DAVID BLUNKETT: Why I despair at my party throwing a lit match on the oil of immigration
We live in extreme and inflammatory times, when passions over Brexit are at their highest and the ability to compromise seems to have deserted our political class.
Wednesday’s meltdown in the House of Commons — when debate in the Mother of Parliaments took on the appearance of a bar-room brawl — is proof of that.
So, given this febrile atmosphere, what on earth were Labour Party members doing introducing a resolution at the party conference in Brighton that throws a match on the oil of the immigration issue?
Wednesday’s meltdown in the House of Commons — when debate in the Mother of Parliaments took on the appearance of a bar-room brawl — is proof that we live in febrile times
With Labour MPs unexpectedly absent in London following the sudden recall of Parliament following Boris Johnson’s defeat in the Supreme Court, members of the Labour Campaign for Free Movement took it upon themselves to indulge in a bout of pointless self-indulgence.
They introduced a motion — passed by conference — to award full voting rights to all UK residents. Not citizens but residents.
This measure would, at a stroke, extend the franchise to millions of immigrants in this country who are not British passport holders.
In addition, the motion commits a future Labour government to closing all immigration detention centres, ending caps and targets on net immigration and ditching the requirement that economic migrants should be able to support themselves through promised work or accumulated funds.
This ridiculous proposal drives a coach and horses through efforts by all parties to devise a fair and workable immigration system in the post-Brexit era, one that balances the needs of the economy with the sensitivities of ordinary Britons living in ethnically mixed communities.
As a former Home Secretary, I know how incendiary the issue of immigration can be. It is only too easy to ‘weaponise’ — a tool that can be employed by the more cynical kind of politician seeking to make capital out of people’s fears.
At their party conference in Brighton, Labour members introduced a motion — which was passed— to award full voting rights to all UK residents. Not citizens but residents. What could be worse than ushering in a fresh wave of unfettered immigration?
We forget now how important immigration was in the 2016 referendum debate, with voters being warned of a supposed influx of millions more immigrants into the UK should Turkey have been admitted to the European Union.
This scare story, along with concocted figures about a Brexit bonus for the NHS, helped swing the Leave victory by a narrow margin.
Given all this history, what could be worse than a policy announcement by Labour suggesting that a party on the verge of government is about to junk many safeguards, ushering in a fresh wave of unfettered immigration based on little more than the ability to stamp your feet on British soil?
This daft motion is a gift for the Tories just as they are set to implode over the issue that has bedevilled them for nearly half a century.
At the very time Jeremy Corbyn is seeking to sell himself as a responsible Prime Minister in waiting amid the anarchy of the Brexit debate, along comes this reckless promise to throw open not only our borders, but also our system of democracy, to all-comers.
Imagine what the Tories and the Brexit Party can say in the coming general election campaign, now only a few months away at most.
This daft motion is a gift for the Tories just as they are set to implode over the issue that has bedevilled them for nearly half a century. At the very time Jeremy Corbyn is seeking to sell himself as a responsible Prime Minister in waiting amid the anarchy of the Brexit debate
Here, they will argue, is Labour trying to gerrymander the national vote by enfranchising millions of new voters who will repay their debt by voting for the party that welcomed them in.
Such people, the critics will allege, will have paid nothing into our welfare system yet will be allowed to use it freely, with no obligation to support themselves or the relatives they bring with them.
In the meantime, asylum seekers rejected after appeal, some of whom have committed offences or absconded, will be allowed to wander the country at will, fostering the fear that they will disappear into our towns and cities, never to be seen again.
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Such is the likely outcome of the motion’s proposal to abolish detention centres.
Boris Johnson and his Svengali, Dominic Cummings, desperate to divert attention from the scandal of the unlawful prorogation and the disembowelment of moderate Tory MPs opposed to no deal, must be dancing a jig of delight.
The sillier end of the Labour Party has always been the best ally of the Conservatives. All my time in politics has shown me that when a party moves away from the concerns of ordinary people it fails.
As a politician in Sheffield, I know that people can be both worried about the effects of uncontrolled immigration and yet welcoming to the newcomers they encounter. Fear and reality are often two very different things.
Boris Johnson and his Svengali, Dominic Cummings, desperate to divert attention from the scandal of the unlawful prorogation and the disembowelment of moderate Tory MPs opposed to no deal, must be dancing a jig of delight
But fear can have a real effect. The people who would suffer if such a policy was enacted are the immigrants who have already made their lives in this country.
They are the ones who would suffer the blow-back from an increase in racial tension.
This conference motion is what in tennis is known as an unforced error. Labour and the Conservatives under Theresa May had been moving towards a rational immigration policy based on work permits for skilled people and tight rules around family reunion — marriages must be legitimate and incoming relatives must be sustained by family, not state, resources.
Asylum seekers must be treated with fairness and compassion but they must be genuine refugees, not economic migrants.
Labour’s policy on a minimum income for new migrants is more opaque, but on the whole its approach has been rational.
Politics is about compromise — a dirty word at the moment. It involves not always getting your way but being able to live with the consequences when you don’t.
It involves devising not only a coherent policy but a workable one.
In the past, Labour’s National Executive Committee and the leadership would have resisted conference resolutions with stupid things in them.
But Jeremy Corbyn has decided not to oppose anything at conference — and then clarify or finesse the result afterwards. This is bad politics because it provides ammunition to his opponents.
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott was rowing back on this barmy motion yesterday, implying in a BBC interview that she would pretty much ignore it.
Proof that Labour is in a mess wholly of its own making. Jeremy always says he will do what conference tells him — and then doesn’t.
I am a believer in the idea that our entitlement to services is built on contributing to their cost.
This motion disregards this principle and will alienate core Labour voters who pay their taxes while often struggling to make ends meet.
An immigration policy must be enforceable or it is no immigration policy at all.
As far back as December 2004, when I was Home Secretary in Tony Blair’s Cabinet, we concluded that we needed a rigorous points-based system for workers and students, combined with limited periods of permitted residence and a strict vetting system for asylum seekers.
This is still the best recipe for healthy race relations in this country.
We reduced asylum claims by two-thirds and processing times from 18 months to 18 weeks.
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott was rowing back on this barmy motion yesterday, implying in a BBC interview that she would pretty much ignore it
Yes, many more people than we anticipated came from the new Eastern European states of the EU in 2004-5, but they were overwhelmingly young, single and productive.
Many left after the crash of 2008 but many stayed.
Their contribution has been overwhelmingly positive. Look at our employment rate — the highest in the EU.
One thing that went badly wrong was the decision in 2015 of Angela Merkel to admit a million Syrian refugees to Germany.
This stoked fears in Britain that they might come here. They didn’t but it helped win the referendum for Leave. Such is the power of this issue.
We live in an era of polarisation — of action and reaction. People are not hearing each other, not making compromises to keep the wheels turning.
We have people who think compromise is betrayal.
In coming up with proposals like this — and the one threatening to eradicate all independent schools — Labour’s Left is mirroring the extremism of the Brexiteer Right.
Counter-intuitively, Jeremy Corbyn needs to stand up to those who insist on denying him the chance to become Prime Minister.
