Mailwatch(ed) Forum

I quite liked Department of Children, Schools and Families which was set up at the same time as Universities and Skills were moved into Business. Gove of course thought it was namby pamby to think in terms of schools as having children in them, so it was back to the Department of Education. I've no idea what happened to children, or whether they were even thought to have an existence outside of taking exams.

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Sun May 11, 2025 8:49 pm As Sunder Katwala points out, saying Labour banning visas for care homes is oversimplified.

Thank you. So a load of people have gone off half cock again, though as Sunder says, there was a reference to ending "that recruitment from abroad", so you can see why there was some confusion.

Talking of whom, here's one such. Somebody puts up in more detail for her, which is what Sunder has read, but she's not interested. She's an academic with a specialism in immigration, so even before she was presented with more detail, she ought to have been thinking about what it might mean to say the care worker visa might be abolished. I know I took the headline at face value too, but I'm not an academic.

The other thing with issues like this is the government having to deal with two distinct views that contradict here. First of these, which will get you infinite upvotes BTL on th Guardian is "Big companies make lots of money and put nothing back in". The other is "Immigration is a big positive". Holding care home chains responsible for recruiting and retaining better reduces the need for immigration. So is that good or bad?

As I say, it doesn't help that everything is framed as "outReform Reform", who believe in "one in, one out".

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Sun May 11, 2025 9:09 pm Talking of whom, here's one such. Somebody puts up in more detail for her, which is what Sunder has read, but she's not interested. She's an academic with a specialism in immigration, so even before she was presented with more detail, she ought to have been thinking about what it might mean to say the care worker visa might be abolished. I know I took the headline at face value too, but I'm not an academic.

This demonstrates two problems

1. The willingness of academics to flat-out lie in order to get clout.

2. Screwed up information environments.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Sun May 11, 2025 8:51 pm I quite liked Department of Children, Schools and Families

DCSF. Known internally as the Department for Comedy and Science Fiction

FFS "risks becoming an island of strangers".

Fucking hell, Starmer has gone mad. "Soaring immigration has done incalculable damage". This really is Reform stuff.

Policies are actually moderate. `So why the Farage framing?

I think I owe Tanja Bueltmann an apology.

Even Warren is struggling to present this well.

As Sam Freedman says there, the student visas is a win for the DfE, or universities specifically. Some credit is due to Bridget Philipson on this despite the stick I keep giving her about universities.

The move to ten years before you can apply to be naturalised interests me; I think my father had to wait twenty.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 11:14 am Fucking hell, Starmer has gone mad. "Soaring immigration has done incalculable damage". This really is Reform stuff.

What are they playing at?

When will politicians realise they can't 'Out-Farage' Farage? In a race to the political bottom he will always win because he's willing to go as low as it gets.

None of Labour's 5 'missions' revolve around immigration but here we go again seemingly willingly letting that issue shape the entire discourse. You can argue that, given Reforms surge in the polls, it's a political reality you cannot ignore; but the more depressing perspective is that given how inept Labour has been in carving out a positive identity, pivoting to a negative 'we'll offer you Reform lite to save us all from the real thing' at least gives them an identity and in the absence of anything more compelling, they're probably grateful for that.

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 12:07 pm

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 11:14 am Fucking hell, Starmer has gone mad. "Soaring immigration has done incalculable damage". This really is Reform stuff.

What are they playing at?

Yes, I'm not at all happy with us deploying that sort of demonstrably nonsense rhetoric. If immigration has "done incalculable damage” , then you clearly haven't tried to assess the alleged "damage" to public service provision in the context of the incalculable benefits that immigration has brought this country. I'm willing to bet that the net effect of immigration is pretty comfortably on the benefits side. Likewise, the talk of an "open border experiment" is just bollocks. This country has never had "open borders", not even under the Tories.

I recall Ed Miliband before the 2015 election campaign telling us that unless we talked about the issue of immigration, we risked not being listened to on other, bread-and-butter issues like the NHS, housing, and the economy. He was right. But I still remember too, Labour being excoriated (admittedly mostly by Trots and Corbynites) for producing a simple campaign mug with the modest slogan "Controls on Immigration" on it.

Can't we do this without directly echoing the rhetoric of Farage and his racist "Reform" outfit ?

Panic. Probably not just at Reform, but also at the Democrats and other Labour-type parties losing support over immigration to populist parties. It's often said that those various Labour-type parties all did it wrong by moving right on immigration, but I don't really see many examples of parties who didn't and then romped home in elections. The nearest anyone has in Sanchez is Spain, but last time I checked he was behind in the polls despite the economy doing well.

zuriblue wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 12:34 pm When will politicians realise they can't 'Out-Farage' Farage? In a race to the political bottom he will always win because he's willing to go as low as it gets.

None of Labour's 5 'missions' revolve around immigration but here we go again seemingly willingly letting that issue shape the entire discourse. You can argue that, given Reforms surge in the polls, it's a political reality you cannot ignore; but the more depressing perspective is that given how inept Labour has been in carving out a positive identity, pivoting to a negative 'we'll offer you Reform lite to save us all from the real thing' at least gives them an identity and in the absence of anything more compelling, they're probably grateful for that.

Yeah, I think that'll be an underrated card for Labour in 2029. But you can do that without talking this rubbish,

I still remember too, Labour being excoriated (admittedly mostly by Trots and Corbynites) for producing a simple campaign mug with the modest slogan "Controls on Immigration" on it.

Yeah, that was pitiful stuff from the usual suspects. Here's what one of them once said about immigrants.

n 1996, Diane Abbott wrote a column for the Hackney Gazette objecting to the recruitment of Finnish nurses to work in a local hospital. The NHS, she argued, should be employing local people, not importing them from abroad. It’s a familiar claim, though usually pushed by conservatives rather than by the Labour left. Most striking, though, was the way Abbott presented her argument.

“Are Finnish girls, who may never have met a black person before, let alone touched one, best suited to nurse in multicultural Hackney?’’ Abbott asked, expressing surprise that “blonde, blue-eyed girls from Finland” had been chosen rather than Caribbean nurses “who know the language and understand British culture and institutions’’.

Did she think they were all Nazis?