The real reason you can't trust Labour on immigration
The last Labour government was frequently attacked on one side for promoting high and unsustainable levels of immigration.
Yet they were also attacked from the left by critics such as Nick Cohen (see here for example) for adopting brutal hardline policies towards immigrants which went further than some far-right parties.
Now you would think two such diametrically opposite charges could not both be justified, and it would certainly be difficult for both to be true at any given moment, but here is the amazing thing.
Both charges were accurate at various times during the lifetime of the last Labour government!
The strongest criticism of Labour on immigration isn't that the last Labour government sometimes practiced an "open door" policy and encouraged unsustainable levels of immigration - although at times they did - or that they sometimes managed to quite literally outdo the Daily Mail in taking a ridiculously hard-line anti immigration stance - though this too was true at other times.
For example, they once deported an asylum seeker to Zimbabwe when even the Daily Mail agreed his fears of being beaten up or murdered by Mugabe's regime were well-founded.
Some Labour politicians managed to exemplify both approaches - for example David Blunkett both famously said in 2003 that there was "no obvious limit" to immigration and yet also imposed or advocated some of the harshest anti-immigration measures including proposals to exclude the children of asylum seekers from mainstream schools.
The really inexcusable thing is that by constantly flipping between these two extremes Labour managed to find the worst of both worlds - with all the disadvantages of an open door policy and also those of a restrictive one but without the benefits of either.
The classic example was the first phase of EU expansion, when at first Labour made Britain the one EU country which offered immediate entry to citizens in the first wave of Eastern European accession countries without any transitional controls.
There were problems with that policy, particularly as Labour massively underestimated the number of people who would come here, but if they had stuck to their guns there would have been benefits in terms of goodwill, and getting first pick of the highest skilled and most hardworking people from those countries.
But what did they do? Maintain a policy of no controls until a few days before the deadline, then panic and attempt to slam the door shut at the very last minute. Which of course didn't work, totally disrupted our border control systems and completely undermined the goodwill we might otherwise have gained. A classic example of the worst of all worlds.
I believe that Britain needs a balanced, firm but fair system of controlled immigration which gives priority to our fair share of genuine refugees and to those who have skills which we need - for example although unsustainable numbers can put pressure on the NHS, it is also true that the NHS would be in grave difficulty without the immensely valuable services of foreign doctors, nurses, dentists and other foreign workers employed in vital NHS jobs. I bet most of the West Cumbrian residents reading this have had their teeth seen to by a foreign dentist in the past five years or have a family member or close friend who has.
The problem with Labour was that half the time they dropped any pretence at balance and fairness, and the other half they dropped any semblance of control.
And whenever Labour's pendulum policy on immigration swung from overly-lax to further-right-than-Ghengis-Khan tough, it seemed as though they were trying to find the very people who even your average UKIP member would welcome to Britain and kick or keep them out.
Did Labour manage to deport Abu Hamza or Abu Qatada? Too difficult, that was left for Theresa May to do.
But when an 80 year old Gurkha war hero who had been awarded the Victoria Cross fighting for Britain wanted to come here, he was initially refused permission to do so under the last Labour government until there was a public outcry. And don't get me started on the idiocy of trying to move the goalposts on genuine foreign medical students and send them home half-way through their courses. This while hundreds of bogus colleges which were little more than degree factories were operating - again, it was left to Theresa May to shut them down.
But the most extraordinary thing about Labour's flip flops from one extreme to the other on immigration is that Ed Miliband is still doing it.
As Dan Hodges points out here in a great Telegraph article which eviscerates Labour's immigration policy, Ed Miliband previously said that what Labour "will never do is try to out-Ukip Ukip"
Except that that is precisely what Labour is now trying to do as leaflets promising, quote,
"Labour's Tough New Approach to Immigration"
start to drop through letter boxes - much to the disgust of some Labour MPs like David Lammy.
Certainly at the moment, Labour appears to be promising a hardline approach. But how much faith should be placed in these promises?
I suspect they are about as reliable as Tony Blair's promise to provide everyone with an NHS dentist within five years or his statement that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction which could be deployed in 45 minutes.
Yet they were also attacked from the left by critics such as Nick Cohen (see here for example) for adopting brutal hardline policies towards immigrants which went further than some far-right parties.
Now you would think two such diametrically opposite charges could not both be justified, and it would certainly be difficult for both to be true at any given moment, but here is the amazing thing.
Both charges were accurate at various times during the lifetime of the last Labour government!
The strongest criticism of Labour on immigration isn't that the last Labour government sometimes practiced an "open door" policy and encouraged unsustainable levels of immigration - although at times they did - or that they sometimes managed to quite literally outdo the Daily Mail in taking a ridiculously hard-line anti immigration stance - though this too was true at other times.
For example, they once deported an asylum seeker to Zimbabwe when even the Daily Mail agreed his fears of being beaten up or murdered by Mugabe's regime were well-founded.
Some Labour politicians managed to exemplify both approaches - for example David Blunkett both famously said in 2003 that there was "no obvious limit" to immigration and yet also imposed or advocated some of the harshest anti-immigration measures including proposals to exclude the children of asylum seekers from mainstream schools.
The really inexcusable thing is that by constantly flipping between these two extremes Labour managed to find the worst of both worlds - with all the disadvantages of an open door policy and also those of a restrictive one but without the benefits of either.
The classic example was the first phase of EU expansion, when at first Labour made Britain the one EU country which offered immediate entry to citizens in the first wave of Eastern European accession countries without any transitional controls.
There were problems with that policy, particularly as Labour massively underestimated the number of people who would come here, but if they had stuck to their guns there would have been benefits in terms of goodwill, and getting first pick of the highest skilled and most hardworking people from those countries.
But what did they do? Maintain a policy of no controls until a few days before the deadline, then panic and attempt to slam the door shut at the very last minute. Which of course didn't work, totally disrupted our border control systems and completely undermined the goodwill we might otherwise have gained. A classic example of the worst of all worlds.
I believe that Britain needs a balanced, firm but fair system of controlled immigration which gives priority to our fair share of genuine refugees and to those who have skills which we need - for example although unsustainable numbers can put pressure on the NHS, it is also true that the NHS would be in grave difficulty without the immensely valuable services of foreign doctors, nurses, dentists and other foreign workers employed in vital NHS jobs. I bet most of the West Cumbrian residents reading this have had their teeth seen to by a foreign dentist in the past five years or have a family member or close friend who has.
The problem with Labour was that half the time they dropped any pretence at balance and fairness, and the other half they dropped any semblance of control.
And whenever Labour's pendulum policy on immigration swung from overly-lax to further-right-than-Ghengis-Khan tough, it seemed as though they were trying to find the very people who even your average UKIP member would welcome to Britain and kick or keep them out.
Did Labour manage to deport Abu Hamza or Abu Qatada? Too difficult, that was left for Theresa May to do.
But when an 80 year old Gurkha war hero who had been awarded the Victoria Cross fighting for Britain wanted to come here, he was initially refused permission to do so under the last Labour government until there was a public outcry. And don't get me started on the idiocy of trying to move the goalposts on genuine foreign medical students and send them home half-way through their courses. This while hundreds of bogus colleges which were little more than degree factories were operating - again, it was left to Theresa May to shut them down.
But the most extraordinary thing about Labour's flip flops from one extreme to the other on immigration is that Ed Miliband is still doing it.
As Dan Hodges points out here in a great Telegraph article which eviscerates Labour's immigration policy, Ed Miliband previously said that what Labour "will never do is try to out-Ukip Ukip"
Except that that is precisely what Labour is now trying to do as leaflets promising, quote,
"Labour's Tough New Approach to Immigration"
start to drop through letter boxes - much to the disgust of some Labour MPs like David Lammy.
Certainly at the moment, Labour appears to be promising a hardline approach. But how much faith should be placed in these promises?
I suspect they are about as reliable as Tony Blair's promise to provide everyone with an NHS dentist within five years or his statement that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction which could be deployed in 45 minutes.
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