Anti-immigration sentiment won’t (necessarily) boost the far right
Posted on Monday 28 February, 2011
Filed Under Far right, Immigration
CONFUSED rightwing populism is more or less the default position for public opinion in this country. I’ve always believed that lefties are making a mistake when they blame the Daily Mail and the Sun for that state of affairs; the reality is that these newspapers sell shedloads precisely because they articulate the prejudices they in turn help to sustain.
Opposition to immigration - predominantly of the ‘I’m not a racist, but …’, variety – is an important component of the package, and that fact has not been lost on politicians.
In particular, the Tories have frequently attempted to capitalise on such sentiments, a strategy explicitly recommended by current health secretary Andrew Lansley in his 1990s days as a policy wonk. But as demonstrated by pronouncements by Jack Straw and (somewhat more overtly) by Phil Woolas, Labour has not always been immune from playing in the dirt.
Remember also the various attempts to talk up Britishness witnessed under New Labour. Thankfully, Gordon Brown’s flag-waved rhetorical calls for a ‘national day’ seem to have quietly been dropped.
Given such a starting point, nobody should be surprised at the claim that half the population would ‘consider supporting’ an anti-immigration soft nationalist party, as demonstrated by the findings of a poll conducted for Searchlight. Why wouldn’t they?
But don’t forget, there is plenty of difference between hurriedly telling a pollster how you might vote when faced with a range of hypothetical options, and actual practice at election time.
The UK Independence Party is, to all intents and purposes, the kind of formation to which the question refered. Its best performance has been the 16% it picked up in the 2009 European elections, a low turnout affair that gives full scope to ‘send a message’ voters.
That fell to around 3% in the subsequent Westminster contest, although that still made them the fourth largest party in terms of vote share. I guess much of the difference is accounted for by the harsh realities of first past the post. AV could bolster UKIP’s support, but is unlikely to extend it dramatically.
The moral of the Searchlight survey is not that tomorrow belongs to the far right, as Ed West in the Daily Telegraph patently seems to hope, but that the political system as current constituted is doing a good job of containing such pressures as things stands.
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10 Responses to “Anti-immigration sentiment won’t (necessarily) boost the far right”
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“Thankfully, Gordon Brown’s flag-waved rhetorical calls for a ‘national day’ seem to have quietly been dropped.”
Brown’s incarnation as the “Bard of Britishness” as Tom Nairn put it, seemed to be about distracting attention from the fact that he was a Scot looking to govern a post devolution England rather than jingoism per se.
Which in fact made it all the more ridiculous … as Brown’s Scottishness either wasn’t an issue at all or figured as about issue no. 26 in a list of things worrying people
A scaremongering poll commissioned by Searchlight, eh? Keep rattling those collection tins and fuelling Swappie hysteria.
Doug,
Just what are you saying?
That Searchlight knew in advance what the survey would say? And that’s why, you think, they commissioned it?
Is that really what you are getting at? Surely even you can’t believe that illogical nonsense?
“AV could bolster UKIP’s support, but is unlikely to extend it dramatically.”
Really? how woudl that work?
Doug,
You are aware that the SWP and its UAF front utterly loathe Searchlight because it has too many Jews – sorry ‘zionists’ – and doesn’t regard the anti-fascist struggle as a usually minor element in its own ‘party-building’ programme.
And the Searchlight survey can hardly give even a crumb of comfort to anyone on the left, quantifying as it does just how huge is the gap between our values and those of the class we pathetically claim to represent.
Even the semi-positive findings that a anti-immigration party could only take off if it was completely disassociated from both violence and fascism just confirms the degree to which bourgeois ideology enthralls the British masses.
It’s a subject that the left tends to wear blinkers about, and this is a weakness. Until we can give an argument against New Labour’s relaxation of immigration controls in order to reinforce growth by new incoming low paid labour, the blinkers stay on.
It’s effect on the middle class is slight, but to the skilled and unskilled working class it has meant a drastic drop in the standard of living and/or a life on benefits. Of course the middle classes don’t see their jobs under that much threat from immigration.
We have turned immigration policy into a middle class question of principle. It’s not immigration policy that is a principle, it’s racism that’s the principle.
I agree with Les. Another thing that pisses me off is the endless discussions on what is ‘Britishness’. It’s anti-class to think in those terms, if you ask me. It is creating an abstract concept of ‘Britishness’ and saying that is what it is. And, strangely this definition of Britishness includes multi-millionaire business people who now are hlping our economy to flourish.
I think Dave is wrong to underplay the influence of the gutter press on public opinion. My dad was a union conveynor in an engineering factory making hyrdaulic fittings and he tells me that he could predict the kind of debates he was going to have that day by what had appeared in the Sun that morning! So if some strike was in the offing the workers would go to my dad and repeat the anti union propaganda printed in the gutter press that day.
P.S. Roger is talking out of his arse.
Daniel Hannan, the leader of the right-wing Tories proclaims the economic ideas of Enoch Powell, but not his views on immigration. He supports either unrestricted or lightly controlled immigration. Why? Well because he believes that the market will control wage levels. When wages reach a low point where immigrants would no longer find working in the UK attractive the wage level would be at the correct level.
The Standard teh other evening highlighted a loophole in motoring law. Apparently a not inconsiderable number of migrants from Bulgaria and Romania are driving around with motor insurance from those countries. This means that effectively they are not insured, as teh effort involved in making small claims would be too immense for insurance companies. This also means that policyholders in Britain are subsidising them as the insurance companies have a pooled fund to cover uninsured drivers. This increases honest pfeople’s premiums. I don’t know if it’s right or left wing, but my vote goes to the part that promises to iron out these sort of anomalies.