For the benefit of any slow learners out there in the so-called 'labour movement' who are perplexed by the swing from Labour to UKIP in the likes of Rotherham and other apparent working-class strongholds, permit me to enlighten you.
Throughout the UK [England in particular] are many small towns and villages where one hundred years ago, all the young men, without exception, would have gone off to fight for King and country in the 'Great War'. Many of them didn't return. Then, in the post-war era, many men and women would all have been employed in the same local factory or colliery. The community spirit that would have arisen out of such shared experiences cannot be underestimated. Well, that community spirit is eroding, and the blame can peculiarly be laid at the door of well-intentioned, but insensitive and misguided Labour. How? Why?
Nowadays, people of a certain vintage who perhaps never went to university and have rarely drifted beyond the confines of their locality find themselves having to 'cope' with all manner of new migrant workers being parachuted into their presence from eastern Europe. Suddenly, it becomes strange to find that the two men queuing ahead of you in the post office are conversing in a foreign language. It is equally disconcerting to find yourself waiting at the bus stop with two women who also are engaged in a dialogue in a foreign language. Such circumstances may not have transformed the locals into racists with extreme views, but what they have undoubtedly done is left the locals feeling uncomfortable and somewhat uprooted by the changing demographics. It's not unreasonable to expect people to be disconcerted by the fact that suddenly in a small space of time at least half the people in their street or their block of flats were born in a foreign land. Suddenly, folk no longer recognise or can identify anyone in the street or at the local shops. Suddenly everyone is a stranger, speaking in strange tongues. Suddenly, many people feel that their community's own identity, and indeed the identity of their country has been radically altered. It's not unreasonable for many working-class people, especially in England, to be experiencing an identity crisis, as they try to make sense of the social upheaval.
The thing is that the smart Alecs amongst the liberal media and the bourgeois, cosmopolitan commentariat do not comprehend the extent to which many people feel that their communities have been put out of kilter by rapid population changes, arising out of a large influx of migrant workers. The trouble with the liberal elite among the governing classes, as well as the clever young things who scribe on behalf of the press, is that they all went to university [and possibly private school] where they were thrust among a variety of peoples from all corners of the globe and all walks of life. They can readily fit into any social setting with others from different ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds, but fail to see how difficult it is for others to adjust when there are many others from small towns and villages who have rarely strayed far from the community that they and their ancestors have cherished. While the city slickers are accustomed to cultural diversity, many others in the provinces are not. For those in the latter to have east Europeans thrust into their midst is not a comfortable experience. Admittedly, it is far from comfortable for the new residents either.
However, this scenario that I have outlined goes some way to explain why the Labour heartland feels like it has been left behind and even betrayed by a Labour Party that presided over a huge influx of migration from eastern Europe a decade ago. Labour just loves to welcome migrants from foreign shores, not least because such migrants invariably tend to then cast their votes for Labour in subsequent elections. Therefore, Labour's traditional enthusiasm for immigration is perhaps governed by self-interest, by the realisation that immigrant communities tend to be more favourably disposed towards the Labour party. Nevertheless, we may now be seeing chickens coming home to roost for Labour, because the party in its devotion to the open-door policy of the European Union has left the Labour heartlands and communities awash with migrants from distant shores. Now, the traditional Labour voters are feeling left behind, unable to come to terms with the rapid population change. They now denounce Labour as 'out of touch', with the Labour shadow cabinet stuck inside the Westminster bubble, putting in appearances on various television programmes, including the obligatory slot on Have I Got News For You. Suddenly it seems that the new Labour brigade have lost touch with their grassroots and that the party's pre-occupation with looking good on television is of paramount importance.
To make matters worse for Labour, the accusation that has been directed at them in recent days is that their politicos do not even give a straight answer any more to anything, and it is difficult to respect people who are evasive in interviews. Only the other week, Andrew Neil asked Douglas Alexander about the unfair electoral advantage that is presented to Labour by the current electoral system. Mr Alexander characteristically slimed his way out of the question. It would have been infinitely more preferable if Mr Alexander had stated that yes Labour do derive an electoral advantage but that this apparent benefit is negated by the fact that 1) the overwhelming proportion of the printed media is biased in favour of the Conservatives during election campaigns and 2) the Conservatives enjoy greater funding at election times, which collectively would perhaps nullify Labour's so-called advantage. Mr Alexander would have won himself credit for an answer of this nature, rather than the usual ducking and diving that the likes of Hazel Blears used to specialise at when she played all interviews with a tedious straight bat. Oh yes, Labour politicos mustn't veer off-message. They must instead repeat the same old parrot expressions about cutting too fast and too far; or harping on about the so-called 'bedroom tax'; or continually screaming about a cost of living crisis. Well, as far as I am concerned, Labour is both out of touch and liable to beat about the bush. In fact, the current Labour team are expert practitioners at beating about the bush. Just to quote an example of Labour's current follies is that when Yvette Cooper is confronted about the public disquiet over net migration, she states that yes Labour are 'concerned' about immigration, and then with her next breath she utters in the next sentence that Labour is especially anxious about the exploitation of foreign workers. Well, Yvette that sentiment is all fine and dandy, but thee are missing the point. Most people want a drastic reduction in foreign workers, first and foremost. It's not the exploitation of cheap foreign labour which is uppermost in the minds of the UK electorate. The Labour Party just does not get it.
Of course, the people who are now flocking to UKIP dare not speak out against immigration for fear that Kevin Maguire and the Daily Mirror and the chattering classes of the media demonise them as bigots and racists. As a consequence, the immigration debate is brushed under the carpet and largely treated as taboo by the liberals and leftists who are essentially a bunch of Utopian daydreamers. Instead, there is a silent mass of people who have concerns about the continuing net migration to Britain. Once they are in the privacy of the polling booth, then they are able to speak, and by Jove they speak quite emphatically in favour of UKIP. This infuriates the apologists for soft touch Britain. Such Liberal Democrats and Labour daydreamers wish for a cosmopolitan, heterogeneous United Kingdom which is effectively a united nations. Well, if these dreamers cast their eyes at the actual United Nations assembly in New York, they would find that even the reasonable, educated gents and ladies who are delegated to sit in that body cannot see eye to eye with one another, so what chance do we have in Britain of different communities being shoved together in an idealistic exercise of social engineering aimed at reinforcing the ideologies of left-wing and liberal daydreamers?
Another dimension which has so far dwelled under the radar, but which represents a slightly surprising source of simmering discontent is tension between the Afro-Caribbean community and the east European immigrants and between the Asian community and the east European newcomers. It's hard not to appreciate the concerns of Britain's ethnic coloured communities. They have toiled for decades, trying to get a foothold in Britain. They struggled to get the best jobs, the best houses, and the best schools for years, and now that the coloured people of Britain are belatedly no longer on the periphery of UK society, they find their social mobility being threatened by the hordes of east Europeans who are now muscling their way into the British workplace. In addition to this, there are precious few black and Asian people residing in the countries of eastern Europe, for one reason or another. Consequently, it is a culture shock for east Europeans and the coloured communities to be hurled together into the same neighbourhoods. One cannot underestimate how mutually uncomfortable this state of affairs is proving to be. It is an indication after all of how unaccustomed the eastern Europeans are to coloured people in their midst that when visiting British teams play soccer matches in eastern Europe, their black players are sometimes recipients of monkey chants and other awful racist taunts. This all goes a long way to explain why a surprising number of black and Asian people both join and vote for the inaccurately described 'racist' UKIP.
Until Labour faces up to the discontent fostered by the mass migration from eastern Europe that happened on their watch, then they will continue to reside in the low 'thirties in the opinion polls and linger in the low 'thirties crucially one year from now. It's something of a tragedy because I do have much sympathy for Labour's traditional desire for social justice and equality, but it just so happens that the current Labour party has travelled a huge distance away from its grassroots, leaving its voters feeling alienated and disgusted with huge payouts to high-flying civil servants, to others in publicly-funded organisations such as the BBC and a plethora of Quangos. Even Labour's devotion to the welfare state is in danger of creating a nanny state in which benefits claimants exploit a system that was established to help them. Labour needs to toughen up. I respected Theresa May's tough love speech to the Police Federation the other day. There was an individual who wasn't afraid to speak her mind and who wasn't courting approval from the assembled members. Could you envisage a Labour representative speaking in such terms? I couldn't. The Ed Miliband party is so obsessed with winning everyone's approval that its representatives dare not speak their mind any more. Sanitised new Labour has lost its soul.
It's no wonder that more and more of its supporters are 'migrating' to UKIP. They have my deepest sympathy.
Oh and let's not delude ourselves with the wishful thinking that support for UKIP will melt away between May 2014 and May 2015. I am far from convinced about that. UKIP's challenge is to tap into the massive reserves of people who don't ever bother to vote anymore at general elections and who amount to about one third of those eligible to vote. If UKIP can engage such disenchanted members of the electorate, then the UKIP phenomenon will prove to be more than a one-year wonder. At the very least UKIP ought to command about ten per cent of the vote share in the next national beauty contest, while a percentage of 25% is also achievable. Either way, the vote share of UKIP will be of a sufficient amount in a whole host of key marginal constituencies to throw a spanner in the works of the two major political parties. In much the same way as the SDP provided nuisance value to the Labour Party in 1983, so UKIP will similarly upset the plans of British politics' terrible twins. Quite frankly, the Labour Party's soft touch approach to immigration means that it only has itself to blame.
Throughout the UK [England in particular] are many small towns and villages where one hundred years ago, all the young men, without exception, would have gone off to fight for King and country in the 'Great War'. Many of them didn't return. Then, in the post-war era, many men and women would all have been employed in the same local factory or colliery. The community spirit that would have arisen out of such shared experiences cannot be underestimated. Well, that community spirit is eroding, and the blame can peculiarly be laid at the door of well-intentioned, but insensitive and misguided Labour. How? Why?
Nowadays, people of a certain vintage who perhaps never went to university and have rarely drifted beyond the confines of their locality find themselves having to 'cope' with all manner of new migrant workers being parachuted into their presence from eastern Europe. Suddenly, it becomes strange to find that the two men queuing ahead of you in the post office are conversing in a foreign language. It is equally disconcerting to find yourself waiting at the bus stop with two women who also are engaged in a dialogue in a foreign language. Such circumstances may not have transformed the locals into racists with extreme views, but what they have undoubtedly done is left the locals feeling uncomfortable and somewhat uprooted by the changing demographics. It's not unreasonable to expect people to be disconcerted by the fact that suddenly in a small space of time at least half the people in their street or their block of flats were born in a foreign land. Suddenly, folk no longer recognise or can identify anyone in the street or at the local shops. Suddenly everyone is a stranger, speaking in strange tongues. Suddenly, many people feel that their community's own identity, and indeed the identity of their country has been radically altered. It's not unreasonable for many working-class people, especially in England, to be experiencing an identity crisis, as they try to make sense of the social upheaval.
The thing is that the smart Alecs amongst the liberal media and the bourgeois, cosmopolitan commentariat do not comprehend the extent to which many people feel that their communities have been put out of kilter by rapid population changes, arising out of a large influx of migrant workers. The trouble with the liberal elite among the governing classes, as well as the clever young things who scribe on behalf of the press, is that they all went to university [and possibly private school] where they were thrust among a variety of peoples from all corners of the globe and all walks of life. They can readily fit into any social setting with others from different ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds, but fail to see how difficult it is for others to adjust when there are many others from small towns and villages who have rarely strayed far from the community that they and their ancestors have cherished. While the city slickers are accustomed to cultural diversity, many others in the provinces are not. For those in the latter to have east Europeans thrust into their midst is not a comfortable experience. Admittedly, it is far from comfortable for the new residents either.
However, this scenario that I have outlined goes some way to explain why the Labour heartland feels like it has been left behind and even betrayed by a Labour Party that presided over a huge influx of migration from eastern Europe a decade ago. Labour just loves to welcome migrants from foreign shores, not least because such migrants invariably tend to then cast their votes for Labour in subsequent elections. Therefore, Labour's traditional enthusiasm for immigration is perhaps governed by self-interest, by the realisation that immigrant communities tend to be more favourably disposed towards the Labour party. Nevertheless, we may now be seeing chickens coming home to roost for Labour, because the party in its devotion to the open-door policy of the European Union has left the Labour heartlands and communities awash with migrants from distant shores. Now, the traditional Labour voters are feeling left behind, unable to come to terms with the rapid population change. They now denounce Labour as 'out of touch', with the Labour shadow cabinet stuck inside the Westminster bubble, putting in appearances on various television programmes, including the obligatory slot on Have I Got News For You. Suddenly it seems that the new Labour brigade have lost touch with their grassroots and that the party's pre-occupation with looking good on television is of paramount importance.
To make matters worse for Labour, the accusation that has been directed at them in recent days is that their politicos do not even give a straight answer any more to anything, and it is difficult to respect people who are evasive in interviews. Only the other week, Andrew Neil asked Douglas Alexander about the unfair electoral advantage that is presented to Labour by the current electoral system. Mr Alexander characteristically slimed his way out of the question. It would have been infinitely more preferable if Mr Alexander had stated that yes Labour do derive an electoral advantage but that this apparent benefit is negated by the fact that 1) the overwhelming proportion of the printed media is biased in favour of the Conservatives during election campaigns and 2) the Conservatives enjoy greater funding at election times, which collectively would perhaps nullify Labour's so-called advantage. Mr Alexander would have won himself credit for an answer of this nature, rather than the usual ducking and diving that the likes of Hazel Blears used to specialise at when she played all interviews with a tedious straight bat. Oh yes, Labour politicos mustn't veer off-message. They must instead repeat the same old parrot expressions about cutting too fast and too far; or harping on about the so-called 'bedroom tax'; or continually screaming about a cost of living crisis. Well, as far as I am concerned, Labour is both out of touch and liable to beat about the bush. In fact, the current Labour team are expert practitioners at beating about the bush. Just to quote an example of Labour's current follies is that when Yvette Cooper is confronted about the public disquiet over net migration, she states that yes Labour are 'concerned' about immigration, and then with her next breath she utters in the next sentence that Labour is especially anxious about the exploitation of foreign workers. Well, Yvette that sentiment is all fine and dandy, but thee are missing the point. Most people want a drastic reduction in foreign workers, first and foremost. It's not the exploitation of cheap foreign labour which is uppermost in the minds of the UK electorate. The Labour Party just does not get it.
Of course, the people who are now flocking to UKIP dare not speak out against immigration for fear that Kevin Maguire and the Daily Mirror and the chattering classes of the media demonise them as bigots and racists. As a consequence, the immigration debate is brushed under the carpet and largely treated as taboo by the liberals and leftists who are essentially a bunch of Utopian daydreamers. Instead, there is a silent mass of people who have concerns about the continuing net migration to Britain. Once they are in the privacy of the polling booth, then they are able to speak, and by Jove they speak quite emphatically in favour of UKIP. This infuriates the apologists for soft touch Britain. Such Liberal Democrats and Labour daydreamers wish for a cosmopolitan, heterogeneous United Kingdom which is effectively a united nations. Well, if these dreamers cast their eyes at the actual United Nations assembly in New York, they would find that even the reasonable, educated gents and ladies who are delegated to sit in that body cannot see eye to eye with one another, so what chance do we have in Britain of different communities being shoved together in an idealistic exercise of social engineering aimed at reinforcing the ideologies of left-wing and liberal daydreamers?
Another dimension which has so far dwelled under the radar, but which represents a slightly surprising source of simmering discontent is tension between the Afro-Caribbean community and the east European immigrants and between the Asian community and the east European newcomers. It's hard not to appreciate the concerns of Britain's ethnic coloured communities. They have toiled for decades, trying to get a foothold in Britain. They struggled to get the best jobs, the best houses, and the best schools for years, and now that the coloured people of Britain are belatedly no longer on the periphery of UK society, they find their social mobility being threatened by the hordes of east Europeans who are now muscling their way into the British workplace. In addition to this, there are precious few black and Asian people residing in the countries of eastern Europe, for one reason or another. Consequently, it is a culture shock for east Europeans and the coloured communities to be hurled together into the same neighbourhoods. One cannot underestimate how mutually uncomfortable this state of affairs is proving to be. It is an indication after all of how unaccustomed the eastern Europeans are to coloured people in their midst that when visiting British teams play soccer matches in eastern Europe, their black players are sometimes recipients of monkey chants and other awful racist taunts. This all goes a long way to explain why a surprising number of black and Asian people both join and vote for the inaccurately described 'racist' UKIP.
Until Labour faces up to the discontent fostered by the mass migration from eastern Europe that happened on their watch, then they will continue to reside in the low 'thirties in the opinion polls and linger in the low 'thirties crucially one year from now. It's something of a tragedy because I do have much sympathy for Labour's traditional desire for social justice and equality, but it just so happens that the current Labour party has travelled a huge distance away from its grassroots, leaving its voters feeling alienated and disgusted with huge payouts to high-flying civil servants, to others in publicly-funded organisations such as the BBC and a plethora of Quangos. Even Labour's devotion to the welfare state is in danger of creating a nanny state in which benefits claimants exploit a system that was established to help them. Labour needs to toughen up. I respected Theresa May's tough love speech to the Police Federation the other day. There was an individual who wasn't afraid to speak her mind and who wasn't courting approval from the assembled members. Could you envisage a Labour representative speaking in such terms? I couldn't. The Ed Miliband party is so obsessed with winning everyone's approval that its representatives dare not speak their mind any more. Sanitised new Labour has lost its soul.
It's no wonder that more and more of its supporters are 'migrating' to UKIP. They have my deepest sympathy.
Oh and let's not delude ourselves with the wishful thinking that support for UKIP will melt away between May 2014 and May 2015. I am far from convinced about that. UKIP's challenge is to tap into the massive reserves of people who don't ever bother to vote anymore at general elections and who amount to about one third of those eligible to vote. If UKIP can engage such disenchanted members of the electorate, then the UKIP phenomenon will prove to be more than a one-year wonder. At the very least UKIP ought to command about ten per cent of the vote share in the next national beauty contest, while a percentage of 25% is also achievable. Either way, the vote share of UKIP will be of a sufficient amount in a whole host of key marginal constituencies to throw a spanner in the works of the two major political parties. In much the same way as the SDP provided nuisance value to the Labour Party in 1983, so UKIP will similarly upset the plans of British politics' terrible twins. Quite frankly, the Labour Party's soft touch approach to immigration means that it only has itself to blame.
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