Ed Miliband on the key subject of immigration

Very courageous speech and tentative policy development by Labour Leader Ed Miliband on the key subject of immigration.  It has already generated an editorial in the Guardian (above).  The speech was courageous because immigration is such an important national issue.

Labour party narrative (both the external narrative it tells the country and the internal narrative it tells itself) has for over forty years been the message that British society is both racist and discriminatory and that only the Labour party can protect immigrants from "unfairness" (or in stronger but less publicly expressed terms "oppression").  Anyone who opposes this view must be a "racist".  There must be no toleration of, or platform for, racists.

This narrative story also appealed to the romantic view Labour had of itself - internationalist, caring for the dispossessed, anti-racist (and to be anti-racist you need to create "racists" to be anti against).

Until the turn of the century this narrative worked.  Post war immigrants, who tended to be Black or Asian, overwhelmingly saw Labour as their natural home (even now very few BME people vote Conservative, and the Liberal Democrat party is probably the whitest mainstream party in the western world).  The accusation "racist" immediately silenced anyone to tried to discuss immigration.

This Labour narrative has become entirely out of date following the arrival of millions of white eastern Europeans over the last ten years.  Because this latest wave of immigrants has been white is has been possible to discuss immigration without being called a racist, or if the racist accusation is made it just looks silly.  Only within the Labour party itself does the "racist" accusation have the power to silence debate (most famously with Lord Glasman although there are many other examples - even Phil Woolas had the condemnation flung at him).

Labour now finds that its previous unassailable position of defender of the immigrant communities has become a liability, alienating the working class communities opposed to immigration (and who are now able to express their opposition without fear of being called "bigot").

The Labour party has a number of choices:

• Continue to position itself as the natural champion of immigrants and immigration and risk continued erosion of the white working class vote (which has reached acute levels).

• Change direction and policy on immigration and risk desertion of the BME votes (as happened in the Bradford by-election) as well as anguish among Labour activists who will see their core self-identity as "anti-racist" evaporating, with the consequent development of an internal party-wide identity-crisis.

• Attempt to change policy on immigration while keeping the immigrant communities on-side as natural Labour voters - with the risk that these two objectives are irreconcilable and the Labour party will appear ineffectual.

On the whole I think Ed Miliband has no option but to follow the course he has.

Whatever the arguments in favour of immigration, the ordinary people do not want it.

Text of the speech (not sure if it is complete - it seems to end very abruptly:  http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/56155/ed_milibands_speech_on_immigration.html

Update

In a piece on the Independent website columnist Owen Jones gives a critique of Ed Miliband's speech.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/06/22/ed-miliband-and-britains-anti-immigrant-backlash/

Although he is absolutely right to call for a German-style re-industrialisation policy (preferably based on exports), and morally right to want more social housing (although there is no chance of that happening without taxpayer support), he misses the wider and more profound point that probably the era of immigration without consent is coming to an end or has already come to an end. 

Therefore the Labour party cannot look for an ever-expanding rainbow coalition of migrants to top up votes lost as a result of the breakup of traditional working class communities (due to a variety of causes including upward social mobility, emigration of blue collar workers overseas, or simply the "old" Labour party members getting elderly and dying - Marks & Spencer faltered due to their traditional customer base simply getting old and dying; the Conservative party almost collapsed because so many of their traditional supporters got old and died; it is possible Labour is now facing the same prospect).

What is to be done? (to quote Lenin).

The Labour party must either acknowledge popular opposition to immigration and offer polices designed to bring it to an end.  Or the Labour party must actively sell the benefits of immigration to the electorate (and good luck to the politician who tries to do that!).  Or ignore the issue and hope that on Election day in 2015 the voters have other things to worry about and if they get back in things can go on the same.