How New Labour's tough rhetoric on immigration boosted the right

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Under Jeremy Corbyn, as I wrote at the start of the month, Labour has quite moderate policies but does its very best so sound like far-left party.

Under Tony Blair, by contrast Labour had progressive social policies but did its best to sound right wing.

I am reminded of this contrast by an article in Prospect by Steve Bloomfield, who writes about the Blair government's rhetoric on immigration:

Under Tony Blair, New Labour passed five migration-related bills between 1997 and 2007. Each one was about making it harder for refugees and immigrants to live here. Each one was accompanied by a wave of dehumanising language in the media and political sphere. 

One of the first pieces of legislation removed benefits from asylum seekers, replacing money with vouchers. These vouchers could only be spent on what the government deemed “essential” - something that didn’t include razors or toothpaste. Shops were banned from giving change, which meant parts of the already meagre allowance often went spent. 

During this period, Labour liked to split asylum seekers up into “genuine” and “bogus.” The phrase “bogus asylum seeker” became so prevalent it was even used, without quote marks, in BBC news reports.

He goes on to chronicle the growing extremism of the rhetoric used by successive Labour home secretaries in this period - David Blunkett, Charles Clarke, John Reid - until the last-named was telling us that "foreigners come to this country illegitimately and steal our benefits".

Go back to the source of this quote and you will find that Reid was condemned by Nick Clegg, God bless him.

All this went on while people from Europe were coming to work in Britain in unprecedented numbers.

Did Labour's approach do anything to calm public concern about immigration?

Bloomfield says not:

Ipsos Mori’s poll in 2008 showed that just 5 per cent of voters who thought immigration was important trusted Labour. The Conservatives were on 46 per cent ... 

"Tough" immigration policies, i.e. those that treated people fleeing terror as if they should be feared rather than helped, not only failed to improve Labour's standing, it normalised dehumanising language and policies. The debate wasn't, "should we help refugees and migrants?" Instead, it was "how best can we stop them causing damage?" And when those are the terms of the debate, the far-right will always be "tougher."

This seems right to me. I would add that liberal politicians should talk about the economic advantages that immigration brings - too often we just get sermons on multiculturalism.

And where immigration causes local problems, such as pressure for school places, those liberal politicians should be honest about this and be seen to be providing the extra resources that local authorities need.

House Points: Keeping up with the cojones

This column appeared in Liberal Democrat News on 21 May 2004. I don't get all the references any more, but at least I wrote it with a certain biro brio.


Keeping up with the cojones

Tony Blair likes people to think he is a pretty mean hombre. Hat pulled down, eyes screwed up against the desert sun. Think Charles Bronson in the opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West.

So he must have been delighted when George W. Bush told Alastair Campbell that “Your man has got cojones.”

Oddly, in a later interview reported in Bob Woodward’s book Plan of Attack, Bush said: “Of course, these Brits don’t know what cojones are.”

Of course we know what they are, even if we do wonder first whether C.O. Jones used to keep wicket for Glamorgan. And in any case, Bush probably thinks the trouble with the Spanish is that they have no word for cojones.

This macho Blair wants to be seen as standing shoulder to shoulder with the President. Trouble is, more and more people are finding that a less dignified position comes to mind when thinking about their relationship.

So we have to find another way of picturing them. One possibility is to see Blair as Bush’s resourceful boy assistant. Every superhero needs one: Batman had his Robin; Sexton Blake his Tinker. And when Hollywood got twitchy because Tarzan and Jane were not married, Johnny Weissmuller found himself, on moral grounds, sharing the jungle with a pretty little boy in a loincloth.

But George W. Bush is no Tarzan. He is no superhero at all, unless it is Can’t Manage Whole Sentences Man. That would make Blair The Incoherent Kid. We had better think again.

The Beano suggests a more promising approach. “Young Tony Blair was the envy of all his chums, for he had his very own pet chimpanzee called Dubya.”

Think of all the scrapes they would get into together. Reporting asylum seekers to the authorities. Attending one of Charles Clarke’s summer homework camps. Invading Iraq. (“Crikey, Dubya! We’ve gone too far this time.”)

At this point in the comic the vicar and village bobby would step in to set things to rights. (“And no more monkey business from you, young Tony!”)

In the real world, unfortunately, it is unlikely that anyone will be laughing in the last frame of this story.

Alan Johnson is neither Ed Balls nor married to him

It is hard to escape the conclusion that Alan Johnson has been made shadow chancellor because:

1. he is not Ed Balls;
2. he is not married to Ed Balls.

Still, Ed Miliband's decision to appoint does suggest that he is planning a strategy that goes beyond opposing every Coaltion spending cut. That will help the quality of political debate in Britain and will not do Labour's prospects any harm in the long run.

You can debate whether this shows Ed Miliband is strong - prepared not to give Balls and Cooper what they wants - or weak - unable to trust himself to control economic policy if he gives one of them the post to which they are most suited. I tend to the theory that it means he is weak. I am reminded of the way the England selectors used to leave out good players (John Snow, Phil Edmonds) because they might be disruptive or hard to control.

But today's events do show how odd the Labour party's internal organisation is. You have a leader who was not the preferred choice of most Labour MPs (or most Labour members, come to that) obliged to put together his Shadow cabinet from the names those MPs have come up with. More than that, he is more or less obliged to give senior positions to people who come high in the poll

So Labour ends up with Alan Johnson, a shadow chancellor who knows nothing about economics; Yvette Cooper, a shadow foreign secretary with little experience of foreign affairs; and Ed Balls, who has hitherto shown no interest in home affairs - he promises to be like Charles Clarke but without the charm.

Incidentally, once Ed Miliband had made up his mind to appoint a shadow chancellor who was not Ed Balls or married to him, John Healey might have been a better choice than Alan Johnson. Healey has a little of Vince Cable's lugubrious charm about him.

Charles Clarke condemns Just William politics

Charles Clarke has an aricle on the New Statesman website - I assume it will be in Friday's magazine.

If I read it correctly, a shorter version would run: "You don't have to be part of a Blairite plot to think that Gordon Brown is a disaster and to want to get rid of him to save the party."

I suspect he hopes that when Brown does go Labour will turn to an experienced former minister who is not identified closely with either Blair or Brown. And who has large ears.

Just William politics sounds the sort of thing that this blog would approve of. Clarke condemns it thus:

As various commentators consider Labour's prospects, the term "Blairite" is being deployed to characterise the policies and personalities of some who question the party's current direction and urge Labour to face the future. Like "Thatcherite", the word is not used kindly. "Blairite" (even "über-Blairite") is a lazy and inaccurate shorthand. It is intended not to illuminate but to diminish, marginalise and insult. It was, for example, the stock phrase used by the Brown political briefing team to traduce David Miliband's Guardian article in early August.

Moreover, this misleading language damages the vital need for Labour to move on to new, post-Blair ground. Those journalists and politicians who use it are fighting the last political struggle, the War of the Tony Blair Succession, in a way that owes rather more to Just William and the Hubert Laneites than to the challenges of modern British politics.

On this analysis, presumably, Harriet Harman is Violet Elizabeth Bott.

Charles Clarke: Body found

Today the home page of the Shropshire Star has the following headline and photograph side by side:

Clarke axed after polls horror

The Sun says Clarke didn't offer to resign

There may be a few amongst my readers who do not buy the Sun every day. For their benefit I am pointing out this story in today's paper by George Pascoe-Watson:

Bungling Home Secretary Charles Clarke did NOT offer to quit last week over the freed foreign convicts scandal.

He told the BBC he had offered to go — which infuriated Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The PM stormed out of the Commons on Wednesday after being humiliated about his refusal to accept the “phantom” resignation.

A glimpse of the young Charles Clarke

www.biogs.com quotes Tony Benn's diary for 23 November 1978:

At 9.45 Charles Clarke, the son of my former Permanent Secretary, Otto Clarke, came to see me and we had a pleasant talk. He had just returned from Cuba, where he was British representative on the Preparatory Committee of the World Youth Congress.

He said Cuba was most impressive ... Fidel Castro was very much an authoritarian but a most impressive man ...

Clarke was critical of the British Labour Party, which he thought was inactive and without influence. When he applied to work in the International Department at Transport House, he hadn't even been shortlisted.

Charles Clarke: A joke

Yesterday Charles Clarke was rounding on press critics who accuse him of imperilling our civil liberties.

You can see his point. Today, says the BBC:

Home Secretary Charles Clarke says he will not resign after 1,023 foreign prisoners were freed without being considered for deportation.
He said he does not know where most of the offenders, who include three murderers and nine rapists, are.

If Clarke is looking to bring in a police state, it is a singularly inefficient one.

All of which reminds me of a joke reported in an article on Soviet humour by Ben Lewis. You can find it in the current issue of Prospect:

A man dies and goes to hell. There he discovers that he has a choice: he can go to capitalist hell or to communist hell. Naturally, he wants to compare the two, so he goes over to capitalist hell. There outside the door is the devil, who looks a bit like Ronald Reagan. "What's it like in there?" asks the visitor. "Well," the devil replies, "in capitalist hell, they flay you alive, then they boil you in oil and then they cut you up into small pieces with sharp knives."
"That's terrible!" he gasps. "I'm going to check out communist hell!" He goes over to communist hell, where he discovers a huge queue of people waiting to get in. He waits in line. Eventually he gets to the front and there at the door to communist hell is a little old man who looks a bit like Karl Marx. "I'm still in the free world, Karl," he says, "and before I come in, I want to know what it's like in there."
"In communist hell," says Marx impatiently, "they flay you alive, then they boil you in oil, and then they cut you up into small pieces with sharp knives."
"But… but that's the same as capitalist hell!" protests the visitor, "Why such a long queue?"
"Well," sighs Marx, "Sometimes we're out of oil, sometimes we don't have knives, sometimes no hot water…"

The Rt Hon Charles Clarke MP

The right to be protected from torture and ill-treatment must be considered side by side with the right to be protected from the death and destruction caused by indiscriminate terrorism.
Speech by Charles Clarke, UK Home Secretary, to the European Parliament - 7 September 2005

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

Charlie the Elephant unpacks his trunk

Charles Clarke has postponed his holiday plans following pressure from Cabinet colleagues, reports politics.co.uk.

According to press reports last week, the home secretary had been planning to go on holiday with his family despite the terror crisis in London. Now he will join them later.

A rather flimsy story.

Yes, but I wanted to use that headline.