Liberals caused political crisis on immigration – not just far right

This article is a repost from our In Common column in The National. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.

How liberals opened the door to the right-wing’s amplification of the perception of an immigration crisis.

Image Source: Unsplash

‘Right-wing politics created the political crisis over immigration and only liberal politics can lead us out of this mess.’ That is the consensus – but I disagree. Liberal politics was an equal partner in the creation of this crisis and is ill equipped to do anything about it. We need a new political settlement or this issue will simply get worse.

But how are those nice liberals complicit? They're the diversity and inclusion people who always say nice things about immigrants. In fact, they positively fetishise immigration. How can this be their fault?

The reason derives from two of the key features of modern liberal politics – virtue signalling and deference to power. The only thing liberals are more committed to than being seen to be on the right side of history is delivering what powerful vested interests want them to deliver.

That is the liberal deal – they will be as assertively moral as they can be, right up until the point at which morality affects the profits of corporations. Say nice things about immigrants, do nice things for property developers.

This shallow commitment to immigrants leads to a process of “social dumping”. For a liberal, the brownie points are won by “letting them in”, not by looking after people who need it after we've accepted them into our country.

This is a serious problem because of the dysfunctional, enormously unequal society and economy we currently have. And that is because of one of the big lessons about immigration throughout history.

Put really simply, immigration is easy when society is functioning well. Nations or periods of time where there is plenty of housing supply, public services are strong and the economy is ticking along just don't have immigration crises because it is easy to absorb new citizens in a positive way.

But if you do the same thing during a housing crisis and when people can't get a doctor's appointment, the result is very different. Looking after people traumatised by war is heavy work and if your society isn't strong enough to do the work, you get real problems.

That is why virtue signalling is so ill equipped to help with this situation. Liberals created a pretty moral immigration approval system (as they should have), but then acted as if that was the end of the story. And of course liberals virtually never have to live with the consequences of their actions.

To be really blunt about it, liberals are all affluent and asylum seekers are never, ever affluent. Once the liberals have “let them in”, those who have just migrated to the UK never move into their street, they never increase the challenge for housing stock locally, they don't take up appointments in the liberals' health centres.

Instead, liberals “dump” immigrants on communities which are already under the most duress, where poverty and crime are already highest.

This is a betrayal. Common Weal has argued strenuously that immigration is a care issue. Even if there is no underlying trauma, those moving to a new society need support to help them settle in (how to access public services, how to get language lessons and so on). These are care issues.

“It is the liberal neglect of the responsibilities that come from their virtue signalling that opens the door to the far right. ”

And that doesn't scratch the surface of the kind of care many migrants need given that they have fled the kind of conditions that make what liberals call “trauma” seem quaint. If you wake up at night with the vision of your parents being slaughtered in front of you, you're going to need support.

That is not what happens. Instead, the liberals wash their hands of the whole problem from the point at which their virtue has been signalled and they're straight back to increasing electricity bills for customers or centralising public services.

It is only in these conditions that the far right can then prey on people's prejudices and promote this issue into a crisis. It is the liberal neglect of the responsibilities that come from their virtue signalling that opens the door to the far right.

The answer to all of this is pretty straightforward. We need housing to be affordable, available and, at the bottom end of the market, still be a place you'd want to live in. We need proper care services which are embedded in our communities and don't involve multi-year waiting lists. We need to sort out the crisis in our public services. Common Weal has many, many suggestions for doing all of this.

And this is why this problem is beyond liberal politics, because it would require them to challenge the interests of the powerful. In the end, liberal politics will always defer to the housing corporations, the bankers and the market. (And don't start me on their propensity for bombing Middle Eastern countries.)

I could give you a list of policies right now which would make an immense difference in defusing this crisis (major changes in media ownership laws to get the press out of the hands of the far right would be high among them). But they all fundamentally challenge business as usual.

And that is the problem. Having signalled their virtue, taken their lap of honour and then dumped the consequences on others, liberals genuinely believe they're the solution, not the problem.

But the Tommy Robinsons of this world prey on the weak by exploiting failure. And that failure is down to the liberals – which is why they very clearly have no answers.