Boriswave denialism

Despite all the supposed progress by migration restrictionists in finally “winning” the argument on migration — which, despite having been won, continues at unsustainable levels — it appears they may have forgotten one of the most important rules of war: never hold an enemy too cheap.

Those who continue to fight for higher immigration are nothing if not indefatigable. In an interview with LBC, former BBC journalist and Downing Street Director of Communications Guto Harri made the case —following the latest ONS data on net migration, which showed it had fallen to 171,000 — that this would be an economic disaster.

Perhaps we shouldn’t expect anything else: asking anyone involved with Boris Johnson’s administration to demonstrate anything other than feverish support for immigration is like asking Ian Paisley to pray for the Pope.

Hari repeats specific claims that have become de rigeur amongst pro-migration advocates for years. Firstly, he argues that migration is central to British economic growth. To which we might say: what economic growth? This, of course, is a statistical sleight of hand: GDP has increased thanks to migration, through the sheer power of increasing the number of people in the country. GDP per capita, of course, has fared much more poorly.

It would have been more accurate to argue that migration is central to Britain’s industrial strategy. As I have written elsewhere, our immigration policy acts as a kind of Human Quantitative Easing, a “method by which government allows geographically rooted industries, which cannot offshore their workforce to lower wage economies, to satisfy their need for cheap labour by importing the same workforce to the UK — with government providing a subsidy, if required, in the form of services and welfare payments.”

Hari makes a similar case to others who still defend the Boriswave: that public services would have collapsed without being able to rely on migrant workers. It is certainly true that many of our key public services are becoming more and more reliant on immigration, which the government is using as a form of public-sector wage suppression instead of tackling deeper underlying issues like productivity and pay. We can see this in education, the prison service and, of course, healthcare, where foreign recruits are prioritised as early as the training stages. Public services are not collapsing, but they are rapidly declining as a result.

Hari also argues that the positive case for migration is ‘not often said as strongly as it should’. On this, I agree completely. Since mass migration started, he positive economic case has been vastly overstated, and continues to be. When it first began, Britons were told immigration was economic rocket fuel: now we are told that our country will simply collapse without it. Immigration is the policy forever scrambling to find a rationale, economic or otherwise.

Finally, Hari speaks about the impact of migration on “certain communities”, and his sympathy for those who have been “overwhelmed” by migration. There is a strain of thinking, developed from post liberal interpretations of the Brexit vote and the victories of Trump and Boris Johnson, that economically “left behind” communities use immigration as a cipher for their dissatisfaction with their loss of socio-economic status and the deracination of their communities. This is nonsense: the vast majority of the country has always been in favour of reducing migration back to the tends of thousands, and this sentiment was expressed as strongly in the Home Counties as the Red Wall. 

This is, whilst wrong, a largely boilerplate pro-migration argument. But Hari attempts a final, original, egregious, coup de grace by pointing out that this may all be the fault of the native population, who have given their leaders no other rational choice. ‘We’ve produced generations of people in this country”, Hari argues, ”who are either not equipped, or inclined to go out and work”. The question of who has been in charge of skills, education and the benefits system over a hefty chunk of the last two decades is a question that is already tired, but must be wheeled out to work again and again like a tragic, over-whipped donkey stumbling it’s way forward on the dusky streets of Cairo. 

In fact, who was in charge over a more recent period is a more pertinent question: Hari points towards the 2.8M working-age people who are economically inactive in the UK due to long-term sickness. That figure stood at 2M when a former employer of Mr Hari became Prime Minister, and stood at over 2.6M when he left. Similarly, the number of people on out-of work benefits jumped from less than 7 million to over 9. It may be pointed out that there was a pandemic, and it might be asked why it never declined following the end of said pandemic.

The reason it never declined was the sad fact that the combined effects of politicians using mass migration as a means to avoid difficult questions about delivering sustainable, natural economic growth and improving living standards have produced a country in which work no longer pays.

In having to provide subsidies to lower-wage workforces imported from abroad, the government has not only distorted the economy but the social contract, in which wages are suppressed, living standards are falling and a greater share of the tax burden must be used to support newcomers who have not, and who may never, contribute to the system. Faced with the prospect of having to work harder and harder for an unfair share of less and less, many of our most entrepreneurial are opting out of living in Britain by relocating to Dubai, Australia or the US: many of those unwilling or unable to leave are simply opting out of work entirely. 

Countries that experience economic slowdowns or fallbacks are notoriously politically fractious and difficult to govern. Luckily, there is hope: most of our economic problems are entirely self-inflicted — and blindingly obvious. We stand on the edge of a technological revolution that will make many of the jobs we currently rely on migrants to fill entirely redundant. Despite the problems presented by needlessly expensive energy and a punitive tax system, there are already British businesses showcasing what this future economy will look like. Conventional political parties should take note: all that is needed to defeat populism is to raise living standards and reduce migration. And it can be done at the same time.