The Prime Minister has announced a crackdown on immigration which isn’t a crackdown and isn’t about immigration, says Fleet Street Fox. Here’s what he should have said instead
Today we publish a White Paper on immigration. It’s not a law and it’s not about immigration, but I want you to think of it as a crackdown. It might even be a crackdown, if the White Paper ever becomes a Bill, and the Bill ever becomes law, and it comes into force at some point before we all die of rage. Let’s pretend that’s what is happening.
It is a strategy absolutely central to my plan for change, which is to do nothing you could really complain about too loudly. I saw what that did to Boris, and Liz, and Rishi, and by God you’ll never catch me out doing something so dangerous as changing things. I’m going to change all that.
The first thing I’m going to change is the truth. I’m going to start using three-word slogans like “take back control” and “smash the gangs” and before you know it, it’s like we never changed governments at all. There. Doesn’t that feel better.
The Tories weren’t Tory enough. Frankly, they weren’t Brexity enough. That’s why I’m going to be tougher than they were on immigration, axing the care visa, tightening up the need for English comprehension, doubling the length of time it takes to be British. Immigration, immigration, immigration. Tough, tough, tough. Immigration. Tough. Crackdown. Is this thing on, Morgan?
People who think they know about politics will say this is all about the local election results and the surge in support for Reform. But this is what I truly believe. Today, at least. How I ended up in the Labour Party is a mystery to me too, but here we are.
With the Tory vote collapsing across the Shires, clearly the wisest strategy is to be a bit more Tory. So I will tell you the nation is being torn apart and you’re right to be worried about immigrants taking your jobs and don’t worry I’ll smash them for you, and I absolutely won’t tell you the truth. Perhaps I should? I don’t know. Someone tell me what to do.
I could be really honest with you, and say that the reason you’ve no jobs is the technological revolution which no government has had the wit to keep up with. I could say that you have higher prices and a stagnant economy because you have been consistently failed by those in power.
Politicians have to buy their way into government with airtime and social media ads and nice suits from friends, so we climb into bed with all sorts of wrong’uns. And not always for pleasure. Then when we get in, we’re often beholden to them and even if we’re not, they have our phone number and our dinner invitations and our ear.
The real cause of immigration is stuff we can’t do a damned thing about. We’d like to fix climate change, but it’s expensive and if we try the billionaires shout at us. We’d like to tax tech companies, but it’s complicated and if we try the billionaires set the troll farms onto us. We’d like to sell arms for wars in far-off places while importing some conflict minerals for a battery industry we don’t have, but it has a worrying tendency to drive refugees our way and then the billionaires…. you get the picture.
And who are the most stateless people in the world? Who has the most rapacious thirst for rare metals, and slave labour, and computer servers to store every dime and every post and every pointless picture of your tea? Who drives down the wages and cuts the jobs and automates production because robots are cheaper, who dodges their tax, who ignores borders, who demands government subsidies while giving next to nothing back? Here’s a clue. If they arrive on a boat, it’s not a small one. It’s a massive motherf***er with a helipad and its own submarine.
The billionaires do more than any other individual to cause climate change, to foment wars, to boost or crash economies. Thousands of people rely on Tesla, for example, for jobs worldwide, and their mortgages are all at risk because of one rich incel’s bid to make himself the most unpopular person on Earth and tank the share price.
A man who, in normal circumstances, should be fixing photocopiers has splurged eye-watering sums first to get divorced and second to send his improbably-breasted girlfriend on a near-Earth orbit hen night. There are plans to overrun the planet with a clone army of extremely idiotic clever people, because some dips*** thinks that would help. These refugees from normality are the only people to whom border controls do not apply. But I’m not going to say a single word of that publicly, in case Elon sends a tweet or Vicky’s Amazon parcel gets dropped en route.
No Prime Minister has ever been brave enough to say that Britain’s problems have been caused by the people who run it, and own it, and boss you about. I mean we’ll blame the last Prime Minister, and warn you against the next one, but that’s as close as we get. Whatever we try to change gets stopped and that’s why it’s easier to do what I’m doing, and change nothing much at all.
So I’ve announced a crackdown, but I won’t begin it for, ooh, a couple of years. I’ve said it’s tearing us all apart, but the evidence shows we’re actually chewing our own leg off. I’ve said it’s not about Nigel but it is, and I’ll tell you it’s what I believe even though I don’t.
When people voted in a Labour government, they voted for change. Not functioning and affordable public services, not solar panels on every house, not taxing billionaires and being more reasonable to each other in general. No, they wanted to change the Labour Party from a bottom-up organisation of people who wanted to make the world a better place into a top-down autocracy that punishes dissent like a mullah with a migraine. They wanted me to ignore the Post Office, the armed forces, Hillsborough Law, and nuclear veterans. So I have.
If I carry on like this for another four years I’ll be able to hand the keys of Downing Street over to my friend Nicotine Nigel, who wants to reverse all the changes since 1952 and make Britain racist again. Being honest would make us an island of strangeness in an ocean of lunacy, so let’s stick with performative press conferences, appeasing lunatic billionaires, and blaming the wrong migrants for the things they didn’t do.
