Pulling up the drawbridge in the face of global economic change and the digital era is simply not possible
There are several contrasting ways of pulling together the domestic political threads of the past few days. One prominent version, promoted by much of the press and reflected in many polls, says they show that Britain faces a migration-driven crisis. Nigel Farage spoke for this view when he told his Ukip conference in Torquay today that parts of the country are unrecognisable. According to this version of events, the failure to control migration is at the heart of long-term national decline, a general collapse of confidence in the welfare system and the sustained fall in real wages.
In this narrative of Britain's options, this week's immigration figures, showing net migration at 212,000, a rise of almost a third over the previous year, and driven mainly by migration from within the European Union, become damning evidence of the failure of government to address the core of the crisis. They certainly leave David Cameron's pledges to cut net migration to 100,000 by next year looking unachievable. With Angela Merkel making clear this week that EU freedom of movement must be maintained, Mr Farage sees an opportunity for migration anxieties to power Ukip to victory in May's European elections.
This is not, however, the only way of looking at these facts and issues. There is another way that says no European country can now, on its own, preserve the economic prosperity and welfare settlements of the 20th century without co-ordinated adjustment, managed reform and freedom of movement. Pulling up the drawbridge in the face of global economic change and the digital era, the course implied by Ukip, is simply not possible. Britain's problems, in other words, are not unique to Britain, or solvable by an island improbably restored to its role as a global power. The problems are shared, common to our part of the world, all connected, and they are only manageable in a flexible but co-operative way.
That, in essence, is the message that Mrs Merkel brought to Britain this week. It is not an easy message to put into practice, sometimes even for a Germany that is broadly comfortable with the shared European approach, let alone for a Britain that is broadly uncomfortable with it and which still battles to adjust to aspects of the continent around us.
But, for all its limitations and problems, it is still a better message than the one that places migration, as such, at the heart of our problems. As Mrs Merkel said in her speech, fair migration within Europe is in many respects a great shared achievement. But it needs to command the confidence of Europe's citizens. That is why the German chancellor acknowledged there may be a need for prosperous countries such as Germany and Britain to look again at aspects of migrants' access to welfare in order to reassure native workers and taxpayers. That is still a much more optimistic message than the one that demonises everything about the EU and European migrants, as Ukip does and as the Eurosceptics who have wrenched control of Tory party policy also do.
Only a fool would make the mistake of not taking Mr Farage and Ukip seriously. But their goal is to embarrass the other parties, not to change the world. No one who listened to Mr Farage's speech today would have heard anything positive or practical. Ukip's currency, ably articulated by its leader, is blame – blaming migrants for causing Britain's crisis, and blaming governments for allowing them to do so. Yet it remains massively unclear what Ukip aims to do about migration, except to stop it, and even more unclear how it would do that. But that is because Mr Farage is a spoiler, nothing more. He often comes close, as he did in a speech last month at a TaxPayers' Alliance event, to admitting that in his view of politics there is nothing to be done. But there is – and this week it was Mrs Merkel, not Mr Farage or Mr Cameron, who set a version of that out best. Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.
There are several contrasting ways of pulling together the domestic political threads of the past few days. One prominent version, promoted by much of the press and reflected in many polls, says they show that Britain faces a migration-driven crisis. Nigel Farage spoke for this view when he told his Ukip conference in Torquay today that parts of the country are unrecognisable. According to this version of events, the failure to control migration is at the heart of long-term national decline, a general collapse of confidence in the welfare system and the sustained fall in real wages.
In this narrative of Britain's options, this week's immigration figures, showing net migration at 212,000, a rise of almost a third over the previous year, and driven mainly by migration from within the European Union, become damning evidence of the failure of government to address the core of the crisis. They certainly leave David Cameron's pledges to cut net migration to 100,000 by next year looking unachievable. With Angela Merkel making clear this week that EU freedom of movement must be maintained, Mr Farage sees an opportunity for migration anxieties to power Ukip to victory in May's European elections.
This is not, however, the only way of looking at these facts and issues. There is another way that says no European country can now, on its own, preserve the economic prosperity and welfare settlements of the 20th century without co-ordinated adjustment, managed reform and freedom of movement. Pulling up the drawbridge in the face of global economic change and the digital era, the course implied by Ukip, is simply not possible. Britain's problems, in other words, are not unique to Britain, or solvable by an island improbably restored to its role as a global power. The problems are shared, common to our part of the world, all connected, and they are only manageable in a flexible but co-operative way.
That, in essence, is the message that Mrs Merkel brought to Britain this week. It is not an easy message to put into practice, sometimes even for a Germany that is broadly comfortable with the shared European approach, let alone for a Britain that is broadly uncomfortable with it and which still battles to adjust to aspects of the continent around us.
But, for all its limitations and problems, it is still a better message than the one that places migration, as such, at the heart of our problems. As Mrs Merkel said in her speech, fair migration within Europe is in many respects a great shared achievement. But it needs to command the confidence of Europe's citizens. That is why the German chancellor acknowledged there may be a need for prosperous countries such as Germany and Britain to look again at aspects of migrants' access to welfare in order to reassure native workers and taxpayers. That is still a much more optimistic message than the one that demonises everything about the EU and European migrants, as Ukip does and as the Eurosceptics who have wrenched control of Tory party policy also do.
Only a fool would make the mistake of not taking Mr Farage and Ukip seriously. But their goal is to embarrass the other parties, not to change the world. No one who listened to Mr Farage's speech today would have heard anything positive or practical. Ukip's currency, ably articulated by its leader, is blame – blaming migrants for causing Britain's crisis, and blaming governments for allowing them to do so. Yet it remains massively unclear what Ukip aims to do about migration, except to stop it, and even more unclear how it would do that. But that is because Mr Farage is a spoiler, nothing more. He often comes close, as he did in a speech last month at a TaxPayers' Alliance event, to admitting that in his view of politics there is nothing to be done. But there is – and this week it was Mrs Merkel, not Mr Farage or Mr Cameron, who set a version of that out best. Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.