Tony Blair’s new changes to immigration is a political master stroke. Earlier this week the Home Secretary; Charles Clarke, outlined a new immigration policy based on a points system like in Australia. Highly skilled workers will have a better chance of immigrating than non skilled, and there will be an overall quota of immigrants allowed in each year.
In the run up to the general election, immigration has become an important issue for middle England. Many Daily Mail readers believe it to be a problem and Britain’s current laws are too lax. The Tories have criticised New Labour for their handling of immigration and they are not the only ones; The BNP, UKip and Robert Kilroy-Silk’s new party ‘Veritas’ are all trying to make noise with a ‘tougher on immigration ‘ mantra.
Recent polls suggest that immigration is an important political issue for many Britons, it is an issue that would be pertinent to the election and it is an issue that would probably have worked against the Government. Indeed the Tories looked like they were gearing up to use this issue as one of their main campaign policies.
The Prime Minister has now addressed a matter that appeared to be a major issue for a large number of voters; in doing so, he has removed it from the election agenda. The Tories must now come up with some other way to expose the Government’s deficiencies if they hope to win back any seats later this year.
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I think you make a good point at a tactical level. All politicians have to act tactically because we live in the real world but if politicians undermine their long term strategy by winning short term battles isnt this destructive?
Backing a policy because it undermines the political ground of your opposition means that ineffective or damaging policies become practice. Its wrong to suggest that immigration is a huge problem in this country - lots of the jobs which immigrants do are the horrible, dirty, boring or dangerous jobs which we don't want to do. Without immigrants demand in the labour market would be unmet.
We want an efficient global marketplace where there is free flow of capital, resources, but an open market needs free flow of labour as well. People on the right want to have their cake ('free' trade and globalisation) and eat it (in nice white societies where everyone looks them).
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