Britain’s political class appeared to be starting to listen. In early 2009, during a series of strikes over UK construction jobs going to cheaper labour from Europe, Brown himself infamously used the phrase, ‘British jobs for British workers’. Then home secretary Jacqui Smith said the ‘pace of change’ had been too fast, and the ‘cultural and emotional impact’ of immigration misunderstood. In early 2010, David Cameron, the Blair-lite leader of the Tories, made a pledge to reduce net migration from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands, if he became prime minister.
Yet there was always a distinct air of dishonesty about it all. A sense that these politicians, all deeply committed to the globalist order, were trying to assuage the anger their own approach to migration had helped create. A sense that just as Brown appeared to be listening to Duffy’s concerns, before he then attacked her as a bigot in private, so the political class was doing something similar – listening to public concerns about immigration in front the cameras, while really remaining completely at ease with it.
And so it proved. From 2010 onwards, the Conservative-led coalition government consistently pledged to reduce net migration, while actual annual net-migration figures crept up to around 250,000. And under Ed Miliband’s leadership in opposition, Labour talked up its commitment to immigration controls, even boasting of it on a 2015 General Election mug, while showing no real intention to follow through on it.
Worse still, this attempt to appear to be listening to public concerns often resulted in acts of performative, theatrical cruelty towards migrants – and hasty crackdowns on illegal migration that caught even British citizens in their net. This was evident in the government’s 2013 decision to trial the use of vans telling illegal immigrants to ‘go home’ in multiethnic London neighbourhoods, and, above all, in the Windrush scandal. In 2018, the Home Office wrongfully detained and threatened Brits of Caribbean background with deportation, despite them having lived legally in the UK for decades. It was a shameful episode that the vast majority of the public rightfully condemned, proving that ordinary people are far from the ethno-nationalists they are routinely portrayed to be.
Managing perception, rather than managing migration, was the political class’s clear priority. After all, any British government serious about reducing net migration would need to have control of its borders. And that would necessitate leaving the globalist embrace of the EU, something that the vast majority of Britain’s political, cultural and business elites really did not want to do.
Even after Brexit, the same tension has persisted. Successive governments have pledged to reduce net migration, while simultaneously allowing it rise to levels unprecedented even in comparison with the era of New Labour. There are often rational reasons for this, from massive labour shortages in certain sectors to public-supported refugee schemes. But the continued and underlying commitment of our political, cultural and business elites to a now creaking globalism, writ large in their longing to rejoin the EU, remains a major factor. In their eyes, immigration remains what it was for New Labour – a morally and socially ‘progressive’ force that will positively transform the nation. And as long as it is conceived in those terms, immigration will continue to be a key battleground long into the future.
Indeed, we saw much of that on display in the reaction to Keir Starmer’s plans to lower net migration. Those championing immigration are still doing so in the shrill hyper-moralised terms forged during the New Labour era. They automatically associate immigration with social, moral progress, and eagerly damn anyone raising concerns or proposing any restrictions as mini Powellites.
Fifteen years on from Gillian Duffy’s run-in with Gordon Brown, too many are still playing this divisive game. They treat migrants not as human beings aspiring to become British, integrate and contribute to their new home, but as a multicultural battering ram against supposed national backwardness. And they wage a never-ending culture war against the ‘bigoted’ people who already live here.
Tim Black is associate editor of spiked.
