The end of free movement was, without question, one of the main reasons people voted to leave Europe. All those bloody foreigners coming over here, doing minimum wage jobs no one else wants to do in a variety of sectors, including social care; it had to stop. Yesterday, home secretary Priti Patel, whose migrant parents would have been prevented from settling in the UK under her rules, announced how we would replace the people migrating to Britain and stealing the British jobs: she wants to use the 8.5 million people who are ‘economically inactive’. So, who are the ‘economically inactive’?
Well, there are 2.3 million students for starters, as well as 2.1 million long-term sick. Given the ferocity of the modern benefits regime, I doubt whether many of them are ‘swinging the lead’. Then, there are 1.1 million people who have ‘retired’ before the official retirement age and 1.9 million who are caring for family members. Less than 1.9 million are said to want a job and note that I said ‘want a job’ and not ‘need’ one. The government will end free movement and replace it with a requirement for most migrants to have a job worth at least £25,600 to go to. Less than 30% of EU migrants earn that amount or more and many earn nowhere near that amount.
It’s important to realise that this is going to happen. And we need to realise that if European workers are unable to come and work in Britain, someone will need to, so it is surely likely that there will be an element of compulsion to make ‘economically inactive’ Brits carry out these jobs?
I cannot see an alternative to compulsion. I cannot imagine those people who have chosen to escape the rat race before the ever increasing state pension age wanting to go back to work. If you are managing okay with your post full time work income, would you really be tempted to go into domiciliary care work, assisting people with their toiletry and washing needs for a take home wage of around £7 an hour? Or, for the same wage, they could work as a fruit picker, many miles from home? Other forms of tough, very low paid, often back-breaking jobs are available. If you retired early to enjoy what you hope would be a longer, more fulfilling retirement, would you consider these jobs to boost your income (though not by much)?
And who will do the caring if home carers have to go to work to make up the shortfall? Maybe poorer students who already have to take part time jobs in order to have some kind of life when they are at university can be compelled to work full time, say overnight shifts in the local Tesco for £9 an hour, when those horrible Europeans have been sent home? Richer students would be just fine because mummy and daddy can continue to sub them. Not much ‘levelling-up’ here, Priti, is there? And what if you literally haven’t got a leg to stand on? Don’t worry: I’m sure Priti can find a way of ditching your idle economic inactivity. Either this stuff hasn’t been properly thought through – and I doubt very much whether Patel can think anything through – or people will be forced to do these jobs.
I suspect the real reason Patel has honed-in on the ‘economically inactive’ is because she knows we are in times of near full employment. Yes, on the face of it, over a million people still register as unemployed but many of these people are – and let’s be brutally honest about this – all but unemployable. For all manner of reasons, from sociological, through addiction to complex family issues, you can’t just wander into a Jobcentre and sweep up the unemployed and put them into people’s homes to carry out domiciliary care functions or cart them off halfway around the country to pick fruit. The government’s concluded these are the only people who are suitable to do these jobs. And they must surely know that if people are not compelled to do them, then they won’t.
This, I suppose, represents the ‘will of the people’. When Nigel Farage stood before his ‘Breaking Point’ poster showing a large line of people of colour, it resonated with millions who were encouraged to believe that foreigners were responsible for the not always great lives they lived. We were told Europeans were taking our jobs, lowering our wages and taking away our opportunities. Now they are going to be prevented from coming to work here and someone will need to do their jobs. More than that, I believe, many will find themselves compelled to do their jobs.
This is ‘taking back control’ in all its inglorious reality. Taking back control will apply only to the rich and powerful, the illiberal elite. In truth, it’s exactly what we voted for, just that the likes of Farage and Boris Johnson didn’t mention the awkward bits.
