The argument that mainstream parties should counter the BNP by adopting a hardline position on immigration was discredited long ago. But the bizarre tag team of Nicholas Soames and Frank Field can’t resist making it again in today’s Telegraph.
To call for harsher curbs on migrants is to perpetuate the myth that it is immigration, rather than a failed neoliberal system, that is to blame for political and social alienation. It is to divide immigrants and natives into “winners” and “losers”, rather than recognise that they are all too frequently victims of the same system.
Labour does have a case to answer on immigration. The party’s Faustian pact with the City entailed the cynical use of migrant labour to undercut domestic wages. But instead of fostering further division, it should adopt a non-sectarian approach that benefits all through a higher minimum wage and more social housing.
It was not, as Field and Soames suggest, Labour’s “cowardice” on immigration that opened the door for the BNP, but its acceptance of an economic system that condemned much of the working class to casual labour.
The declaration that immigration has left Britain without any sense of “cohesion and identity” is particularly egregious. It is not migrants who destroy cohesion, but demagogues like Griffin and the City plutocrats.
Field and Soames do not even pause to offer token praise for migrants’ economic contribution. Yet new figures show that in 2008-2009, immigrants paid 37 per cent more in taxes than they cost in welfare payments and public services.
By painting a wholly negative picture of immigration, Field and Soames do not challenge the BNP’s agenda, they pander to it.
Content from our partners
Related
