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Break with this Tory rhetoric! Labour Briefing editorial

22nd January 2014

Break with this Tory rhetoric!

Recent weeks have seen a poisoning of the political discourse about immigration. Much of the ludicrous fear mongering about an imminent invasion of Romanians and Bulgarians was whipped up by Tory tabloid newspapers. Their agenda is transparent: maximum publicity and support for UKIP ahead of the European Parliamentary elections this spring, primarily as a means of pushing Cameron to the right. Then, no doubt, they will suddenly discover that the UKIP website mocked the death of Nelson Mandela and that its leader Nigel Farage allegedly sang Hitler Youth songs at school. The same tabloids will then quietly fall in behind the Tories before the 2015 general election.

Nor does the Government believe half the rubbish it talks about the dangers of migration. It has suppressed its own report which shows that the benefits of EU immigration into Britain significantly outweigh the drawbacks. But the Conservatives know from their darkest days in Opposition that immigration is the one issue on which they always lead Labour in the polls. So as their unpopular service cuts and cost of living crisis bite deeper, the issue of foreigners becomes a convenient distraction for a beleaguered Government.

More fool the Labour leadership then for drifting along with this agenda. Its failure to oppose the Government’s new immigration bill is an act of political cowardice, which allows to pass unchallenged the most odious practices - like the rewarding of Home Office staff with shopping vouchers for rejecting asylum seekers’ claims.
This pandering to a public ignorance that Cameron’s team itself helped create might yet backfire. As two million displaced people flee the civil conflict in Syria, our Government, representing the eighth richest country in the world, refuses to take in a single refugee. And Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, timidly playing catch-up, says: maybe 400?

Much of the Tories’ dislike of the EU is due to the latter’s modest commitment to some workplace rights such as minimum holiday pay and maternity entitlements, which Tory business backers want binned. And many of the Government’s new rules on immigrants are about charging for universal services, which opens the way for charging for other people later. Under the anti-migrant rhetoric, an attack on many of our post-war welfare gains is being mounted.

The Labour leadership must break from this narrative, not just on immigration, but on demonising benefit claimants, as Shadow Work and Pensions spokesperson Rachel Reeves has done, or on scapegoating teachers, as we’ve had from Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt. Unless it fundamentally changes the conversation from the Tory line of divide and rule, all the positive noises about controlling the energy companies and breaking up the banks will look implausible and lack credibility.

Millions of hard-pressed people desperately need a change of policy. If Labour cannot convince them that it is on their side, they will not feel inspired to vote for them, however attractive a few of its policies may look on paper.

This is the editorial from the current (February 2014) issue of ‘Labour Briefing’, the magazine of the LRC. Subscribe!