Scorching the Earth on Immigration

The Tories have lost the next election, and a quick bounce back from the expected heavy defeat is not terribly likely. Facing a historic reckoning and no obvious means of recovery, they're playing politics in the end times. Nothing the Prime Minister or his front bench of the clueless and the gormless can do will reverse this situation. Even reviving the career of yesterday's man won't cut the mustard. But that doesn't mean the Tories will abstain from causing more damage between now and whenever the election is called, and today's announcements on immigration are a case in point.

Since Suella Braverman was exiled to the backbenches, sundry MPs and Tory editorials have pressured Rishi Sunak to "do something" about immigration. This has become a constant buzzing in his ear since the ONS revised its 2022 figures last week, revealing net migration was 745,000 for the year - the highest on record. For a government that routinely talks tough about hard borders and reducing the inflow of people, this is nothing less than an embarrassment. Meanwhile, the execrable Reform UK have been doing the media rounds, reminding the Tories of UKIP ghosts of the recent past. Something had to be done!

Unfortunately, that "something" is counter-productively stupid policies. James Cleverly re-announced the repeat attacks on higher education with a clamp down on overseas graduates remaining in the UK, a ban on care workers bringing dependents with them, the abolition of the 20% below market salary scheme (which happened to exercise Keir Starmer on Sunday). And the most damaging - raising the minimum salary threshold for foreign workers from £26,200 to £38.7k.

It's not difficult to see what this means in practice. Because the Tories have systematically defunded health and social care and held wages down, there are acute labour shortages as workers move out of these industries for better pay. To stop them from collapsing utterly, the Tories have overseen the largest waves of migration this country has ever seen. But because the problem they caused has not gone away, and that the pull factors - low wages by UK standards but high wages by global standards - cannot be fixed over night, slamming the shutters down on migrant workers will jeopardise not just health and care, but all sectors addicted to poverty pay business models and not a few paying near to or the average salary. Starmer likes to peddle the "country, not party" rubbish as his signature sideswipe at the Labour left, but it has never suited anyone more than the Conservatives.

In the backrooms, there might be some Tories congratulating themselves on a bold move. They might be daft enough to think it will go down well in the so-called Red Wall. The proles aren't competing with foreigners over jobs in KFC and Sports Direct any more. That and the handsome minimum wage hike will help us see off Labour. There might be others welcoming it as a forceful correction to the labour market. I.e. Instead of doing the hard work of planning and investing, a few years of pain will ensure low paid sectors sort themselves out in the absence of cheap overseas labour. And if you're dependent on health and social care and will be affected by the sudden exacerbation of labour shortages, that's hard cheese.

It's also a barely-disguised elephant trap. Or so the Tories think. Yvette Cooper got the centrists tittering over her sweary reply to Cleverly in the Commons (some of us observe how she often drops a shit bomb in her speeches), but predictably she committed Labour to doing nothing. Not to unwinding this ridiculous policy, setting caps, or tackling the structural pull factors. This isn't just because there's a complete void where the shadow front bench sits, but because saying anything in opposition might make Labour look "weak". And when they do undo it because it's so obviously a Tory scorched earth effort, that gives future Tories something to attack Starmer's shiny new government on. They're so transparent.

Going from comments in The Telegraph, Tory MPs are well pleased. Danny "Freddy" Kruger of the miserable New Conservatives was "delighted". John Hayes, one of Braverman's pathetic cheerleaders, said the government had finally "seen sense". But immigration is not the magic bullet the Tories think it is. Years of scaremongering and the amplifying of racist "real concerns" won them their precious Brexit, but immigration is now widely and rightly seen as distraction tactics. Poll after poll shows immigration trumped by other immediate and visceral concerns, and even on the issue specifically the Tories are trailing Labour. They don't even own the issue any more. That only means one thing: the more they highlight it, the more out of touch they look. And the harder they will hit the brick wall of electoral defeat.

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