General British politics discussion thread

The idea that immigration is 'harming' the UK is strongly disputed by many people. It's definitely not accepted wisdom or a settled position that everyone agrees on. The idea behind it is definitely coming from the hard right and far right in British politics (Farage, Braverman, Jenrick, plus GB News etc). They are of course trying to normalise it and claim that everyone thinks that way and agrees with it.

But if you think that the overall record-breaking numbers are a problem, and you want to tackle that probvlem, you have to start by asking yourself why the UK has overall record-breaking numbers.

Don't say "small boats"; despite what fascists and the fascist-adjacent want you to think, small boat crossings contribute a tiny, tiny percentage of the UK's record-breaking immigration numbers. This isn't about small boats.

It's about the UK's points-based immigration system, introduced after Brexit, with the aim of ensuring that the UK receives as many immigrants as its economy and society needs, with the skills, education levels and other characteristics that the UK wants.

The cromulent explanation for the record-breaking numbers, then, is that the UK needs record-breaking numbers of immigrants.

Individually, people — even those who say they want a reduction in immigration — do want the actual immigrants. Opinion surveys show a majority of voters saying they don't want a reduction of immigrants that are needed for the NHS, for social care, for fruit picking, who come as students, etc; they just want a reduction in the overall number of immigrants while leaving all the major immigrant groups untouched. What could be easier?

Are the numbers in the last few years sustainable? Economically speaking they are not only sustainable — they are necessary. Or, at least, highly desirable.

Politically speaking, they may not be sustainable — that is evidently Labour's view, anyway. But, of course, politically speaking, significantly lowering the immigration numbers may also not be sustainable if it leads to social care collapsing, the NHS becoming ever more inadequate and crops rotting in the fields.

This is a circle that can't easily be squared.

I live in a quiet cul de sac, on one side is an English lad Billy (electrician) his Mrs and 2 teenage kids, other side is an Iranian guy Ali (doctor) his wife and 3 kids.

Rest of the road (10 houses) all white British, couldn't tell you the name of a single one of them.

Yes back in the day we probably did know the names of everyone on our streets but i agree it's certainly not the fault of any immigrants that this has changed.

I'm not saying that the points-based system, as currently structured, is absolutely the best system the UK could have and is beyond improvement. I'm just saying that it is as it is for a reason, and if you are going to change it it's a good idea first of all to work out what that reason was. If you don't do that, you don't know what the consequences of your changes will be.

For instance:

There is no particular a priori economic reason that student visas doubled from 2019 . . .

There certainly is. Overseas students pay high fees — much higher than the cost of delivering the course that they participate in. The surplus earned from overseas students is a key element in the business model of most (all?) UK universities. If you did limit the number of student visas, then you'd have to (a) considerably raise fees for domestic students; (b) considerably raise the taxpayer subvention for domestic students; (c) considerably reduce the number of places made available to domestic students (with concomitant reduction in the number of academic and other staff employed); or (d) some combination of these three.

Which might or might not be something a government would want to do. But you need to make a decision about that before you can commit to reducing student visa numbers.

. . . or that the numbers staying on graduate visas more than doubled even though only a third are doing graduate level jobs 

Well, again, before you can say there is no reason why this has happened you need to ask yourself why this has happened; there may in fact be a reason. (Spoiler: there almost certainly is.) It may or may not be a good reason, but you can't make a judgement about whether it is or not until you know what it is.

Also, as an immigrant living somewhere where I have to prove I speak the local language to be allowed stay, I find the focus on that element bizarre. Immigrants who don't speak basic English (and generally speaking the standard required is not high) are not going to be particularly economically useful.

The UK already has English language requirements for employment-related and study-related visas. The proposal now is to impose a language requirement for those coming on family visas. And, obviously, when somebody is coming on a family visa, the question of whether they are going to be "particularly economically useful" is not a primary consideration; that's not the reason they are being granted a visa.

It's already the case that you can't get visas for your dependents unless you are earning a pretty good salary — the argument being that you have to be able to support your dependants. But, given that, it seems cruel to impose an additional requirement designed to ensure that your dependants can contribute economically. You can, it seems to me, make some kind of a fist of justifying the imposition one or other of these requirements, but not the imposition of both simultaneously.

It's also not irrelevant that this comes after a long period of reducing or eliminating funding for adult education courses in English as a second language — courses largely availed of by migrants. Coherent policy shouldn't be cutting this funding on the grounds that competence in English is unimportant and at the same time imposing language tests on family-based migrants on the grounds that competence in English is important. Hence, I think, the criticism of this measure. At best, it looks like incoherent policy. At worst, it looks punitive.

I don't call them far right but I do call them idiots.

They voted for Brexit and learned no lessons so people can tut-tut all they want at me calling them idiots but they are exactly that and not I Farage voter I ever met has managed to convince me otherwise.

Well I know what Labours are supposed to be and if Starmers are what he has shown so far he can fuk off and let someone more suitable do the job.

Yes, I understand this argument but was there a glut of universities going bankrupt 5 years ago? The huge rise in numbers is also mostly coming from low or very low ranked universities.

Well, a glut of universities going bankrupt would point to a funding crisis within the sector, which would tend to support the explanation that rising overseas student numbers are driven by universities seeking overseas fees. The bulk of the increase in numbers coming from lower-ranked universities also aligns; those are the ones you'd expect to have the most acute funding problems.

(There could be other factors at work; pretty much the last thing a Brexit Britain seeking to position itself as a powerhouse knowledge economy would do is restrict foreign student numbers. Providing education to overseas students is one of the UK's most significant service exports; there would be strong resistance within government to any attempt to constrain it.)

Well, equally, you can not say that clearly the UK requires these immigrants as you rather explicitly have. Of course there is a reason, you can't jump to the reason that it is because they are economically necessary.

Granted. But, given that this large increase is the outworking of an immigration system expressly designed to serve the UK's economic needs, that's pretty much the first explanation for the phenomenon that you need to consider.

If your starting point is "there are too many immigrants; this is causing social tensions and pressures; we must therefore look at ways of reducing immigrant numbers" [and, NB, I'm not saying that this is your starting position, Podge] you have said absolutely nothing to suggest that the points system is not working as designed. I think from that point you can go one of two ways:

• "We should review the points system to ensure that it is optimally serving our economic needs". Fair enough but, as you have no reason to think that it isn't, you should be open to the possiblity that this will lead to only marginal change — a tweak here, a tweak there, but no huge change.
• "We shouldn't have a points system that is driven primarily by our economic needs". If that's your approach, you need a new system that targets new, yet-to-be-stated policy outcomes. And the first thing you need to have is a public and political discourse aimed at finding some agreement on what outcomes a migration control system should target. Only then can you set about devising a system that will target them, or even assess how the current system matches up to those policy aims.

I can't think of too many candidates in the current Labour Parliamentary Party that would do anything differently from Starmer, none immediately spring to mind in his Cabinet anyway.

We lived in Derby nearly 40 years ago and nobody talked to their neighbours. Nobody. It was bloody depressing.

Moved back to Dublin and got to know all the neighbours very quickly. Were the Mrs. and I live now, all of the neighbours know each other and will stop for a chat or help one another out.

Neighbourly reticence has nothing to do with immigrants. It's always been a British thing.