Rishi Sunak is doomed either way on immigration

Good morning. Sometimes the obvious conclusion is the right one. Persistently high inflation in the UK is bad news for households, bad news for businesses and as a result bad news for the government’s re-election hopes.

But some things are less obvious: Just this morning, the UK’s record net immigration of 606,000 in 2022 will spark a fierce debate about British immigration policy. And I think the political consequences of that are far from clear.

Party like 1979

Sometimes a chart is worth a thousand words.

I don’t have much to add here, other than Chris Giles’ article on whether the UK is once again the “sick man” of Europe is very much worth your time.

As I say, I think the political conclusion of this is clear: Facing 1970s-like economic challenges will lead to 1970s-like political consequences. Whether the next election is something like February 1974 – when majority government gave way to minority government – or 1979 – when Margaret Thatcher won a majority – is up to the polls. I’ve said my article about what I think is the likely outcome and I don’t want to get into the old stuff.

These are not good economic conditions for the current governments. I think the main source of relief for the Conservatives is the victory of the Labor Party in 1974 and the Conservative Party in 1979 after their defeats in 1970 and 1974.

Change the record

The United Kingdom has set a new record for net immigration. Historically, we’re experiencing the biggest change in the UK, in terms of raw numbers, like this chart from the University of Oxford Explains the Migration Observatory. The proportion of foreign-born people in the total UK population has increased from 9 per cent in 2004 to 14 per cent in 2021.

The majority of Britons say they want lower numbers of immigration, but a large proportion oppose specific cuts in most areas In reality It leads the highest immigration figures in the UK. As Sunder Katwala, Director of the British Future Research Center, explains in this informative and informative article:

Only 1 in 10 people think we have taken in too many refugees from Ukraine. The idea of ​​reducing visas for the NHS or Social Care is also unpopular: just 12 per cent would restrict NHS visas. Only 17 percent support reducing the number of fruit pickers.

Sander identifies a group he calls the “honest reducers” in the UK: people who say they want overall figures in the UK lower but who also don’t oppose all the political changes required for that outcome. He says about a quarter of the population belongs to this group.

The problem for the Tories here is clear: this quarter is not enough to win the next election on its own, but if that quarter skews to smaller parties from the right or stays at home, there is no chance that the Tories will be able to. Either win. and Nuffield College Ben Ansell explained at Substack (the free!) Recently, the conservative electoral alliance relies heavily on voters who are likely to be among Sunder’s loyal devotees.

There is a direct analogy here with the internal and external difficulties the Conservative Party faces with regard to taxation and spending. Almost every Conservative MP claims they want lower taxes – but it’s been some time since a Conservative chancellor managed to secure deep cuts to public spending after the parliamentary party. Indeed, many Conservative MPs like to demand tax cuts and, the next moment, demand more spending – on defence, families and skills. (More in The Times, speaking by Steve Swynford A brief overview of several of these groups Worth reading.)

My general point is that we all tend to overestimate our willingness to bear costs. Many honest Sunder reducers are anything but: they will immediately start ranting when their second taxes go up, if they increase the rates charged by corporations or actually see any of the real costs the UK will have to bear in order to reduce the UK’s net immigration figures.

In many ways, the Conservatives’ current electoral impasse highlights this. Yes, some of the crises facing the government are external crises in which the conservatives had no role. Some of the problems are entirely self-inflicted, such as the lingering consequences of Liz Truss’ short-lived presidency. Some are both, such as the long period of public sector payroll adjustment and the tailings from the lockdown. But the thing is, while the British electorate has nothing to do with a Truss government, almost everything that now makes the Conservative Party popularly unpopular helped make it popular.

The internal debate in the Conservative Party over immigration, and much of the commentary on it, speaks as if there is some clever talk or political lever that Rishi Sunak could pull to make his life and his party easier. I think the reality is that there is a group of voters who will continue to be angry at the Tories for failing to cut immigration and who will be angry at the consequences if the Tories actually do.

There’s a caveat here for PT, too. The party’s proposal to rewrite the UK’s immigration rules so that employers could not pay 20 per cent of those listed in shortage below the going rate would, I think, be very popular with the public. (That it was also recommended by the government’s Migration Advisory Committee adds to the appeal from a Labor point of view.) But just as with any of these policies, it comes with a cost: And I, if I were a worker, had none. Confidence that voters will be willing to actually pay the cost when the bill arrives.

Try this now

I saw Plan 75And honestly I thought it was horrible. A film against euthanasia with brick-by-brick ingenuity and intelligence, it stretched well beyond its normal running time.

There have been three thought-provoking films that ponder the issue of assisted dying and what it means to have a good death in the past year: one of them, beautiful morningYou can still watch it in cinemas, while Everything went fine And more than ever available for streaming. (My favorite of the trio is more than everand while beautiful morning Less than the sum of its parts, the plot line involving the main character’s aging father is unquestionable.)

What ties these three movies together is that while they are, I think it’s fair to say, broadly pro-euthanasia, their depth and their humanity means they evoke truly conflicting feelings and reactions. Life is complicated when you start with it, and a good movie, which depicts this complexity, inevitably gives more than one message.

not like that Plan 75, which made me long for death. (Full disclosure: Leslie Felperin did not agree: you can read her review here.)

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