Keir Starmer rules out the return of free movement if Labour comes back into power

Politics & Elections
1

I’m thinking that by making this explicit, Starmer is poisoning the well with younger voters.

I understand he’s doing this because he doesn’t dare do anything that might tilt the immigration-adverse “Red Wall” voters back over to the Tories, now that many are leaning toward Labour in the next election. And he can’t run on a platform of “repeal Brexit and beg to be let back in again because, honestly, we shot ourselves in the face with this” platform, so he’s taking the squishy middle ground of “making Brexit work.” But as long as, even if the party does come into power in 2024, he refuses to engage with any proposal for easing trade barriers if they involve loosening immigration rules (which the business community are increasingly agitating for, as they’ve got a ton of jobs that need filling), it’s a non-starter.

Thing is, the young people who voted overwhelmingly against Brexit are the ones most pissed off that they can’t travel as freely, can’t work or study in other countries, and so forth. And Starmer’s essentially saying that they don’t matter nearly as much as the Brexit-voting seniors who are seemingly willing to settle for a tanking economy that’s driven them to food banks if it means they don’t have to hear Polish on the buses any more.

I can’t even with these guys any more. Either party.

2

So do the Liberal Democrats and SNP want to return to the EU?

3

Brexit has been a massive exercise in self-harm, but (for the foreseeable future) the damage is done. Ending freedom of movement was the main impetus behind Brexit, so to reopen that can of worms would be to reignite that whole debate and rekindle anti-EU sentiment (which remains strong). Brexit took up so much attention, both in the UK and in Brussels, for years on end!

Beyond restoring some peripheral and relatively non-controversial ties (like science or academic cooperation), I can’t imagine what constructive action Labour could take at this point vis-à-vis the EU.

4

Unfortunately in terms of achieving electoral victory he’s probably right to do so, as clearly illustrated in the following plot of turnout by age.

We have the same problem in the US. If you don’t vote, your opinions don’t matter. On the good side it does seem to be trending in the right direction with young voters increasing participation and old folks steady or declining, but there is still a huge gap to cover.

5

The Lib Dems, I believe, want to try and restore ties. I don’t know if they’d go for full revocation, but they have as much chance of getting into power as I do of becoming Pope, so it’s kind of a moot point.

As for Scotland, when they had their own independence referendum in 2014, part of the Tories’ push against it was that they’d also be out of the EU, but sticking with the rest of the UK would be a better economic choice. Who knows if that was a deciding factor, but the measure was narrowly defeated. Then two years later…well, we know what the Tories did then. Scotland rejected Brexit in the referendum, got pulled out of the EU against the will of the majority of Scots, and they’re reaping the economic downturn rbought on by a party that stabbed them in the back. Which is why the SNP has been pushing for a new new independence referendum, which the British Supreme Court has denied the as of last week. It might not be feasible anyhow. Scotland is running a pretty big debt at this point, something like 9% of GDP, and to qualify for entry to the E.U. that has to be brought down to below 3%, which isn’t likely to happen for a while yet. But long story short, yeah, the Scots by and large would rather be independent and trading with the massive economic bloc on their doorstep.

6

And the Tories are pushing similar voter suppression measures to try and keep the young people on the outs. Yes, they need to step up, and faster, but I suspect Brexit is pushing the numbers to improve.

7

It’s also a problem with first-past-the-post. Brexit is an issue that demonstrates a lot of the worst aspects of FPTP:

The marginal constituencies are the only ones that matter, so “red wall” style constituencies that the tories can flip over a wedge issue like Brexit have outsized importance.

Additionally Brexit from the start wasn’t an issue that the existing party system was equipped to deal with - a relatively weak majority of the Conservatives and a significant minority of Labour support it so the parties have to do all this weird posturing to maintaing their bases. And with Labour anti-brexit voters this has the worst effect - if Labour takes an in-betweener stance or even leans pro-Brexit, an English Labour voter that realistically has to choose between Labour and Conservative still has no alternative party to vote for other than to vote for a spoiler.

8

I had not thought about it greatly, but if we posit that Scotland does separate from UK and does decide to rejoin EU and the EU decides to take them in an interesting problem immediately appears. One that may have already gotten lots of talk in UK circles but which I’m ignorant of. Specifically:

That would produce a EU/non-EU land border in the middle of the island of Great Britain. A border much physically larger and (I think) more economically significant than the EU/non-EU border already dividing the island of Ireland.

Talk about a mess.

9

Starmer is probably reacting to the report that " UK net migration hits all-time record at 504,000".

It’s a legitimate concern. Since EU net migration has fallen, that shouldn’t be the issue he’s emphasising. And the explanation from the government is :

Home Secretary Suella Braverman said the record numbers were “understandable” given the circumstances in Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong

For anyone who was seriously studying the anticipated economic effects of Brexit, it involves examination of the governments’ response to Brexit. Which is made even more complicated by the Covid crisis, the Russia-Ukraine war and its effects, and the global rise in inflation. The proposed economic benefits premise of Brexit was that UK government investment in Britain would be more effective and less costly than EU investment in Britain. Labour costs from a domestic workforce would go up, and be inflationary overall, but would increase domestic participation in the UK workforce, resulting in a net GDP benefit over the long-term. Selective immigration to fill skills gaps would be more effective than open immigration.

None of the immigration-based Brexit benefits have been achieved. But let’s back away from Brexit and examine the premise of the OP, which is that free movement of immigrants is good. There were over half-a-million net immigrants into the UK in the year to June. The UK is in recession. If movement of immigrants into the UK is providing an economic boost, how is that economic boost evident?

Also, if there’s a skills-gap in a profession, is the optimal solution to fill that gap by perpetually importing foreign workers in that profession, or is it to promote domestic workforce participation in that profession? The latter is more expensive. But my belief is that it would be more beneficial to British society. Cheap labour has plusses and minuses. The minuses are mostly experienced by the domestic economically disadvantaged population. Which is the population of voters Starmer is addressing his comments towards.

10

It’s a conundrum and while I don’t think Scottish independence is coming soon, it’s worth considering.

My own Celt-abroad take on the difference with the Irish situation, is that the whole of Ireland, both the Republic and NI, are connected by a common culture and ancestry that predates the partition. After the GFA, there are people who literally can step out of their backyard in the north into a field in the Republic, who commute to work across the border every day, and who can experience Ireland in ways that thirty years ago they couldn’t. The Brexiteers steadfastly ignored all that, and took an attitude of “Well, toss the Czechs out first, then we’ll worry about the details.”

There’s a movement towards a unified Ireland, which would solve the problem of the customs border, but the ones most adamant against it are the Protestant Unionists up north; a lot of them consider themselves British more than Irish. It was reported a few months ago that Catholics, for the first time, outnumber Protestants in NI. This is huge: if there’s enough of a demographic tilt away from Unionist ties, a push to unite the whole island could actually work.

Basically what I’m saying is that the customs border in Ireland is a direct result of sectarian divvying up of the place. A land border in Scotland would have a different dynamic, as it would be newly imposed, dividing two distinct cultures (English/Scottish) rather than dividing one society. It would be a nightmare (see: commuting across the border, above). I get the impression that a lot of people up north, due to indifference, condesension and downright hostility from Westminster, might identify more with the Scots than folks in the wealthier shires down south. But a lot of towns in the north bought the bill of goods they were sold over Brexit and heartily voted to leave. So what do I know?

11

First past the post applies to constituencies as opposed to the national vote. Brexit was based on the national vote.

12

Correct, the problem is that “normal” elections where the parties put their policies related to the relationship with the EU, free movement etc. in their platforms, the success of the parties/platforms don’t accurately capture the range of opinions of the electorate because a handful of constituencies are orders of magnitude more important than the rest, and even in constituencies that matter, many people are essentially captive to whatever choice is given by the top 2 parties in their constituency.

13

One option is for those with the skills and education to emigrate should and not bother sending remittances home. It would certainly stick it to the pro-Brexit elders. Though the Tories could start enacting Eastern Bloc style travel restrictions; pensioners would still be allowed to travel abroad if they choose.

14

What are the current rules for a UK person who doesn’t have any familial claim to citizenship in a current EU country? They certainly were EU work-eligible pre-Brexit, but what is their status today? Was it possible for them to obtain pre-Brexit a permanent EU passport (or whatever documents are needed to work) that survived Brexit?

For comparison, as an American with no claims to any other citizenship, there’s damn near nowhere on Earth I can legally emigrate to on an (almost-) permanent basis and earn a living there without lots of legal obstacles to doing so.

Voting with one’s feet and leaving the country sounds like a fine idea. Until you notice darn near nobody else will let you in, and the few who will charge dearly for the privilege. Which is certainly their right, just not real convenient for you/me.

15

It’s navigable, but some people are getting caught up in the burocracy. I feel sorry for guys like this, not so much for the folks who retired to Spain, voted Leave and are now shocked that Spain won’t let them live there year-round any more.

16

I truly don’t want to participate in a thread hijack, and so will attempt to relate my dispute with your post back to the OP, but you’re writing nonsense. If the Brexit referendum was purely about free movement, it would have suffered a far more severe defeat. Tony Blair’s decision after the 2004 EU enlargement to only impose welfare restrictions, as opposed to immigration limits, resulted in far more immigrants than Blair had publicly predicted. The consensus from economists is that the UK overall had a net benefit from the EU immigration based on the 2004 enlargement, but the sectors of workers who were affected by the increased workforce competition suffered disproportionately. The increased number of immigrants didn’t affect Blairs reelection in 2005, but did affect Gordon Brown’s campaign in 2010. He was asked about EU immigration by a Labour supporter, replied that net EU migration was equal, which was untrue, and called his questioner a bigot. .

Brown lost that election

Moving on to 2016, there was discussion about the need for immigrant workers. Lots of that discussion asked whether the needed workers should come from the EU without visas, or whether they could be “supplied” by the global market. And again, there was a question of whether in the long term, those workers should be imported or supplied domestically. It was ultimately a side issue - mostly a side issue for the side that lost the referendum. That side had a chance to try to revisit the decision in the 2019 UK general election. They couldn’t get the Labour Party to support their position, and the party that did support their position, the Liberal Democrats, lost badly.

So please explain your sentence and debate the electoral problem of UK voters rejecting electoral platforms espousing free movement, and also advocate why the Labour Party should support those platforms.

17

You’re assuming that the referendum was “about” anything. The question the British people were asked was “Do you want to keep all of the benefits of EU membership without any drawbacks?”. Nearly half of the population recognized that that was an impossible proposition, but slightly over half didn’t, and so said “Of course we’ll keep the benefits but give up the drawbacks; show us how to make that happen!”. To which the government responded by giving up all of the benefits while keeping many of the drawbacks.

18

Democracies work better when there are consistently meaningful choices in elections. As a function of FPTP, the majority of constituencies UK-wide (and a vast majority of the English ones), are 2-party races between the Tories and Labour. Some issues related to the UK’s relationship with the EU, including free movement, don’t neatly fit into the choice between those two parties. The members of those 2 parties are internally very divided on those issues and leadership of each party has no choice but to anger a large swath of their own members regardless of what position they take on it, even more than on most issues.

This dynamic could exist and have the result that the parties have clear positions that are different from each other on the issues where the public is meaningfully divided. For example on the issue of a free movement bloc with the EU, it would give the public a more meaningful choice if the top 2 parties were either a pro-free movement left-wing party and an anti-free movement right-wing party or vice versa. While this wouldn’t be perfect it would at least allow voters to decide if they care more about that particular issue or the other issues that align more neatly with the party divide. The dynamic is significantly worse if both major parties have similar or the same policies on that issue, because in a large group of constituencies there simply is no way to express opposition to the consensus except voting for a spoiler. And the dynamic is further compounded when the incentive for both parties to align this way is the result of the opinions of a minority of constituencies.

Labour’s policy and the reasons it’s taking it at one particular time is not in a vacuum relevant to my argument. Political systems are more democratic if voters had more choice, and in FPTP often creates dynamics such as this one where the self-interest of each party is counterproductive to the democratic system as a whole.

19

Brexit was about a lot of issues. National sovereignty was the big one. Giving the finger to the government in Westminster was another. Immigration was also a concern, but pretty far down the list of issues the electorate felt important. Public opinion was informed by a succession of stories in the press of the foreign criminals allowed to enter the UK because of the EU free movement rules. So get rid of the EU and you get rid of the criminals - an instant solution to the nationals ills. You will also force employers to recruit and train UK nationals to do the jobs that are needed. Sadly this bit was not so simple. The British cultural aversion to serving anyone lest they be looked down upon by some undeserving snob means that if you want to provide service, it is better to hire Italians/Spanish/French/Portugese workers if you want the staff to be nice to the customers. Working in agriculture is also not at all popular with the British, but it is a job that makes a lot of sense if you don’t know English very well and you are fast. Then there is NHS health care and social care. Labour intensive and now cut off from the EU labour pool. There is also building, once dominated by Poles, then the Romanians. But now recruitment has to rely on a limited pool of British workers with the appropriate skills.

The Governments attitude is that it is for employers to adjust to these new conditions. However, in some cases, such as healthcare and socialcare, the government IS the employer and we find an NHS in crisis because there is a shortage of healthcare and social care staff cut off from the EU labour market.

In think the general idea is that these problems will eventually reduce over the long term and the government just has to sit and wait it out. However, I am not seeing any advertisements for training programs for nursing or social care as a career. It is difficult to sell it as a vocation, the wages are miserable and after Covid there has been an exodus for staff leaving after all the stress and the nurses are now striking for more pay,

There are very big structural changes happening to the UK labour market and the ending of the free movement of labour within the EU has contributed to create a skills crisis.

Governments try to persuade the voters that they are in control of immigration, but it is a confidence trick. They are not at all in control. They hardly even know how many people come and go from the UK, the statistics bear little examination. There is no big database of everyone who is in the UK, no accounting for comings and goings. They make a big some and dance at immigration control coming into the UK. Lots of scanners and cameras. But the UK is still largely a free country, there are no ID cards, no officials breathing down your neck and and no police asking to see your papers as they do in Europe. It is not a state like China trying to monitor and control its unfortunate citizens with an array of technology and strict rules.

This is another bit of political positioning by Starmer. He says he is not going to the change the much vaunted immigration policy of the Conservatives. So they cannot attack him on being soft of border controls and letting in all those foreign criminals.

Is he going to nothing about these serious skills shortages? Of course he is. He has a lots of options and recruiting from the EU will be one of them. He just has get the Home Office to relax their restrictions for some kinds of job in sectors that are suffering serious problems. This seems to be beyond the ability of the Conservatives, who have elevated immigration controls as some kind of article of faith and entrusted it to their most hawkish operators on the right of the party. This puts him in the position to attack the Conservative incompetence on this issue without opening himself to the charge of being ‘soft’ on immigration and border control. He has plenty of wiggle room on this issue.

Starmer is smart with these policy positions, but I want to see what sort of people he has in his team. The Labour party, like the Conservatives, have their own radical element who can cause much trouble for a party leader. Controlling the loose cannons and maintaining party discipline is always a challenge. He has to keep it together and make the party look sensible and electable to mainstream voters. Policies like this will worry some, especially the younger voters. But some kind of EU/UK youth mobility scheme, such as exist already with Australia and other countries, could easily address that, if it becomes a sore point.

20

In the context of this thread, I’m addressing the discussions of free movement of workers between the UK and the EU nations as part of the pre-Brexit debate, and whether those discussions are still relevant. I’d rather not participate in an expansion of the debate outside of those parameters.

Pre-Brexit, it was recognised that workers from the EU had a significant presence in many industries including health service, agriculture, hospitality, construction, and many others. One question based on the number of EU workers in the UK was if they lowered the wages of UK workers in those industries, basically following simple supply/demand economics. Another question was if the surplus of skilled EU workers was suppressing job entrants into junior roles in skilled positions. The common joking reference was “Polish plumbers”. I’m not sure if there was a price decline, but the availability of plumbing services definitely improved. Job entrants into industries where the labour was supplied by EU workers steeply declined. The UK government tried to remedy the lost opportunities for job entrants by creating an apprenticeship scheme which failed miserably.

So now there’s a fundamental question of how the UK workforce supply should be managed. Look at agriculture. I didn’t notice stories about agricultural worker shortages this autumn, but they were around for the past two years. If there is an agricultural worker shortage, should worker wages rise to meet that shortage from the existing labour supply? Food prices would go up (well they already have), but the workers benefit. Or, if domestic supply is insufficient, should labour be open to the global market? Transportation to the UK may be an issue, but the supply of Afghanistan labourors is very cheap. Why does that needed supply need to be met from the EU?

I think there’s a fundamental problem with the idea that the UK should accept free movement from the EU, but restrict it from everywhere else. Free movement from all countries won’t work. Therefore, a standard should be set for working immigrants, and applied equally to applicants, whether they’re from the EU or elsewhere.