Corb Blimey!

[Lucy Waterman]

Corb Blimey!

Bored of Education wrote:

They put all the "pledges" on mugs and the stone. The mug was sold off their website.

Well, maybe, immigration shouldn't have been on the "pledges". You can have and should have an immigration policy, of course, but when you are picking policies to put as your main pledges, you don't have to put immigration. They didn't, for instance, put anything about renewable energy nor, indeed, any environment policies, defence (apparently quite important all of a sudden) or corporate tax fraud. Come on, Tubby, you know exactly what they did - "What are the Tories dog-whistle policies? Let's answer them and get close to them as possible.". The "Not quite as bad as the Tories" strategy, basically. The odd thing is that there was nothing about the EU on there but I suppose it's a cross-political issue.

As it goes, I checked to see whether they did mugs for the other pledges. There weren't any on the site. Not too odd, you may think but they do have the main pledge mug and other 2015 campaign paraphernalia. Does this mean they pulled all the individual pledge mugs, not just the racist one, or that they pulled that one but hadn't produced any others.

The problem is that when the public consistently say - whenever they're asked - that immigration is one of the most important issues facing Britain, not making it one of your priorities means you get fucked by the other side.

As a comparison, The Tories used to avoid talking about the NHS under Hague and IDS, because they knew Labour owned the issue. But Cameron had the sense to engage with it in the run-up to 2010, and it helped him.

Miliband had to say something about immigration if he wanted to win the election. If people cared as much about renewable energy, it would have made sense for that to be a pledge.

[N est à?]

Corb Blimey!

The mug does seem emblematic of how Ed Miliband's Labour triangulated itself to defeat though. As a pledge, it was meaningless, and won't have impressed people who do have immigration at the top of their list of concerns: there are already controls on immigration, Labour committed to no particular course of action (the other 'stone' pledges were similarly vague). At the same time, to, well, metropolitan clever dicks like me, it looked like embarrassing pandering.

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

Corb Blimey!

Lucy Waterman wrote:

They put all the "pledges" on mugs and the stone. The mug was sold off their website.

Well, maybe, immigration shouldn't have been on the "pledges". You can have and should have an immigration policy, of course, but when you are picking policies to put as your main pledges, you don't have to put immigration. They didn't, for instance, put anything about renewable energy nor, indeed, any environment policies, defence (apparently quite important all of a sudden) or corporate tax fraud. Come on, Tubby, you know exactly what they did - "What are the Tories dog-whistle policies? Let's answer them and get close to them as possible.". The "Not quite as bad as the Tories" strategy, basically. The odd thing is that there was nothing about the EU on there but I suppose it's a cross-political issue.

As it goes, I checked to see whether they did mugs for the other pledges. There weren't any on the site. Not too odd, you may think but they do have the main pledge mug and other 2015 campaign paraphernalia. Does this mean they pulled all the individual pledge mugs, not just the racist one, or that they pulled that one but hadn't produced any others.

The problem is that when the public consistently say - whenever they're asked - that immigration is one of the most important issues facing Britain, not making it one of your priorities means you get fucked by the other side.

As a comparison, The Tories used to avoid talking about the NHS under Hague and IDS, because they knew Labour owned the issue. But Cameron had the sense to engage with it in the run-up to 2010, and it helped him.

Miliband had to say something about immigration if he wanted to win the election. If people cared as much about renewable energy, it would have made sense for that to be a pledge.

Peope care about whatever they're told to care about. If they get their world view from The Sun and The Daily Mail and they bang on about inmigration day in day out they're obviously going to care about immigration. By giving in to that worldview you are giving up your duty of providing an alternative one and settling for counterattack politics.

Fifty years ago 99% per cent of the people would have been agaisnt gay marriage. If that is not the case anymore it's because some people raised an alternative voice instead of lying down to accepted wisdom.

[Lucy Waterman]

Corb Blimey!

Yeah, but those 99% probably wouldn't have placed gay marriage as one of their top three concerns.

Changing the British public's mind about immigration ex nihilo is an exercise in preference-shaping way beyond the skills of any party leader. The most likely thing to do it is a series of extra-party-political events along the lines of Aylan Kurdi.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Corb Blimey!

Yeah, exactly. And worth saying that Labour had a decent go at being positive about immigration. Even the "British jobs for British workers" came from "building on the talents of all", as well the "dogwhistle".

[DCI Harry Batt]

Corb Blimey!

When DA FUK did Labour have this decent go?

[E10 Rifle]

Corb Blimey!

Peope care about whatever they're told to care about.

I don't think we're gonna get very far if we dismiss public opinion as simply that of a media-brainwashed herd. It's a lot more complicated than that. Some people's hostility to immigration will be based on their own actually-lived experience, their resistance to change and so on. Just as – and this isn't said enough - people's positive attitudes to it are also borne of their own experience of it. Once you've discovered that Them Foreigns Next Door are actually decent sorts whose kids play with your kids etc, attitudes change that way too.

Of course, the extent to which this becomes a political issue - and other unrelated things are blamed on immigrants - is where media bias etc come more into play. And I don't think Labour have ever succeeded on a platform on which hostility to immigration played a significant and prominent part. People voted for Blair for other reasons.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Corb Blimey!

Bizarre Löw Triangle wrote:

But I agree with you about the lack of narrative with Labour. It's a problem.

It's less about narrative IMO and more about lacking and ideological basis to underpin that narrative.

If it was something superficial, all other centre-left parties in Europe wouldn't be experiencing similar malaise.

Demographics is a lot of that. Aging populations, high cost of pensions etc.

I see that as about the biggest issue of all, and ideology isn't much help in tackling it. I'm OK with rail nationalization (from 2020) but the sort of money at stake there is peanuts compared with pensions and pensioner benefits.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Corb Blimey!

TonTon wrote: When DA FUK did Labour have this decent go?

One of only three countries who didn't have transitional labour controls from 2004. Brave and principled, and good for the economy. They got bucketfuls of shit for it.

By 2007, it wasn't politically tenable and they stupidly put restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians.

[Toro Toro]

Corb Blimey!

Oh, Tubby. You can prove anything with facts.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Corb Blimey!

To change the subject, I see the SNP are opposing English Sunday Trading because it'll effect Scottish Sunday Trading.

I oppose the changes too, and think the SNP should vote on everything in Westminster, so good on them.

But hang on. If Scotland would cave in helpless before a fairly minor (in economic terms) policy like Sunday Trading in rUK, I reckon the chances of it blazing the social democratic trail Sturgeon wants are pretty much the square root of zilch.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Corb Blimey!

Toro Toro wrote: Oh, Tubby. You can prove anything with facts.

Fuck, he's still around.

[Toro Toro]

Corb Blimey!

That's right, pretend Tubby's point hasn't made you look silly, and attack me instead.

[E10 Rifle]

Corb Blimey!

There were more than 100 people at my local LP branch meeting last night. Around five times as much as there used to be. On a Monday night in November. For all the nonsense going up higher up the Labour party food chain among the Grown-Ups, it's quite hard to get a grip on this upsurge in enthusiasm at local level, but it's great to see.

[johnr]

Corb Blimey!

Tubby Isaacs wrote:

When DA FUK did Labour have this decent go?

One of only three countries who didn't have transitional labour controls from 2004. Brave and principled, and good for the economy. They got bucketfuls of shit for it.

By 2007, it wasn't politically tenable and they stupidly put restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians.

I don't remember this as a decent go at promoting/being positive about migration, but maybe we all see history through our own prism; I certainly remember them saying, to paraphrase, 'there won't be that many'. And, when there were, in fact, many more than forecast, and it became 'politically untenable', they soon started being a lot less positive.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Corb Blimey!

They did get caught out by other countries imposing restrictions, but they took a positive decision, based on sound advice.

Various lying liars told lies about the advice they'd received, so that virtually everybody believed they were useless or crooked. This is good on what the actual advice was.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21682810

The economist who predicted that opening UK borders to 10 new EU countries in 2004 would increase the population by 13,000 a year has accused MPs of misinterpreting his figures.

Politicians have said the forecast was "spectacularly wrong" and "laughable".

But Prof Christian Dustmann believes none can have read his 2003 report.

He said it made clear immigration would be much higher if, as happened, Germany and other countries decided to curb access to their labour markets.

Immigration's particularly difficult, I think, because of the "lump of labour" myth- ie that there's a finite amount of jobs and immigrants "take" a lot of them and therefore reduce wages. It's even worse than the "country as household budget" myth, because some people with leftwing opinions believe it too.

Ad Hoc made an excellent post a while ago about the lack of a decent argument put for immigration, beyond a vague "good for business". I fear it's pretty hard to make one that overcomes the prejudices.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Corb Blimey!

E10 Rifle wrote: There were more than 100 people at my local LP branch meeting last night. Around five times as much as there used to be. On a Monday night in November. For all the nonsense going up higher up the Labour party food chain among the Grown-Ups, it's quite hard to get a grip on this upsurge in enthusiasm at local level, but it's great to see.

Excellent news.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Corb Blimey!

This is good on immigration from Jonathan Portes from 2011, where Labour gave up defending its policy.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/09/27/labour-are-apologising-for-their-record-on-immigration-in-office-they-are-wrong-to-do-so/

Nice dig at the charlatan Glasman there too.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Corb Blimey!

Toro Toro wrote: That's right, pretend Tubby's point hasn't made you look silly, and attack me instead.

Fuck off. Like, I don't mean it as an insult. I just really, really wish you would fuck off. Properly fuck off. And stay fucked off.

Fuck off.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Corb Blimey!

Tubby Isaacs wrote: This is good on immigration from Jonathan Portes from 2011, where Labour gave up defending its policy.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/09/27/labour-are-apologising-for-their-record-on-immigration-in-office-they-are-wrong-to-do-so/

Nice dig at the charlatan Glasman there too.

Tubbs - is the "having a good go" thing based on the non-restriction policy alone? As johnr says, we all see and hear and remember things in our own ways, of course. But is there more to what you meant than that policy?

[Toro Toro]

Corb Blimey!

That's right, pretend Tubby's point hasn't made you look silly, and attack me instead.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Corb Blimey!

Toro Toro wrote: That's right, pretend Tubby's point hasn't made you look silly, and attack me instead.

Since you live in your own little fantasy world, why don't you just stay there, and stop bothering the rest of us?

And fuck off.

[E10 Rifle]

Corb Blimey!

Ad Hoc made an excellent post a while ago about the lack of a decent argument put for immigration, beyond a vague "good for business". I fear it's pretty hard to make one that overcomes the prejudices.

Well yeah, it's the overuse of the "good for business" argument - by liberals as well as pro-EU Tories - that's part of the problem, I think. It reduces all of us to economic units, and constricts the room for human arguments about immigrants.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Corb Blimey!

TonTon wrote:

This is good on immigration from Jonathan Portes from 2011, where Labour gave up defending its policy.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/09/27/labour-are-apologising-for-their-record-on-immigration-in-office-they-are-wrong-to-do-so/

Nice dig at the charlatan Glasman there too.

Tubbs - is the "having a good go" thing based on the non-restriction policy alone? As johnr says, we all see and hear and remember things in our own ways, of course. But is there more to what you meant than that policy?

Not just that policy, but policy in general before 2007. Jonathan Portes was basically Blair's man before 2001. This is the period that lying liars refer to when they say there was a "plot" involving Andy Neather. They made a fair bit of a report showing positive benefits in this period.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Corb Blimey!

E10 Rifle wrote:

Ad Hoc made an excellent post a while ago about the lack of a decent argument put for immigration, beyond a vague "good for business". I fear it's pretty hard to make one that overcomes the prejudices.

Well yeah, it's the overuse of the "good for business" argument - by liberals as well as pro-EU Tories - that's part of the problem, I think. It reduces all of us to economic units, and constricts the room for human arguments about immigrants.

Human arguments for asylum are clear enough (one area Blair's record is harder to defend) but less so for "economic migration", and probably doomed. Lots of people don't even see a right of economic migration from Poland to the UK, so the developing world is probably a no-no.

It's a really tough area. I don't know what Corbyn will do. He's within his rights to take his time, that's for sure.