I had a conversation
on social media recently that went a bit like this (and I’m
paraphrasing):
‘I want massive
reductions in immigration’
‘But how? Stopping
firms or the public sector’s hiring Labour, or collapsing a number
of universities? How much poorer do you think people will be prepared
to be?’
‘Figure
it out or Reform will’
‘You
want a large reduction in immigration so you tell me how it will be
achieved and at what cost’
‘I’m not a immigration policy expert. What I’m saying is either
Labour does it or the populists will.’
I feel that, since the success of Reform at the last General Election
and Trump’s victory, a good deal of public discourse is a bit like
this. It is dumb politics. Never mind the facts or the
consequences, we need to do what the populists want, or repeat what
they say, otherwise their march to victory will be unstoppable.
The fear is real enough. Trump did win, and in
a recent poll 28% of people had a favourable view of
Nigel Farage, higher than any other party leader. A majority of
people voted for Brexit. But the lesson of Brexit is not that Cameron
should have screwed the economy by even more than he already had in
an attempt to hit his immigration targets. The only way Cameron could
be sure to hit his immigration targets would have been to stop free
movement, which would have meant Brexit, so Brexit to stop Brexit!
One consequence of Brexit is that the government can now largely
control immigration numbers if they want to.
The chart
above shows numbers have been unusually high because
of people coming to study or work, so all the government has to do to
get the numbers right down is to stop issuing work visas and tell
universities to stop teaching overseas students. Suppose the
government did just that. The negative consequences do not need
spelling out, but does anyone seriously think that Farage would say
that was great, my job is done? He would just go back to pointing at
asylum seekers arriving by boat.
The politics of stupid is believing that the way to deal with Farage
or Trump type populism is to do what Farage or Trump happens to be
shouting about at the time. Concern about immigration is real enough, but it is important to ask why there is concern about immigration. To put it very simply, there are probably two types of reasons
why voters find populists going on about immigration attractive. The
first is that these voters don’t like foreigners. Immigration
numbers don’t matter to these people when there are already plenty
of foreign looking people already here. The second type are voters
who mistakenly think that problems like finding it difficult to see a
doctor or buy a house are because of immigration. Cutting immigration is only likely
to make those problems worse, by stopping doctors or construction workers coming to the UK
The last twenty years or more in the UK is a clear illustration of
why populist appeasement doesn’t work. For example, in an effort to reduce
immigration numbers the last government effectively closed down
almost all safe routes for refugees to enter the UK. So now refugees
risk their lives to cross the Channel in small boats. The last
government spent extraordinary amounts of money on the Rwanda scheme
to deter asylum seekers crossing the Channel that was never going to
work. It did them no good whatsoever. The scheme was stupid, and the
government was stupid to invest so much political capital in it. If
you are genuinely worried about refugees arriving by boat, provide
safe routes.
The most glaring example of the futility of appeasing the populists is Brexit. Leave the EU, the populists cried, and everything will be great. We left the EU, and pretty much everything is worse as a result. Has the failure of this populist cause done its main protagonist any harm? Clearly not. However it has made people poorer and more discontented, adding fuel to the populist fire. Following the populist path with Brexit has only encouraged populism.
If believing that doing what right wing populists ask for will reduce
populism’s appeal is dumb, then aping what they
say is worse still. Describing
immigration policy under the previous government as
running an ‘open borders experiment’ is as misleading coming from
Starmer’s lips as it is from Farage. The immigration system put in
place after Brexit involves clear rules about who can get visas,
excluding immigration into most unskilled (effectively low paid) jobs. That
is not open borders!
Repeating that kind of nonsense does great harm. It misinforms the
public, which is bad enough, but it does so in a way that helps the
populist! Imagine if, when Trump said that he had heard immigrants
were stealing pets and eating them in Springfield, Harris had replied
that if she was elected she would put a stop to that. No one is going
to vote for politicians because they start acting like Farage or
Trump, when they can already vote for Farage or Trump.
For those who find Farage appealing because they don’t like
foreigners, I doubt there is much you could do to reduce his appeal
beyond exposing aspects of his behaviour (like his
attitude to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the NHS) that are
less attractive to those voters. This inability is particularly the
case when the right has a media machine pumping out stories about
‘criminal immigrants’ and ‘invasions’. However, the outlook
is less bleak for those with mistaken beliefs about the economic
consequences of immigration. These misunderstandings must be engaged or they will continue.
The first step in reducing the populist’s appeal to this group is
to
talk about the jobs immigrants come here to do. Such discussions are also the best way of both understanding immigration, and in some circumstances to perhaps potentially reducing it.
I often say that asking people if they would like lower immigration
is a bit like asking if they would like lower taxes, or if they want
more money for the NHS. I use this example, because it shows that it is possible to
move public discourse to routinely look at the consequences of
actions. It has become second nature for journalists to ask
politicians proposing extra spending to ask where will the money come
from. (Although unfortunately less routine to ask the same question
to those proposing tax cuts.) It could become equally routine to ask
how cuts to immigration would be achieved, and what the costs would
be.
If we don’t start doing this, public discourse on immigration will
remain dumb, and in those circumstances only the populist wins.
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