Ideas@TheCentre
The moment Brown lost the election?
Peter Saunders |
30 April 2010
Brown was campaigning in Rochdale (the town where the cooperative movement was born) when he was introduced to rusted-on Labour supporter Mrs Duffy. She told him her worries about the budget deficit, student grants, and the number of East Europeans coming to Britain. Brown, who was wearing a mike, smiled, chatted, then got into his car and, with the mike still on, began criticising his team for organising the encounter with this ‘bigoted woman.’
Immigration is the rumbling issue of this election. Annual immigration has more than doubled under Labour, and there are about a million illegal migrants (though nobody is sure since there are no checks on people leaving the country). It is an issue that many working class voters are angry about (including some black and Asian voters), and political pundits are worried that the fascist BNP will poll well next week.
The Tories have proposed an annual cap on immigrant numbers, but they won't say what it will be. Labour wants an Australian-style points system, but even before Brown’s gaffe, few voters trusted Labour on immigration (we recently learned that in 2001, ministers deliberately boosted immigration to make the country more multicultural and to wedge the Tories on race). The Liberal Democrats’ contribution to this debate was to offer illegal immigrants an amnesty, which would almost certainly encourage even more to come.
In reality, there is almost nothing any of these parties can do to limit immigration numbers, because most foreign workers are from the European Union (many, as Mrs Duffy pointed out, from Eastern Europe). Under EU rules, they have right of entry.
The Spectator recently calculated that 92% of all the jobs created in Britain since 1997 have gone to foreigners, and that one in eight workers is now from overseas. The reason they come to Britain is that, even in recession, they can find jobs paying much higher rates than at home. Meanwhile, almost six million working-age Britons are on benefits.
Welfare is part of the issue here. Many Brits won’t do low-paid, unattractive jobs any more. They prefer to rely on state handouts. But there is a widespread belief that foreigners are ‘taking our jobs’ (a sentiment Brown himself seemed to encourage last year when he spoke of ‘British jobs for British workers’).
All mainstream politicians speak with forked tongues on the immigration issue, but Labour is particularly vulnerable given that mass immigration affects working class voters most directly. Brown’s gaffe was probably the moment he lost the election.
Professor Saunders is a Senior Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. This article is part of his weekly piece on the UK election.
