As the Guardian notes in its morning comment email:
Thousands of Britons should be trained to drive trucks, work in the meat industry and gather crops rather than filling vacancies with foreign workers, Suella Braverman will tell Conservative activists on Monday. With the government bracing for a record increase in net migration figures later this month, the home secretary's intervention will be seen as a rebuff to cabinet calls for an easing of visa rules.
After a weekend of the Conservative Democratic Organisation conference, today we have the start of another three-day jamboree from another far-right faction within the Tories.
Braverman gave the CDO conference a miss, but it looks like many of the names from the weekend will appear for a second outing. Jacob Rees-Mogg opens the show.
But what is the significance of Braverman's showing up? It is that Subnak cannot even keep control of his holders of the principal offices of state. That's not good.
Nor is Braverman's message likely to go down well with anyone outside the far-right of the Tories. After a weekend of decidedly woke television (Eurovision and the Baftas, both being heavily political) her message of isolation and of increased limits on immigration really does seem very out of step with the country.
Although, no doubt, those on the Tory far-right will simply say that this is evidence that Gary Lineker really is in control of the fate of everything and everyone, except that of Leicester City, of course.
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Braverman is just a complete loony. Having read the profile in the Guardian, I’m sure she just likes to wind people up.
The fact that some are calling her a possible leader of the Tories is quite frankly incredible to behold.
The problem is however that recent history is full of loonies who just don’t take anything seriously. Look at BREXIT – those pushing Leave did not expect to win – it was just enough to disrupt. And when they ‘won’, they had no plan at all to take us out of the EU in an organised way.
Braverman’s tactics are simply to disrupt and annoy at scale using the known racism in our society to water down any unifying sentiment.
In some weird way, she is wreaking revenge on the society that enabled her to be where she is and denying those opportunities to others.
I recall a young Englishman being interviewed on TV outside our local jobcentre and being asked why he did not want to work on the Fenland farms – his reply was – ” What – you expect me to get up at 6 to do back breaking work for the minimum wage”. In contrast the Eastern Europeans who were employed were valued for their good work ethic. I doubt if those who voted for Brexit to keep these people out will step in to replace them !
When I was a teenager I worked in East Anglian fields
It was not uncommon for kids over half a century ago to have a week out of school for harvesting. My wife remembers a week of potato picking!
Doing a modestly paid job as a student, working hard in all sorts of weather gave me a wider understanding of working conditions for many people. The money was handy, but I couldn’t have lived independently on it. No wonder young people do not plan to work in these unpopular jobs; they hope at least for a few of the basic goodies of life. Only those who come from much poorer economies can benefit from most of these jobs, or those with no ties and responsibilities who can have cheap, paid foreign holidays by working and living here temporarily.
It doesn’t help that our silly social class system judges people by the jobs they do rather than their value as human beings.
Two of my children picked potatoes in their early teens. After long days of backbreaking work, they returned to a warm, comfortable home, a hot shower in a clean bathroom, good food and plenty of it and a decent bed, none of which had to be paid for out of the pittance that was their wages. No bad thing for them to have found out quite early how much labour is required to get food to our tables, but they were spared the overcrowded caravan in a muddy field with minimum sanitation and far from anything approaching civilisation. I don’t imagine these conditions exist everywhere now, but they certainly do still exist.
In the understanding of the human condition the Eurovision song contest fits somewhere between savage political satire and Lewis Carroll, but it mostly confirms one of the Tory world’s best kept secrets. Tory behaviour has made us one of the least liked countries on the planet.
That and 500 years of Empire.
I would take her a little more seriously* if the government abided by the blind faith in markets they claim to have. In the face of a serious shortage of nurses, the answer should obviously be to offer a large increase in nurses’ salaries.
[*Though in Braverman’s case, that still wouldn’t be very seriously at all].
Pretty much sums up the progressive nature of liberalism of 19th century. Free market ideology provided workers a political argument for why they should demand higher wages. It isn’t the free market itself that provides for the worker, because in most cases the market exists only as a metaphor. The things that exist are the baker, the smithy, the miller, the farmer, the labourer etc. They all coordinate with one another and provide for one another without knowing about the whole organisational structure.
“With the government bracing for a record increase in net migration figures later this month”.
Of course it is. The Conservative Party may have voted for Brexit, and produced policies attacking immigration; but it never had any intention (or capacity) to reduce immigration. It can’t. It daren’t. I have been pointing this out since 2016. London would collapse. There are jobs people will not do, at any price. In the 17th and 18th century we have forced people into certain forms of employment; and still failed to find sufficient labour prepared to do the job. The Conservative Party know this very well; but they cynically live off the paradox of fake policy and mendacious execution of policy.
Britain has been importing labour to do unwanted jobs since the eighteenth century. Without immigration the canals and raiways would not have been built. They were constructed by hard labour the British population (in sufficient numbers) were disinclined to do; the canals and railways (the sinews of industry), were built by navigators (navvies), famously arriving in large numbers from Ireland. We wanted them to do the work. The same principle has continued for around 250 years. It isn’t going to change now.
Agreed
Immigration has always been a political gift for the far-right because all politicians to the left of Fascism do not want to talk about it.
Tory business owners have always been keen to profit from desperate migrants who are prepared to work in terrible conditions for low wages and everybody on the centre and left of politics treats any mention of immigration as racism.
The general consensus being that it is best to let sleeping dogs.
When immigration was measured in tens of thousands that may have been the least worst thing to do. However, since the Fascist takeover of the Tory party it has become obvious that unless decent politicians of the centre, the left and the small remnant of non-Fascist Tories are prepared to take on this subject the reality of immigration for too many of the population will be defined by the Suella Braverman’s of this world and the well funded neo-fascist front organisations that support them.
You only have to look at today’s headlines in the Express and Mail to see what they are trying to do.
Local populations were not just disinclined to navvying; they had neither the numbers nor the individual physical capacity and experience to do it as efficiently as gangs of peripatetic specialists. And the local economy got into trouble if the farm hands did take to the shovel and weren’t then available for harvest. It was and still is the nature of capital projects that when one job is finished the machinery and personnel move onto the next and the operators and maintenance crew, fewer, and with different skills, move in. Likewise specialised agriculture – the hop pickers go home, the grape pickers move on. The mixed farm might perhaps sustain a permanent workforce, but most intensive monocultures in the modern fashion don’t. The ability to move with the work is a necessity for these tasks to be carried out at all – out of the C-suite you can’t survive year round on a few months’s paying work a year.
Good points
Mr Thomlinson,
At last, a critical confirmatory summation of the facts. Thank you. The chilling counter-fact is that the Conservatives know this perfectly well. They wrote the manual. Braverman’s sordid cynicism is a joy solely for Right-wing Conservatives, because they know there is a limit to the number of elected Conservatives prepared to deliver such contradictory tripe, at least on a public platform; and trash their reputations beyond repair for possessing an iota of sense or judgement, simply to re-energise the toxic divisions of Brexit and immigration to save the Party from well-deserved and overdue electoral wipe-out. This is, in short rabble-rousing of the worst kind; even worse, delivered by a lawyer.
My mate’s dad, Joe, the genuine article, from Sligo, on hearing a surveyor pondering how many lengths of pipe he’d need to run down an incline, suggested that if he knew the elevation and the distance, he could work it out on the back of a fag-packet. The guy looked aghast.
The part she didn’t say is that they will need to incentivise those locals to take up those jobs. Either pay them more or coerce them to do it for the same pay.
The Conservatives intuitively understand that if they want to attract bankers to The City, they have to make sure the pay and bonuses are competitive. But the don’t apply the same logic when they can’t retain nurses. And I’m pretty sure they won’t understand why locals will want more pay to do the work foreigners have been doing for cheap.
Agreed
Good point Col.
I remember one of the better programmes about BREXIT before it actually happened.
It was about the care sector and I recall the camera team went on the street to ask people if they would be prepared to look after the elderly.
One answer was put like this ‘ If I’m going wipe someone else bottom, that’s fair enough but it’s got to be for a lot more than the minimum wage’.
And there you are. And I think that’s fair comment.
People are not lazy in this country, it’s more like they are not fools and know when they are being exploited (or at least we did). A decent wage for all work would be a nice change, or at least a social security system that could work alongside income without penalising people who were working because benefits are still reduced too sharply when earnt income comes into play (the so-called ‘taper’ is too steep).
The Tories love a low wage economy of course and are always too quick to paint their own society as ‘work-shy’ rather than ‘exploitation savvy’. So we then rely on immigrants and we are also compared badly to them – something which has not escaped my attention concerning Braverman’s background – Patel too I think was motivated too by the ‘lazy white people’ trope.
All these issues go on and on when they can or should be resolved because they have just become play things for our totally unprincipled politics.
Ignoring the question of where this “training” is meant to come from (is Braverman proposing to increase government funding for job training? No, I thought not. So we are hoping that the market will provide, when it is signally failing in this regard already – if wishes were horses) …
Who are these people that Braverman wants to drive trucks, process meat, and pick crops?
From the ONS data – https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/employmentintheuk/february2023 – employment (16-64) is over 75%. Unemployment is about 3.5% (about 1.3 million people – about 800,000 up to 6 months, about 170,000 between 6 and 12 month, and about 270,000 over 12 months). Unemployment went up markedly from early 2020 to mid 2021 (we all know why) but that bump has worked through and disappeared. There will always be some unemployment in the system and this is actually at historically low levels. If these people wanted to do those jobs, they would be doing them already, but they probably have better choices.
So that leaves the 21.5% of people aged 16-64 who are “economically inactive” (about 9 million people). But why are they “inactive”? About 29% (2.5 million) are long term sick. That has gone up by about half a million since 2019 (no need to wonder why long-term illness has increased markedly in the last three years). Perhaps some investment in the health service would reduce that, or alternatively perhaps Braverman wants the sick and disabled to be picking vegetables for a pittance. About 19% (1.6 million) are at home, mostly caring for children and other relatives. See the first reason. It would help GDP for many people with domestic responsibilities to go out and get paid work (and employ minimum wage carers), but many thinking feeling people (rather than rational economic units of work) actually do want to look after the people they hold dear themselves if they can. Another 25% (over 2 million) are students, and they should focus on their studies (so they get better jobs in the future) not waste time processing meat and picking fruit. And 13% (a million or so) have retired early. They won’t have the state pension for some time, so must have their own private resources. Congratulations. And many might be doing voluntary or other unpaid work already.
So we are left with about 1.8 million currently economically inactive people who would like a job. Or to put it another way, unemployment is around double the headline statistic, but half of them are not actively seeking work. A large number of them are not currently working because they are sick, or students, or have other responsibilities. So perhaps Braverman can propose some positive policies to encourage people who are willing and able into work, rather than spouting meaningless cant.
The reasons that net legal immigration is at relatively high levels is that there are young, fit, motivated, well educated and skilled people who want to come to to work in the UK, to earn money and pay taxes here. Why shouldn’t we want that?
I really don’t know why we would not
Your approach is persuasive because it addresses the quantum. There is a need for a more thorough drilling down to the detail, but what your analysis broadly shows is that there is no low hanging British labour ‘fruit’ for Braverman to pick. They do not exist in the quantum required. In addition so poorly provided for are so many in Britain, with so much endemic deprivation over so many decades; there are significant numbers, whom employers will be reluctant to employ, under any circumstances. This is an uncomfortable business truth the paradoxes of conservatism is reluctant to face.
Braverman is reaping what the Conservatives have sown. If they didn’t want this problem the Conservatives would require to have re-designed and reconstructed the country from the bottom-up. Thus, you only need to state the problem above to see the absurdity of her argument. Where is the Labour coming from to fill the haulage, railways, hospitality, fish processing, NHS nurses and doctors, farming, retail, construction (plumbing, eletrical) shortfalls? I have not noticed Braverman providing the population stats and critical anlaysis. What I see is red in tooth and claw politics.
I still cannot understand why refugees already here are not allowed to work? A small hotel near where I work is housing some refugees. It is near the centre of town, those residents free to work could walk to employment in cafes and shops with no transport costs and could be contributing to their accommodation costs as well as improving their English. To me it is madness and cruel to keep people in this limbo.
Under international law they should be allowed to work
It is the Tories who do not let them do so
It is not just the Tories that deny asylum seekers the right to work. During the last Labour government, probably around 2005, as a trade union official I was present at a number of meetings with asylum seekers to see what the union could do to help. Every one of them said ‘let us work’.
One more reason for you to reconsider your previous affiliation with MMT is the advocacy of all leading MMters, including Stephanie Kelton, of the Job Guarantee.
No doubt these jobs could include driving trucks, working in the agricultural industry etc. or at least encourage those who are without jobs to take them up. This aspect of MMT does, perhaps understandably, cause those of a more ‘socially liberal’ disposition some difficulty.
https://stephaniekelton.com/guaranteed-jobs-through-a-public-service-employment-program/
Ironically, opening up the UK to immigration would, I imagine, enable those employers who resent having to pay anything approaching a living wage, to be able to pay a pittance to these foreign workers, thereby driving down their costs and increasing their profits. Bang would go the argument that wage increases are driving inflation because they could keep wages stagnant or effectively cut by taking high fees from their foreign workers in return for that grubby caravan in the middle of a muddy field. Must be a real conundrum for the Tories – on the one hand, I’m sure they are being pressed to allow immigration to grow in order to drive down wages and fill these poorly paid/unrewarding and soul-destroying jobs – and on the other hand, their rampant xenophobia has them choking on the prospect of allowing any one other than their nannies or some wholly ineffective hedge fund manager in. And of course, it’s completely inconceivable for them to consider doing anything that would incur costs on their part, such as funding training or providing meaningful healthcare to those with long term health issues, or providing a funded solution for the proper provision of care to the elderly and the disabled. They’ll just do what they always do – bugger all. And bugger all does a lot of heavy lifting for them these days – it makes the boat-carrying immigration crisis worse; the healthcare crisis worse; the social care crisis worse; in fact, pretty much everything that affects the ordinary citizen on a day to day basis worse. That must be their plan, because the alternative is that they have no plan and they are inflicting misery simply because it’s in their gift and they actively want to. And that’s a terrifying prospect if true.
What I find so hilarious about the large increase in net migration is that this is all migration that fits within the Tories immigration policy, apart from the odd 40,000 on small boats.
So am I correct in assuming that the end of free movement is a massive increase in Tory approved policy immigration?
Two issues that are not mentioned though are Under Employment and Productivity.
There is a recognised issue in the UK over productivity and many employees only working part time when they would like to work full time.
It has been pointed out by Brexiteers that the availability of cheap Eastern European labour meant that business’s didnt have to worry about pay and productivity, and that it encouraged the growth of low pay low productivity undertakings such as cafe’s and car washes rather than well paid productive business.
It seems to me that what we need is a national drive to improve productivity and the utilisation of labour, an obvious start might be to remove the savings in National Insurance that employers get from employing part time rather than full time workers, more and better training, possibly funded by levies on employers as happened in the past and perhaps some sort of ‘Tax’ designed to discourage low pay low productivity business’s – perhaps restrictions on managers pay and dividend distribution?
Business is not interested
They have been taught the short term view
Another failing of microeconomics
There is a desperate, cringeworthy irony in Braverman’s speech. Her position is founded on what she claims is a deeper understanding of the immigration issue: “But I think there is something deeper going on here. I think the left can only sell its vision for the future by making people feel terrible about our past. White people do not exist in a special state of sin or collective guilt. Nobody should be blamed for things that happened before they were born.”
No, they do not deserve blame for what happened before they were born; but Braverman clearly has no knowledge at all about that which she chooses to declaim. When Britain chose to end slavery, it did so by compensating, not the slaves, but the British slaveowners; with a full valuation of their chattel (slave) property, calculated at an average market price prevailing before manumission was made law. They did so at colossal cost to the National Debt, which fell on everyone in Britain. The debt was consolidated and rolled over for almost two centuries; but was not finally redeemed (matured), until 2015 (Treasury FOI).
The important point here against Braverman’s rash ignorance, is the political argument the slave owners made at the time to justify the British people as a whole paying heavily to reward the slave owners for a confessed grevious wrong, conducted by the slave owners (who were very well represented in both Parliament and Government, and whom promoted their interests aggressively).
The slave owners’ argument was that slave owning was not the sin of the slave and plantation owners: “Slavery had become a national sin, which could be absolved only by a national remedy: compensation for the injured proprietors [the slave owners]” (Kathleen M Butler, ‘The Economics of Emancipation’; p.10). Any guilt was through: “… the sanction and indeed the encouragement of the State, for the law permitted slave-owning ….. Accordingly, the State could not free the slaves without compensation” (SG Checkland, ‘The Gladstones’; p.275). The slave owners passed the guilt of slavery to the whole British people; and the British people paid a very full price to acknowledge acceptance of the national guilt. At least that was the self-justification for a cyncial political sleight of hand. Just like Braverman’s political sleight of hand today.
We are free to feel terrible about our present; just as the Abolitionsts felt about slavery in 1833. The son of the PM, then Earl Grey, remonstrated that it was the slaves who required compensation; but nobody was listening. In any case, it was the British people who carried the responsbility, and paid the price; both burdens removed from the shoulders of the British slave owners, who were richly rewarded both from the profits of exploiting slavery, and then from the compensation for abolishing slavery; in either case solely to uphold the property rights of slave owners.
Thank you
John S Warren wrote “The Conservative Party may have voted for Brexit, and produced policies attacking immigration; but it never had any intention (or capacity) to reduce immigration. It can’t. It daren’t.”
I agree, but there’s one glaringly obvious question that never seems to asked by the mainstream media nor addressed by the UK Gov: instead of the UK Gov dithering about with ineffectual schemes to stop the boats and (seemingly a lower priority) break the business model of the traffickers, why not try rooting the traffickers out? After all the migrants seem to have no problem in finding them and doing deals despite manifold language difficulties, so surely UK’s Intelligence Services and police must know who they are and where they can be found? Lest we forget, it’s the migrants who need protection from these ruthless criminals as well as from the cack-handed attempts by the UK Gov to prevent their migration.
I am not sure that will work
When there are no legal routes to the UK illegal ones will always be created
Although, I stress, refugees cannot legally arrive illegally in international law
Of course criminals will continue trying to fill their pockets irrespective of regulations and obstacles to restrict them. My point is that the combined efforts of UK and international security services, UK police, Interpol and Europol are surely switched on enough to identify the individuals behind the trafficking and where they are operating. Or has the Tories’ obsession with shrinking the state reduced the effectiveness of MI5 & MI6, as it has done to the NHS, the courts, Companies House and so much more?
Probably
Well, Sir Richard Dearlove (yes, that Richard Dearlove – google him) is speaking at the National Conservatism conference, on “Active Measures: A Second Coming”. Sounds a cheery topic for the after-lunch slot, perhaps.
The Conservatives and the intelligence services, eh; it has form. Most notably of all, Chamberlain and the chilling Sir Joseph Ball (First Director of Research, Conservative Party).
Chair of the Trustees of the University of London
Ex MI6
Far right advocate
Where I was brought up in Kent, the hop-picking was traditionally done by families bussed down from the East End of London en-masse, for a paid holiday. The hop-gardens in Hereford were picked by similar from Birmingham, etc. They lived in animal sheds or whatever was available. That ended with the agricultural minimum wage, and when the Londoners had decent accommodation and wages.
The fruit-picking was mostly done on piece-work, for cash, by women on benefits, earning a little extra for their families. That ended with cries of ‘benefit fraud’ and legislation that meant farmers had to take ID and be informers for the DHSS as it was then.
The other indigenous source of labour were the gypsies, who followed the cycle of fruit-picking, potato-lifting, sprout-cutting. Of course, they’re a target for the Tories because they make the countryside look untidy.
If you really want indigenous labour to replace immigration, you have to allow these practises to revive, but with protection against exploitation.
How about decent wages with tax paid?