The former Tory, and now Reform far-right MP, Robert Jenrick, has set out in the Daily Telegraph his ideas on tax reform, for which programme he is now responsible on the Reform bench, such as it is.
His proposal is that the UK tax system should become explicitly racist by design. I suppose we should no longer be surprised by this, but I still am, and my shock that people would wish to use the UK state to prejudice people's well-being remains quite profound.
Jenrick's proposal is dressed up as a reform of National Insurance, but in substance it is a blatant tax on employing migrant labour.
The idea appears to be straightforward. Firms employing UK citizens would receive a National Insurance tax advantage by way of reduced bills. In contrast, firms employing migrant workers would pay more. The lower the migrant worker's pay, the greater the relative penalty. The result is intended to make migrant labour significantly more expensive than domestic labour, with the adjustment being very deliberately regressive so that those on the lowest pay suffer most.
The consequences are worth considering.
Firstly, this is a subsidy for employing British workers funded by a tax on employing migrants. Reform is trying to change employer behaviour through the tax system, making it more attractive to recruit UK citizens and less attractive to recruit people from overseas. This policy is blatantly racist
Secondly, the policy is deliberately aimed at sectors that rely heavily on lower-paid migrant labour. Hospitality, agriculture, food processing, social care and similar sectors would face the greatest increase in costs. The viability of a great many companies in this sector would be in doubt. If the NHS were subject to this charge, massive cuts in its services would be required if its budget were not increased to cover the cost.
By contrast, banks, universities, technology companies and multinational businesses recruiting highly paid overseas staff would be relatively unaffected. This, then, is a policy that is not only racist but also elitist.
Thirdly, the policy assumes that unemployed UK citizens can readily replace migrant workers. That is a very large assumption. Many employers argue that vacancies already exist because suitably skilled or willing domestic labour is not available in the places and occupations where demand exists.
Believing that UK workers are suddenly going to become keen to take on the work with antisocial hours, or challenging roles, that many migrant workers now undertake in the UK economy as a consequence of this tax change, is an exercise in fantastic thinking, in the sense that it does not reflect reality, and that it is not going to happen.
Fourthly, Reform is explicitly seeking to force economic adjustment. The argument is that if employers cannot access migrant labour, they will invest in training, automation and productivity improvements instead. Whether this happens in practice is another matter. Some firms might invest, but others might simply shrink, relocate or close.
And if anyone can tell me what these adjustments might be in social care, I am keen to know. Does Jnrick know someone who has created a bottom-wiping machine?
Come to that, is the coffee shop experience now to become, make your own out of a machine? My suspicion is Jenrick has no clue what he is talking about.
Fifthly, the policy would almost certainly increase labour costs in some sectors. Since labour costs are a major component of prices, at least some of those costs would be passed on to consumers. Food, care services and hospitality are obvious candidates. This policy is profoundly inflationary, especially for those on the lowest pay.
Sixthly, the proposal is intended to reduce migration not only by limiting new arrivals but also by encouraging existing migrants to leave. Jenrick openly suggests that millions of migrants might be forced out of work by this proposal, and without an entitlement to benefits, would have no choice but to leave the UK. It is quite clear that this policy of hate and deliberate abuse is Jenrick's motivation for this plan. But it would imply a substantial reduction in the UK labour force, with consequences for economic activity, tax revenues, consumer demand and public services, many of which might simply no longer be deliverable, with the poorest in the remaining UK community being those most likely to suffer as a result, and they are the people most likely to vote for Reform at present.
Seventhly, there is a contradiction at the heart of the proposal. Reform argues that migration has not generated significant economic benefits. At the same time, it believes removing migrant labour will force productivity growth. If migrant labour is genuinely economically unimportant, the gains from replacing it are likely to be limited. If, however, migrant labour is economically significant, then removing it carries substantial economic risks. Jenrick seems not to have noticed this.
The reality is that this proposal is about using tax as an instrument to effect social change, which I recognise as possible and, when used appropriately, desirable. But this is tax being used to deliver a racist migration policy. In the process, it is also an attempt to reshape the labour market using the tax system.
The consequences would be profound.
Farming would probably cease in the UK.
So would UK food production.
The hospitality industry would fail in very large part.
The social care sector would collapse.
The NHS would, if this charge were imposed on it, fail, forcing people to take private medical cover or go without.
The ramifications would be enormous.
And would there be funds in that case for businesses to invest, or even businesses left to employ those whom Jenrick wants to supply with jobs? I doubt it.
Jenrick wants to release a racist wrecking ball on the UK economy, and it will create mayhem, havoc, and massive distress. And the Telegraph welcomes the prospect of all that with glee.
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So predictable that Farage’s Nomad Capitalist interests won’t be affected- he loves economic immigrants, just wealthy hypermobile citizens of nowhere, not the ones who actually do the work.
Nigel Farage Loves Borders and Economic Migrants – Led By Donkeys (and flying monkeys)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA8T29zWNCw
I can only share your shock. This is how the Nazi’s started on the Jews – they attacked their economic viability first as a way to begin to make them non-citizens of Germany. As you say, racist. The tax obsessed employers will lap this up I suppose, but will there be a decent wage with these jobs to attract ‘white people’?
So, we have people here who want to pull up the drawbridge and create a whites only fortress based off the coast of Western Europe. The whole country will become a 21st century Martello Tower. Great!
We can’t even ask how it came to this can we, because we know. It started in 2010, when the Tories came in and made the public pay for a private banking crisis. This was because the universities, economists and MSM covered up the real cause of the 2008 crash, and greed got away with it. Smelling blood in the water, capital has pressed home their advantage ever since.
What is amazing to me is that all this political and social oomska we are in has happened relatively quickly which means that the fault lines were always there. But again, we know this – or we did – from world War 2. It is weird that every year we have celebrated the end of of WWII we have actually been taking a step towards another conflict because we have failed to pick up the warning signs. And like the Zionists, you have to ask creatures like Jenrick the question, ‘What did you actually learn from the lessons of the Holocaust?’.
Tragic.
There are of course an awful lot of issues about the use of labour in the UK economy including productivity, pay and conditions and this addresses none of them.
May I suggest however that Robert Tressels message in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is as true today as it was in early 20th Century Britain and that far to many people are working for far to little which means that many of us will have to pay more for things – or landlords get less rent.
Maybe not too much of the “racist” accusation? I can think of a Portuguese couple, care workers, who might return to Portugal. There are doubtless others from other countries for whom “racism” doesn’t seem relevant. And if Scotland were to become independent, and a Jenrick-style policy were in force, would they have to go back to Scotland? I imagine Jenrick is just pandering (why?) to voters who live in areas where there are lots of migrant workers who are blamed for all our ills. But all your arguments against this being in any way a sensible policy are still valid.
Christopher
Do be a good chap will you and read your history? To make a people into non-persons in a state, the first thing you do is economically disenfranchise them and turn them into a burden. And then – as history tells us forever – you have manufactured consent to do what you want with them.
Pilgrim, you’ve entirely missed Christopher’s point. I’m an immigrant and I’m as white as they come and Jenrick’s stupid proposals would certainly affect me. That’s what he meant. The policy proposal isn’t racist in that sense because it would affect white immigrants just as much as it would brown and black ones.
The Irish have been subject to discrimination for centuries and they are white. I have seen at very close hand the impact of that. Of course that is racism.
Christopher was entirely wrong.
I guess implementing this will all be made easier by leaving the ECHR? But so will firing people for no reason, removing holiday pay, sick pay, parental leave – basically anything that might eat into profits can be stopped – people are just resources, who cares about their wellbeing right? …,,Right? – I wish more Reform and Restore voters could see this!
Agreed
I too was genuinely shocked at hearing this policy. Initially I thought this was a Restore policy, but indeed Reform are trying to crowd out their right flank. It seems utterly destructive for the country, but on consideration, I can see how this will fit with Reform’s plan.
Remove foreign labour from the areas you outline, leaving a worker gap. Next, cut taxes excessively and reduce social spending to pay for it so that those British people who are unemployed, in education or suffering from disabilities can no longer survive. Force those people into the low paid employment previously undertaken by foreign workers, shrink the education sector so that only the wealthy are able to take advantage of it and crush middle class professions.
I think the aim is to let the billionaires continue as they are, raise the next 10% up to a more wealthy middle class, extend perhaps another 15% to comfortable professions and basically crush the remaining 75% into low paid serfdom. NHS will essentially have to go, replaced with paid healthcare for the top 25% and some sort of underfunded mess called the nhs for everyone else. Don’t actually have to remove it, just make it useless. At least we won’t have foreigners though… Rich people don’t want Nigerian nurses tending to them in the care home, they want white people with wholesome northern accents, ideally with a doffable cap.
I don’t think those red wall ex-Labour voters fully appreciate this plan, nor do I think it will work. I do think they will do considerable damage as they try.
Since Jenrick is a total arsehole he would live in dread of a bottom wiping machine.
Bottom wiping machines are to be feared. A caring hand and a caring eye are needed, as skin afflictions from immobility and humidity are very unpleasant. I think Simon W has a point, sadly. I shall have doffed my last disposable glove come the next general election, but we must fight to ensure my fellow carers are in their jobs by choice, being treated with the dignity with which they care for all in need, and not just for the well-off.
Thank you
Maybe not a bottom wiping machine but an AI enabled robot with a sympathy/empathy mode!
The unemployment rate is about 5% – about the same at the US (about 4%) and Eurozone (about 6%). The idea we have a mass unemployment problem of British people is nonsense. We certainly do have a problem with young people – the not in employment, education or training – but we can solve this because as we all know from this fine blog we have plenty of things for people to do.
The people the right are mostly after are the so-called economically inactive, and there are indeed about 9 million aged 16-64, of whom about 1.9 million do want a job (the main other categories are student, looking after family/home, long term sick, retired and ‘other’ such as not giving a reason). The difference between unemployed and economically inactive but wanting a job is worth looking at and presumably includes a lot of young people.
I find the datasets here very useful:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket
The second person who has taken a long time to come out as a heartless troll today.
What give you the right to say some people should be unemplpoyed?
Is that your white, male, wealthy smug git privilege speaking?
You won’t be calling again.
“Believing that UK workers are suddenly going to become keen to take on the work with antisocial hours, or challenging roles, that many migrant workers now undertake in the UK economy as a consequence of this tax change, is an exercise in fantastic thinking, in the sense that it does not reflect reality, and that it is not going to happen.”
It has NOT happened in the US with the “ICE roundups” and “self-deportation” so there is no reason or evidence to think it would happen in the UK with a “Migrant National Insurance” tax.
What will happen, as it is happening in the USA, are crops rotting in the fields, problems with construction demolition and related debris removal plus the added bonus of a massive shortage of entry level healthcare ancillary support & healthcare custodial staff.
I know that will be the outcome here as well. And Jenrick would be delighted with that.
Why????
Because he is a bear of little brain, desiring superficial results, without consideration of consequences.
Incarcerating people is lucrative, it seems. Investigators from More Perfect Union found disused warehouses had been sold to the US government for sums far above their valuations, for the purposes of holding people detained by ICE. Wealth creation takes some strange forms.
Link to MPU video:
https://youtu.be/Ox7eagAO_D4?si=R4XC7JSTXZsbUsfc
As you say, this can’t be serious policy, unless they want total economic collapse.
But sadly the airtime it gets moves the overton window on how we discuss people (as mentioned by PSR). Normalising racism and stoking division is their main aim