Not About Immigration, But About Ambition

Thom Brooks writes:

Today’s Conservative party annual conference was addressed by home secretary Theresa May in a long-anticipated speech on immigration.

Many expected this to set out her stall as a potential successor to David Cameron. But what we heard was not very promising.

May’s speech had the usual well-rehearsed lines we have been treated to before.

One minute she claims that Britain continues to honour its commitments to protect refugees, while the next several minutes are spent detailing all the ways in which she plans to shut the door on them.

This is a dishonest double-speak we have become used to.

She said our compassion for genuine asylum-seekers puts the lives of the most desperate at greater risk.

This was a speech not for the heart, but for Tory heads. Those who had made it to Europe are those that can – often young, healthy and educated.

No, we must be cold to be kind and clamp down on their entry so we can divert resources to help those even more vulnerable and unable to escape far from camps on the borders of Syria and similar war-torn regions.

We should not let out our hand to help those that are here for fear others might follow their risky paths across sea and barbed wire.

Instead, Britain should collect the refugees from sites it is willing to receive from.

I know – this is the kind of argument we saw from Nigel Farage and the United Kingdom Independence party during the general election.

It says, ‘We’re for clamping down on immigration even if it hurts the economy’. But May goes further in saying Britain should focus on those who are the most desperate.

These are people who require assistance, but for whom a life in Europe an even greater leap and more difficult adjustment.

There was nothing at all from May on what additional support she would offer asylum-seekers from these areas she is willing to accept from to enable their integration into British society.

She can demand they speak English, but if they lack free support this will not happen and May will make it more difficult for some migrants to integrate.

This is perverse because May claims mass immigration has made a cohesive society impossible.

Now that is at odds with what the prime minister said hours before – he said we should be proud of the multiethnic, stable country that Britain is.

Clearly one is not listening to the other.

But if mass immigration is such a problem, May has herself to blame. It is on her watch – and now more than five years in her role as home secretary.

She has seen through multiple immigration laws. Tories breaking new net migration records is no fault of any Labour government.

And her wholesale opposition to a common European Union asylum policy drew cheers from the audience, but this go it alone attitude shows remarkably poor political skills in finding room to negotiate.

British tabloids might say we are swamped, but we are far behind Germany, Sweden and others in the numbers of refugees making claims. By many thousands.

Working together allows for compromise. But going it alone means we try to plead our special case – and since others are under much greater pressure I fear she can expect very little in return. May’s plans can only disappoint.

There is so much to dislike about this speech it is hard to know when to start.

May says migrants bring no economic benefit, but that is not what her own officials have said and what the government’s own assessments claim from the Treasury to the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Worst of all, the public can be forgiven for thinking all migrants are refugees. Or that refugees are the biggest number of migrants to the United Kingdom.

After all, May only really devoted time to speaking about them. But they are not – and by a long shot.

Most immigrants are a lot like me. I came as a student.

‘Students are not, and never have been, immigrants’. Who said that? Enoch Powell in his ‘rivers of blood’ speech. 

When you are running to the right of Powell on immigration, we have a big problem.

Most other migrants – like me – are in work. We are not refugees. We did not claim asylum. But we are somehow off the table not for discussion.

And I am sure that yet again we have another immigration speech by a minister who knows nothing of being an immigrant first-hand and does not know the system from the ground up.

If only she spent less time reading reactionary headlines and more time speaking to real migrants, we would have heard something very different.

There may be reasons for this. It may be that May focuses so much on refugees because she can do something about those figures.

She can also close the taps allowing non-EU students or workers and maybe she really is willing to let the economy tank to score a political point in trying to outmanoeuvre George Osborne or Boris Johnson to replace Cameron.

And that is what this was really about. It was not a speech about immigration, but ambition – May’s ambition.

She will clearly run to follow Cameron and set out a populist speech, but I suspect her abandoning the centre-ground to Tory modernisers is either the gamble she has to take or the end of her leadership campaign before it starts.

My guess is the latter.