Lucille
Lucille
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Why has there been such a firm lobby in favour of immigration for so long? The answer lies in one of the most arresting facts about modern politics – a fact which, in my view, even the most redoubtable experts like Andrew Green have perhaps not quite taken on board. I refer to the unlikely alliance between big business and the New Left.
This alliance reached its apogee under Tony Blair, who was known for his slavish admiration for rich people whose hospitality he so often enjoyed for free. But it extended throughout New Labour. Peter Hain, the onetime anti-apartheid campaigner, a man whose progressive credentials could hardly be more immaculate, had to resign in February because he had accepted £100,000 from a pharmaceutical magnate, one of whose companies is facing prosecution for the biggest fraud ever alleged in the United Kingdom.
The alliance between big business and the New Left is not, however, based merely on the greed, opportunism and venality of politicians, or on the desire of big companies to buy political influence. Instead, it is based on ideology. Specifically, big business is in favour of immigration not only because it drives down wages – allowing profits to remain high without companies actually having to sell more products – but also because it is culturally in favour of multiculturalism.
The entire ethic of post Cold War globalisation, indeed, is profoundly anti-national. The multinational corporation, like Marx’s worker, “has no country”: the modern international corporate executive is more at home in an airport departure lounge or a Hilton hotel than in a village pub. He scorns any notion that the legislative framework of a state should give preference to the fixed inhabitants of that state, and instead tells the government that he will simply re-locate, like some disembodied spirit, to another part of the world if the tax regime is not favourable to him. To put it bluntly, multinational companies are vehicles of cosmopolitanism, every bit as powerful and influential as the more intellectual proponents of multiculturalism and the end of the nation-state.
The big corporation likes immigration because immigrants drive down wages and are typically not unionised. Big companies do not care if immigrants do not pay taxes, or if they make extra demands on schools and hospitals, because the state picks up the bill for that. They do not care if there is general inflation, or sector-specific inflation such as in property, because they have their eye on next year’s bottom line, and on their Christmas bonus, not on what will happen a generation hence. Big companies operate on the principle “privatise the profits, socialise the losses”, demanding that policies be pursued which increase their income because the costs are passed onto the taxpayer and society at large.
Ever since Mrs Thatcher, the predominant ethic in British politics has been pro-business. The slogan is “free trade”, but that is not the same thing. In domestic politics as in diplomacy, there are no permanent victories, especially not if political parties stop thinking, as the Tory part did long ago. So deeply entrenched has “free trade” now become that it is a taboo which unites the whole political class. Any suggestion that the activities of business should be limited or directed by the state is dismissed as Luddite economics, reactionary thinking worthy of a flat-earther.
In fact, Britain and many other European states are themselves just as much in hock to the demands of big business now as they were to the labour movement a generation ago. The pendulum has now swung too far in the opposite direction. Let us hope that the breaking of the taboo of immigration will mark the moment at which it starts to swing slowly back.
This alliance reached its apogee under Tony Blair, who was known for his slavish admiration for rich people whose hospitality he so often enjoyed for free. But it extended throughout New Labour. Peter Hain, the onetime anti-apartheid campaigner, a man whose progressive credentials could hardly be more immaculate, had to resign in February because he had accepted £100,000 from a pharmaceutical magnate, one of whose companies is facing prosecution for the biggest fraud ever alleged in the United Kingdom.
The alliance between big business and the New Left is not, however, based merely on the greed, opportunism and venality of politicians, or on the desire of big companies to buy political influence. Instead, it is based on ideology. Specifically, big business is in favour of immigration not only because it drives down wages – allowing profits to remain high without companies actually having to sell more products – but also because it is culturally in favour of multiculturalism.
The entire ethic of post Cold War globalisation, indeed, is profoundly anti-national. The multinational corporation, like Marx’s worker, “has no country”: the modern international corporate executive is more at home in an airport departure lounge or a Hilton hotel than in a village pub. He scorns any notion that the legislative framework of a state should give preference to the fixed inhabitants of that state, and instead tells the government that he will simply re-locate, like some disembodied spirit, to another part of the world if the tax regime is not favourable to him. To put it bluntly, multinational companies are vehicles of cosmopolitanism, every bit as powerful and influential as the more intellectual proponents of multiculturalism and the end of the nation-state.
The big corporation likes immigration because immigrants drive down wages and are typically not unionised. Big companies do not care if immigrants do not pay taxes, or if they make extra demands on schools and hospitals, because the state picks up the bill for that. They do not care if there is general inflation, or sector-specific inflation such as in property, because they have their eye on next year’s bottom line, and on their Christmas bonus, not on what will happen a generation hence. Big companies operate on the principle “privatise the profits, socialise the losses”, demanding that policies be pursued which increase their income because the costs are passed onto the taxpayer and society at large.
Ever since Mrs Thatcher, the predominant ethic in British politics has been pro-business. The slogan is “free trade”, but that is not the same thing. In domestic politics as in diplomacy, there are no permanent victories, especially not if political parties stop thinking, as the Tory part did long ago. So deeply entrenched has “free trade” now become that it is a taboo which unites the whole political class. Any suggestion that the activities of business should be limited or directed by the state is dismissed as Luddite economics, reactionary thinking worthy of a flat-earther.
In fact, Britain and many other European states are themselves just as much in hock to the demands of big business now as they were to the labour movement a generation ago. The pendulum has now swung too far in the opposite direction. Let us hope that the breaking of the taboo of immigration will mark the moment at which it starts to swing slowly back.