Oswald Mosley. Far right, wealthy, former public schoolboy, posing as the anti-establishent hero, Farage leads Ukip, a sort of BNP in blazers. His ‘hale-fellow-well-met’ facade is liked by many people, even though it’s as authentic as Boris Johnson’s buffoon act, which is to say it isn’t. They are liked, for reasons I kind of understand, as being the sort of chaps you’d like to have a pint with, despite or maybe even because of their hardline right wing populist views. I’d be far more worried if the leaders of the British right were more charismatic and imposing, like France’s Marine La Pen, but what if someone like her turns up? It happened in Germany during the 1930s. All of this is why politicians must listen to us.
To many people, politicians seem a million miles away from those of us living ordinary lives. I cannot relate to the Old Etonians who run the Tory Party (and the country) who talk in a different language and live completely different lives to the rest of us, but then I find it hard to relate to Jeremy Corbyn’s resurrection of old Labour, being talked down to by the upwardly mobile affluent chattering classes, being told that if you question migration, you are a racist. The hard left and the hard right almost seem to converge with their sneering we-know-best attitude to the great unwashed.
The Cameroons in the leafy shires and the Corbynistas in their neat townhouses each stand a million miles away from those who fear their culture being changed, feeling like strangers in their own towns and believing that migration is affecting their lives through lower wages, inadequate housing and overstretched public services.
Things are no longer bubbling along, anger just below the surface. People are getting angry because they are disenfranchised and they believe politicians aren’t listening to them. With migration, they are right.
The failed multiculturalism experiment has much to answer for. As the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins pointed out, “If you have two cultures in one society then you have two societies”. The only thing is now we have many more than two cultures and no one asked the people.
Open debate, that’s what is needed. A secular, multi-coloured, multi-ethnic country suits me just fine, a multicultural mix of different, usually religion-based, cultures doesn’t.
The big danger to the status quo is that, sooner or later, a thoroughly modern Mosley will appear and latch on to the levels of concern that exist in our country, taking us to a dangerous place. No one in high politics, from Labour to the Tories, opposes the separation of society down religious and cultural grounds, and I don’t think I am alone in feeling very concerned about this.
People are worried and people are frightened. History tells us that when a crisis, usually an economic crisis, comes along, society further divides and people who are perceived to be, or who actually are, ‘different’ bear the brunt and take the blame. And if conventional politicians don’t take a lead today, someone even worse could be leading tomorrow.
