Uncapping Ed Miliband

No party of big business can ever do anything other than support unrestricted migration, any more than it can ever do anything other than support the unrestricted movement of goods, services or capital. The Conservative Party, created and always run by big business magnates whose fathers or whose persons had been Liberals and who themselves essentially still were, has always been exactly such a party.

Immediately after the War, when it was still just about possible to talk about the British Empire, the Conservatives supported unrestricted migration within that bloc, even though few, if any, other parts of it allowed unrestricted migration from the United Kingdom. After Suez and other Conservative acts to dismantle the Empire for the preservation of which the War had been fought  (for example, no African country ever became independent of Britain under a Labour Government), the Conservatives turned instead to Europe.

They have never turned away from it. In 1974, they were defeated by the only party ever to have promised, and to have held, a referendum on the European question. In 1983, they defeated the only party ever to have contested a General Election on a commitment to withdrawal. In 1997, their defeat replaced a Chancellor in favour of joining the euro with a Chancellor opposed to it. In 2015, when they are undoubtedly going to be defeated, there is every sign that they are going to be defeated by a party committed to significant repatriation of powers and to a referendum on continued membership, as well as to a workable, rather than to a deliberately unworkable, approach to immigration from Eastern Europe.

Workable, rather than deliberately unworkable, because designed, not by and for big business (as Tony Blair's was and as David Miliband's would have been), but for, and in consultation with, the trade unions. The pro-Commonwealth, Eurosceptical Labour Governments of the 1960s and 1970s were able to control immigration while the Conservative Governments before, in between and afterwards were not. The Labour Governments of the coming decades will also be able to do so. And for the same reason.