Labour must kick Britain’s dangerous addiction to migration
For some of us, Boris Johnson’s recent book tour has come as a welcome relief. Finally, the former prime minister is saying what we always knew to be true – that his post-Brexit migration boom was a deliberate ploy to prop up our ailing economy.
In an interview, Johnson admitted that the so-called “Boriswave” of post-Brexit immigration was not an administrative mistake. He claimed that his government simply had to open the borders, in order to “deal with inflation”. Absurd as this might sound, Johnson’s approach is popular in Westminster. At the first sign of economic difficulty, many politicians immediately reach to loosen migration rules and announce a visa bonanza.
Unfortunately for Britain, this misguided policy survived July’s change in government. Like Johnson before them, Keir Starmer’s Labour has no plan for growth besides pumping up our population.
As Britain teeters on the edge of recession, with business confidence plummeting, all of the signs point towards a government which still regards immigration as the surest route to growth. Just this week, Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, was reported as considering a separate system of “Scottish visas”, designed to attract migrants north of the border – an idea which was quickly back-peddled on after widespread criticism.
Adding millions of people to the country can boost GDP – the size of an economy – but not GDP per capita, the far more useful measure of an economy’s per-person success. In real terms, migration-driven growth amounts to little more than an accounting trick. The economic fortunes of ordinary citizens do not improve, but politicians avoid the scary headlines associated with a recession.
But unlike most accounting tricks, this one has some nasty real-world downsides. This is particularly true for a system that seems deliberately designed to attract low-skilled labour from the developing world, while making life difficult for highly capable migrants from countries like Australia and the United States. Unlike other growth-facilitating measures, migration contributes to rising crime and a fraying social fabric.
For an example, look no further than the Welsh town of Aberystwyth. Just this week, an Iraqi goat-herder was arrested in the sleepy Welsh town for his alleged involvement in a criminal drug ring. Hawre Ahmed came to the UK “seeking a better life”, but was found to have used barber shops and car washes to launder drug money. At least Britain’s cash-only barber shop industry is continuing to boom, despite the post-pandemic lethargy across the rest of our economy. Every cloud has a silver lining.
If Labour were really serious about growth, they would start by addressing the structural blockers to it. They would stop pursuing an ideological energy policy which is putting many of our biggest industrial manufacturers out of business. They would also introduce measures which enable firms to make long-term capital investments into mechanisation, automation, and robotics.
Most importantly, they would reform our planning system to allow people to actually build growth-enabling infrastructure – nuclear power stations, railways, and houses. I’m not holding my breath.
Even if Labour won’t embark on any of these necessary reforms, artificial migration-driven growth must end. We cannot plaster over the cracks in our economy any longer, particularly when the social consequences are so dire. We deserve better than accounting trickery designed to spare our politicians’ blushes.