The Spectator

Letters | 10 November 2007

issue 10 November 2007

Telling Right from Right
Sir: I was very disappointed to see James Forsyth pinning the xenophobe label to Gordon Brown for his comment ‘British jobs for British workers’ (Politics, 3 November).

The trouble with Forsyth and his kind of Conservatives is their claim that the logical position of the Right is to welcome a free labour market, hence immigration. But they are best described not as true conservatives but as neoconservatives or market-obsessed Jacobins. Just as New Labour shouldn’t be confused with Old Labour, so the new Right should be differentiated from the traditional, small-c conservative Right. Traditional conservatives believe in markets as a means to an end, not as the end itself. They do not worship Mammon. Their main concern is that the state should continue to naturally command the allegiance of its people, from which arises their cautious approach to immigration.

Yugo Kovach
Twickenham

Sir: In your leading article (27 October) you repeat the Home Office claim that immigrants ‘contribute £6 billion p.a.

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