Duncan O’Leary says the Miliband speech on migration targeted employers and workers’ rights not immigrants. Owen Tudor has asked us to recognise the labour aspects of what he said. It’s fair to point out that Miliband talked about weak labour standards and higher fines for breaching the minimum wage.
But he did say that immigration has caused lower wages and employment, taking the jobs of British workers, and needs to be reduced. This is a measure that would be harsh and misplaced, and rhetorically such an approach is bound to have an effect on debate. He did not raise Labour issues like trade union rights and state housing.
Miliband said Labour had been wrong to be so open to Central and East European migration. But this presented something as a fact that is actually an empirical error. Jonathan Portes has shown that these migrants did not lower wages or cause unemployment. In fact they work, pay tax, contribute to economic growth and support public services and the ageing population. Immigrants are less likely to claim benefits or use welfare than British citizens, and more likely to set up a business. Miliband’s speech was one made on factually shaky grounds – his advisors must have known this – a speech which was likely to stoke up antagonism against immigrants.
Miliband missed the chance to raise current Tory proposals to deport UK-migrant families on less than average incomes. He could have used the rhetoric of protecting the family and the poor to do so. And he failed to press the case for one of the UK’s greatest industries, its universities, to be able to encourage rather than turn away lucrative international students, another issue of the moment. How bad will that be for the economy that he was focusing on, and for higher education?
Key issues beyond British economics were not addressed – most notably the needs and rights of migrants, just as human as those who are born within the borders of the UK. Why do migrants want to come to the UK? For better life chances. What can be done to meet these chances in the UK or in their home countries? The benefits of cultural diversity surround politicians every day in London, and the racism and xenophobia migrants experience are exacerbated by ill-informed commentary on the issue: these human questions did not come up.
Of course Miliband has to appeal to the fears of working class voters in an era of insecurity. But the job of politicians is not just to accommodate the electorate but to show leadership and shape the debate, as Obama has done recently on irregular migrants. Even David Blunkett is advising Labour to steer away from opposing immigration.
Every vote won from the far-right by anti-immigration rhetoric runs the risk of affirming their ideology and losing a vote from the liberal left, to another party or to no party at all. A politician who is liberal and of the left should be pushing attitudes in the direction of fairness and tolerance, not ramping up the opportunities for beliefs which foster the opposite.
Britain is facing housing shortages, low wages and unemployment. While Miliband did talk about responsible capitalism, there is a more social democratic language that can be used to discuss these problems and bring people around to a Labour perspective. Council housing has been run down, trade unions weakened, poverty and inequality have increased. This is why the British working class suffer problems with accommodation, pay and employment.
A Labour approach should be about stronger unions, a living wage and state housing. Yet Miliband left these aside and adopted the explanation of insiders and outsiders. The outsiders, needy human beings, will suffer as a result, with dangerous language about them being built up. Chances to frame the debate within a social democratic and Labour discourse remain.