Miliband’s gutless speech

Here we go again. Ed Miliband gave another speech about immigration this morning proving yet again that this is a subject about which no-one is ever permitted to talk.

Any time a Labour politicians talks about immigration and the party’s record in government I am reminded of Evelyn Waugh’s acid observation on hearing the news that Randolph Churchill had successfully endured an operation to remove a benign tumour. This, Waugh wrote in his diary, represented  “A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.” Comparably, it seems a typical triumph of modern politics that Labour should disown one of the more reputable parts of its record in office.

As Jonathan Portes points out in the Independent, there was ample political — as well as economic — justification for opening Britain to workers from eastern european countries, freshly minted as members of the EU.