Immigration

I hope that CoffeeHousers, regardless of political affiliation, will welcome a speech by a Labour leader that is explicitly patriotic, about England as well as the United Kingdom. As Ed Miliband said today, Labour has too often seemed either uninterested in Englishness or embarrassed by it, when there is nothing in its history and values that justifies this. Miliband was also right to emphasise the legitimacy and strength of ‘multiple identities’ — whether English and British, Scottish and British, Indian and British, or British and Muslim. And he was right to urge the English to ‘embrace a positive, outward looking version’ of national identity. Ideas of national identity that are

Theresa May’s suggestion that Britain could suspend the free movement of people in the event of a Eurozone break up is a reminder of just how transformative an event the falling apart of the single currency would be. The Home Secretary is a cautious politician who picks her word carefully, so when she says that the government ‘will be doing contingency planning’ about the immigration implications of a Eurozone break-up you know it is serious. One of the things that makes this such an intriguing development is that it suggests a shift in government thinking on the severity of the crisis that could be coming. A few months ago, a

How goes the Tories’ plan to reduce net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’ over this Parliament? Not too well, judging by the latest ONS figures released today. As it is, net migration was 252,000 in the year up to September 2011. That, lest you need reminding, is over double the Tory target. No.10, however, has been fairly defiant in response. ‘It’s still our intention to bring levels of net migration back down to tens of thousands,’ said a spokesman today, before adding that, ‘clearly that’s going to take some time.’ They also cited different Home Office statistics, which record the number of visas issued up until March of this

If you think things couldn’t get worse than Ed Miliband’s Five Live interview, read his speech on patriotism. It seeks to build on his ‘predators’ speech, which suggested a Manichean divide between bad companies and good companies. Labour MPs of Mr Miliband’s political heritage always place manufacturers in the latter camp. He hails the success of many of them. ‘You know better than I that this success has been achieved against the odds.’ I suspect they know better than he the effect that a 25 per cent devaluation has on exports. ‘Economic protectionism is what governments reach for when they don’t believe firms can compete. And we will never return to

‘Immigration: enough is enough.’ That’s the motion for The Spectator’s next debate, and also a major concern for many disgruntled voters. The Tories are currently miles off course for achieving their aspiration of reducing net migration from the ‘hundreds of thousands’ to the ‘tens of thousands’ in this Parliament. Should they do more to meet it, so that the UK’s economic and cultural fabric isn’t frayed irreparably? Or should we be glad that that they’re not, because immigration is a crucial ingredient for growth? These will be the questions at hand for our panellists, who are Dominic Raab, Frank Field and Kiran Bali speaking for the motion, and David Aaronovitch,

The government’s official advisers on immigration, the Migration Advisory Committee, have today published a report into the restrictions on skilled migrant workers from outside the EU. Turns out that the much-vaunted ‘cap’ on skilled workers has only been half taken up — with numbers likely to be around 10,000 against the cap of 20,700 — and that this is offset by the high numbers of workers, around 30,000, coming to the UK on ‘intra-company transfers’. (These transfers are designed for multinational companies wanting the flexibility to move their employees around the world: the example used by the Committee’s chairman today was of ‘Japanese auto-engineers testing cylinder-heads made in Japan’ for

Today brought closure of a kind to last year’s border fiasco (which I covered for Coffee House here and here), with the publication of the report by the Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, John Vine. On first reading, there is no ‘smoking gun’ which would trigger a ministerial resignation. The report does find that, in early 2011, the immigration minister Damian Green had authorised the relaxation of one of the checks at the centre of the controversy: ‘Secure ID’, which verifies the fingerprints of foreign travellers with visas. But the report also finds that Green’s authorisation should have been superseded by later instructions from the Home Secretary Theresa

Why are you never served by a Londoner in a London branch of Pret A Manger? I asked this in the Telegraph recently, and yesterday’s Evening Standard had a great piece tracking down four who applied, and were rejected without an interview. Some suspect there is a bias in favour of immigrants: if your name doesn’t sound exotic, game over. I doubt that a company like Pret, whose most valued ingredient is the famous enthusiasm of its staff, can afford to discriminate in any way. But the wider point is a very serious one: that British employers have come to prefer immigrants, believing that they work harder. And that a

During the leaders debates before the last general election, David Cameron declared that he wanted to make immigration a non-issue and he would go about it by reducing immigration numbers from hundreds of thousands a year to tens of thousands a year. He hasn’t succeeded in the second objective — more than half a million people arrived here in 2010, only 30 per cent of whom were from the EU — and he most certainly hasn’t succeeded in the first. At least if the reaction to today’s revelations about immigrants on benefits is anything to go by. Chris Grayling, minister for employment, and Damian Green, immigration minister, wrote an article

Remember Theresa May’s border skirmish against Brodie Clark back in November? This morning the Home Affairs Select Committee published their report into the whole affair. Ideally it would have cleared up some of the confusions over who was responsible for waiving various security checks at our borders last summer, and whether they were right to do so — but it doesn’t really manage it. This is not really the fault of the committee: some of the crucial questions they put to the Home Office remain unanswered, and key documents have not been released to them. For example, Mr Clark claims he raised the issue of the ‘health and safety’ waivers

Immigration will remain at the heart of political debate in 2012. Economic downturns tend to heighten concerns about migrants competing for jobs and depressing wages, and spending cuts tend to sharpen resentment over migrants claiming benefits or adding to pressure on public services. The latest e-petition to garner a hundred thousand signatures will get its reward of a day in parliament, debating the effects of immigration on Britain’s growing population. And while Labour and the Liberal Democrats might be reluctant to talk about immigration, the Tory leadership clearly see it as useful in handling those on the right who are unhappy with life in coalition — commentators as well as

A quick post just to add the Guardian’s interview with David Cameron to your Saturday reading list. It takes the unusual approach of fielding questions to the PM from a range of ‘public figures’ — and, although many of those questions reduce down to ‘why aren’t you giving more money to X?’, the results are still generally engaging and occasionally insightful. And so we learn, after an enquiry by The Spectator’s own Toby Young, that Cameron doesn’t keep a diary. And we also have the PM justifiying his stance on Europe to Nigel Farage; skipping over a question about what he may or may not have inhaled during his time

I spent this morning with Ed Miliband on a trip to a factory in Sunderland. Miliband was visiting the Liebherr plant there, which manufactures cranes. The centerpiece of the visit was a Q&A with the workforce. Now, a factory in the North East is not the toughest venue for a Labour leader to play. But Miliband appeared far more comfortable in this setting than he does when giving a traditional speech from behind a podium.   Unlike Miliband’s Q&A at Labour conference, the questions were not softballs or traditional left-wing fare. One set of three questions were: why don’t we close the borders, bring back national service and do more