Economic scapegoating
Jim Jay on immigration minister Phil Woolas’s nascent demagoguery:
Clearly if there is a global economic crisis people are going to blame immigrants rather than the institutions who created those chaotic financial systems? Only if you encourage them Phil. Otherwise people might think someone sorting potatoes has not had much to do with the global economic meltdown.
We can probably look forward to a lot of more of this in the run up to the next election. The financial crisis is so complicated it’s difficult to know where to pin the blame. So let’s keep it nice and simple: blame bloody foreigners. It was something that the Thatcher government used to like to wheel out to shore up the vote. Labour used to hate them for it.
Me, I skimmed the BBC article a little too quickly. This from Woolas…
This government isn’t going to allow the population to go up to 70 million.
…put me in mind of a eugenics programme. The fantasy of cabinet ministers being voluntarily neutered and spayed as an example to the rest of us was an appealing one. I’m talking about physically neutered and spayed obviously. We all know they were ideologically and morally sterilised a while back.
Posted on October 18th, 2008 at 7:43pm under New Labour
| Related posts... • Phil Woolas: satirical singularity • The ’situation’ with Eastern Africa • Phil Woolas doesn’t do political populism |
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The government must really be grateful to you – not you per se, but the horrified reaction you represent.
You have to presume that by now even Labour has noticed that the core demographic is crumbling pretty damn fast – has been really since at leat 2005, but probably before that. (By core demographic I don’t mean the activist core but the voter core – very different people).
They listen to the focus groups. They see the polls. They know
a) immigration consistently comes at or near the top of voter concerns
b) the BNP vote increased something like 4 times between the 1999 Euro elections and the 2004 elections. In 2004 they got 4.8% of the vote – pretty near to electing MEPs with all that lovely Brussels gravy. They’d get nailed in one-member constituencies – but PR and the list system give them a chance of representation.
c) demographic change has accelerated even since 2004. We’ve had the odd incident like 7/7 as well.
d) UKIP took more then 10% of the vote in 2005. That implies a lot of discontented people using the PR system to send a message – and not one about the war in Iraq. Are there likely to be more discontented people now, or fewer ?
e) if you wanted to put together a checklist of conditions favouring the rise of a far-right party, you’d find this govt have ticked most of the boxes.
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2008/10/that-ten-point-plan.html
Labour do not want to see the BNP gaining seats and cash any more than I imagine you do. They are IMHO worried – and rightly so. Hence Mr Woollas. He first came out with this stuff a couple of weeks ago – and only a few people – like Penny Red – seemed to pick up on it.
Mr Woollas is the MP for Oldham – an exceptional place. Of the three towns where Asians rioted in summer 2001, Oldham, Burnley and Bradford, Oldham is the only place which did not see the riots followed by BNP representation on the local council. At the very least I’d expect that he’d get a respectful hearing from the left on matters of race and immigration. Maybe Jon Cruddas could pick up a few ideas from him.
But maybe it’s a good job he doesn’t get that respectful hearing. Because Labour aren’t sending signals to me or thee, but to the neglected core vote – you know, those ordinary white working class joes (aka lumpen racists) who used to vote Labour as a matter of tribal course, but who have slowly grasped the fact that Labour is no longer the party of people like them.
To get their attention you need a bit of controversy. I note that horrified reactions have been all over the BBC this time. That’s just what Labour need if they’re trying to get the ‘we care’ message across to joe.
It’s not a new Labour tactic. Blunkett was the past master at coming up with punitive soundbites which horrified Guardianistas while delighting Joe Public – who then ignored him letting all the burglars out and the asylum seekers in.
There is an alternative. Rather than pandering to tabloid hysteria etc etc Labour could robustly defend the case for immigration.
Last summer the Labour blogger Chris Paul attended a meetup with Hilary Benn and the delightful biker babe Hazel Blears. He asked why they didn’t take a ‘more progressive line’ on immigration.
“Hazel recounted a rendezvous with twenty decent people relaxing in their gardens in her constituency whose number one concern was and is immigration. She feels Labour cannot win unless we are tough on immigration.”
Presumably the strategists think ‘the progressive line’ will go down like a lead balloon.
Typo. It was in the 2004 Euro elections that UKIP got 16.8% of the national vote. That’s an awful lot of discontented voters up for grabs.
The funny thing is that Labour is horrendously tough, uncaring and unpleasant on immigration, but the message isn’t getting across because the press know their power and can conjure up entirely imaginary worlds where no one is ever kicked out because of their human rights, particularly if they’re a violent criminal, etc., etc. Woolas is merely the latest New Labour minister to attempt the impossible task of finding rational solutions to an irrational problem that gets bigger every time you address it.
In London, at least, a lot of their ‘core vote’ will have experienced this first hand, since the white working class isn’t exactly as lumpen as all that down here, and people have wives/husbands/girlfriends/work colleagues who’ve been on the end of various bits of Home Office ghastliness – as an example, one of the guys working on my kitchen was trying to save up money to visit his Brazilian girlfriend, who’d just been kicked out of the country. In the end the rise in air fares meant he couldn’t afford it. His likelihood of voting Labour is, I suggest, rather reduced by all this. In the end it’s not enough merely to demonstrate you ‘care’ by kicking out some darkies, it actually has to go further and involve some regard and concern for the way their authoritarian, unaccountable government has kicked sand in the eyes of their own support for many years.
One of the many benefits of multiculturalism, openness and integration is that it reduces the benefits to government of indulging in demonisation.
So, basically, the government wil think it will get all those voters back from the BNP by sending ‘dog whistle’ signals around immigration (let alone racism), to spare the the bother/stigma of voting for the BNP. And given the BNP’s attitude to British-born/bred blacks and Asians, this addresses the issue of race relations and multiculturalism how, exactly? Oh, I forget: Brown’s obsession with ‘Britishness’ means that New Labour doesn’t ‘do’ multiculturalism any more. But then they don’t do a thought-through immigration policy that’s not based on a numbers game they can’t win either. Hysterical nativism it is then (just don’t mention internal EU migration).
redpesto – Labour have “triangulated” everyone else. They were bound to get round to the BNP in the end !
It’s pretty clear who’s to blame – there is an agenda which is going swimmingly.
OK. lets recap here.
The argument is that in order to pander to a specific group of people amongst us who think those they consider to be “non-british” – which to be blunt does not necessarily include descendents of people who have settled here – are taking all the “British” jobs of real “British” people (i.e. white, at least fifth generation) immigration should be curbed.
In this way, the logical conclusion of the argument is that the self-defined “real British” will then be able to find proper jobs and unemployment will disappear overnight because the number of immigrants “pinching our jobs” will no longer be over here to do it.
Lets test this shall we. How many jobs have disappeared from the UK as result of immigration into the country and how many have gone as a result of being transferred out the country through the holy writ of globalisation and the Free Market?
Well I know the sure that during my working life we’ve lost millions of jobs in mining; steel production; shipbuilding; trawling/fishing; car manufacture; engineering; manufacturing; tool making; etc. etc. Even technology jobs are being transferred abroad – and that’s not just call centre work but high tech. stuff too.
This would have been brought home to anyone watching last weeks TV documentary about the railway enthusiasts who took 17 years to build a new working steam engine. Quite a bit of the work had to be done outside the UK because the skills and experience shop has shut down and been transferred aboroad in the name of the free market capitalism.
The reality and the evidence is that the cause of most of the employment problems are not the result of immigration into the UK but the transfer of jobs out of the UK as a result of our political and business classes blind faith based fixation with free market globalisation.
But lets not let evidence based arguments muddy the waters. It would not do to question this faith based idolatry. Nor, apprantly, would it do to tell certain people and groups of people who are wrong that they are wrong and why they are wrong. Far easier for the political and business classes to pander to ignorance and superstition by stooping down to this level and scapegoating fellow human beings.
What next I wonder. Focus groups are dissatisfied with having to walk up hills because it makes them get out of breath, lets tell them that we will abolish the laws of gravity.
Focus groups unhappy that the sea is too cold when they go to the seaside in the the UK (because being people who don’t like foreigners and who want to keep British jobs in Britain for British people they surely would not go out of this country for their holidays), lets agree a policy of suspending the laws of physics and thermodynamics for two weeks a year.
Dickheads up in arms about their favourite foods being too full of calories making them fat, idle and stupid, lets pander to their ignorance and mardiness and tell them we are going to do away with chemistry and chemical reactions altogether.
Seems to me there are two choices here. One the one hand we could abandon evidence based reality altogether. Forget about the scientific method of analysis. Dump two thousand years of empirical practice. Jettison the lessons of the enlightenment. Go back to creating policies, ways of acting and reacting to the world around us based on faith, shamanism, superstition, mumbo jumbo, ignorance, prejudice and pandering to the lowest common denominator.
We could go the whole hog. One month we could burn witches. The next month we could string up travellers and gypsies. The following month we could throw anyone with a skin pallor the wrong shade of dusky into the sea. The month after that we could deport single mothers to Pluto (what do you mean it’s not doable? we’ve abolished the laws of physics remember). After that we could send all the feckless, workshy and non-hardworking families to the Gulag for their own good because as we all know “work makes you free”. Dependent upon which set of scapegoats the Mail and the NotW are targeting at any one time.
And the beauty of it is that when we’ve done that we can start all over again until there is no-one left in the country except Mail and NotW readers and a few dickhead politicians prepared to pander to them.
On the other hand we could stick to reality, the scientific evidence based approach to policy making and continue to apply the lessons of two thousand years of history and experience.
It is no use pandering to those who are dickheads – regardless of where they are, who they are, what colour they are, what size they are or whatever. A dickhead is still a dickhead and needs to be told they are dickheads. Pandering to them only encourages them in their ignorance and stupidity and does them and society no favours.
If they want to go off and vote for the BNP let them. Once their fellow dickheads get elected and face having to do some real work and confront the realities of elected office and of life they will soon change their minds and their votes.
Becuase this particular member of this particular focus group will not be voting for any politician at any level and of any party who panders to this kind of dishonest, racist, bigoted, and ignorant section of our society.
In this way, the logical conclusion of the argument is that the self-defined “real British” will then be able to find proper jobs and unemployment will disappear overnight because the number of immigrants “pinching our jobs” will no longer be over here to do it.
Otherwise known as the ‘lump of labour fallacy’. It’s nice to see New Labour’s new economic policy for these new times in action.
Immigrants, the new jews for this time of fascism.
As for eugenics, sign me up please, don’t want to start wearing nappies again with all the drugs that keep u alive.
“A dickhead is still a dickhead and needs to be told they are dickheads. Pandering to them only encourages them in their ignorance and stupidity”
This is the English working class you’re taking about. Tell me, were they always dickheads, or was it only when they started disagreeing with you ?
Off topic but are you on baord with the atheist bus advert sponsorship?
Not for me, thanks Daniel. I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous answer.
“This is the English working class you’re taking about. Tell me, were they always dickheads, or was it only when they started disagreeing with you ?”
No, it’s racists he’s talking about, that is obvious to most of us. Some may be working class, but since when was the working class one uniform mass possessing the same opinions and living in the same conditions?
Dave Hansell:
I agree about the foolishness of eroding the British manufacturing base, we’ve essentially cut ourselves off from being a world leader in future productive leading industries.
But the distinction you make between free market globalisation, by which I think you mean trade, and immigration is false. British workers paid at the national minimum wage (or any wage which they are likely to accept) cannot produce labour intensive goods like textiles at prices which are competitive on world markets. Moving the factories over to Eastern Europe or bringing Eastern Europeans over here to work in the factories is, economically, almost the exact same thing. There are social advantages and disadvantages to both, but they are two sides of the same coin. It makes little sense to be rabidly for one and against the other. You can be for both, in which case you have to put up with the wrenching social dislocations that they will cause (which is fine as far as The Economist et al are concerned) or you can be against both (in which case you are pretty much supporting a set of corporatist policies).
Laban Tall,
I refer you Igor’s posting.
It is also worth repeating the whole paragraph rather than picking abit out and taking it out of context;
“It is no use pandering to those who are dickheads – regardless of where they are, who they are, what colour they are, what size they are or whatever. A dickhead is still a dickhead and needs to be told they are dickheads. Pandering to them only encourages them in their ignorance and stupidity and does them and society no favours.”
The logic of your line of argument is that working class people like myself who do not think in this way cannot be properly working class.
Nick,
The logic of your line of argument is a race to the bottom where one set of workers are played off against another set of workers to reduce wages and conditions.
It’s also a simplistic dichotomy – either you are for or against both. Which does not adequately represent the compleity of the system(s) under scrutiny.