I just hope we can calm down about this migration/refugee/asylum-seeking malarkey that’s beginning to get a little too serious for me. Some parts of the press – I wonder if you can guess which parts? – have long crossed the racism line, but in recent days, I wonder just how far they can take things.
Every day it’s something new, whether it’s a rape story, which merely confirms to some that all foreigners are rapists or it’s that some child refugees are not children at all. And they’re probably also rapists anyway who want to come here to claim benefits and get social housing for life. Some people genuinely believe that’s true and very few people have the gumption to suggest that it might not be true.
To play that broken record once again, we need to talk about migration and we need to do it soon. We need to move away from the Tory/Ukip line that migration is all bad news and the Labour line that all migration is good news, the more the merrier (this is pretty well the Corbyn view) because the public mood, I believe, lies somewhere in the middle. This is not my mood because I believe we need as many migrants as the economy needs and we need as many migrants who can contribute to the public purse to ensure this country can afford a properly funded NHS and to ensure we have enough money to pay a realistic pension the larger numbers of senior citizens. Not everyone agrees with that – far from it – and that is why we need a proper debate.
Labour has moved from Miliband’s anti-immigration mug to Corbyn’s open door policy, the biggest leap imaginable and the Tories, under a new leader who is careering to the right, has ramped up the ante by saying migration matters more than a stable economy. The battle lines are being redrawn and both sides could not be further apart.
I happen to think that most people don’t care about the nationality of the doctor and nurse who cares for them in hospital. I don’t think there’s a great outcry about eastern European fruit pickers either. But there is a concern that foreign workers are driving down wages in some areas. I believe this is true. How about supermarkets whose overnight shift is almost entirely Polish? The supermarkets know they could not attract British workers to do the heavy lifting in the twilight hours, so they pay what they can get away with. The argument goes that without the Poles (insert any foreign group of people) the wages would be higher. We need to look into this, we need to investigate and we need to find out if it’s true.
My guess is that the argument is not so much about foreign workers, it is about Muslims coming here. I cannot believe there would be a fuss if a few hundred thousand Australian atheists were working here, but the cultural aspect frightens some people. You might be surprised to learn that I have sympathy with that argument because I support diversity but I also oppose the failed experiment that was multiculturalism. I believe in one culture within which everyone lives and co-exists. That everyone can pray if they want but no one has to. Where no one of any religion enjoys a privilege that no one else gets. That means we all live under one law and our children attend non religious schools, all of our children. End of, full stop. If this sounds like “if you don’t like it over here, then go to X and live under their laws”, it isn’t supposed to. I don’t care who lives here as long as they live under the same laws that I do.
But, as I said, we need to calm down a bit. Although Ukip is beginning to implode, do not think this is the end of the far right in Britain. Ukip were always the BNP in blazers so there is a vacancy on the far right. This is my most pressing concern.
Labour is ‘led’ by a clueless, uncharismatic pensioner, the Liberals by a man no one has heard of and the Tories, I fear, are led by someone who is out of her depth. All you need, at a time of economic crisis, which Brexit will bring, is someone to blame. The blame will surely be attached to the migrant. And what if a genuinely charismatic far right figure emerges, as the economy tanks and there is anger on the streets? Don’t believe it couldn’t happen to us because when people feel threatened and are frightened – well, you know the rest.
When the process of our departure from the EU begins in earnest, we need meaningful reassurance that the hit to our economy will only be temporary and preferably brief. The politicians and the country may suffer a terrible backlash if leaders aren’t able to lead.
