Nick Clegg's self-defeating move on Europe and immigration

I once heard Jim Wallace say that when your opponents start fighting on your chosen ground you should be pleased. It shows you are winning this debate.

He is right, which is why I do not think Nick Clegg's embrace of the Conservatives' anti-immigrant rhetoric will achieve its aim of curbing the threat from UKIP.

Imagine you are a UKIP voter - go on, try. If you here even the leader of the hated Liberal Democrats admitting that we are too soft on immigrants who come here to live off the state, that will confirm you in your view of the world. It will not make you question it and decide to vote Liberal Democrat instead.

I think there is a better approach and it is that advocated in the Commentary in the current issue of Liberator, which advocates the consistent third of the electorate that is pro-European:

That one third is a minority but it is a considerably larger one than that which has ever voted Liberal Democrat. It is the obvious pool in which the party should be fishing. 

The pro-European vote has effectively been abandoned in previous elections, perhaps on the assumption that it had nowhere much else to go. Not merely can that vote be awakened but it is essential that it is awakened ahead of any referendum eventually happening.

At present Nick Clegg is veering between this approach and one that seeks to appeal to everyone. When pursuing the latter he talks about the centre, but in the case of immigration at least, he locates that centre far to the right.

I  am not the most instinctive pro-European you have ever met. I recognise that being in coalition involves compromise. It is just that I do not think this latest Clegg initiative will work.

Mainstream politicians, by pandering to the Farages of this world, are feeding the very far-right public opinion they fear. I suspect that, once again, we are seeing an effect of the political class now being formed from such a narrow, privileged base.

This post first appeared on Liberal England.

Are Lib Dem ministers happy with a “wogs go home” message?

Yesterday came news of the government’s latest wheeze to reduce illegal immigration. The Home Office is planning to send large billboards round six London boroughs on the back of advertising vans, carrying the slogan “Go home or face arrest”.

For the full sordid details, read Caron Lindsay’s report on Liberal Democrat Voice, the report in last night’s London Evening Standard, and a statement issued by Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather, which is worth quoting in full:

This is the latest in a string of Home Office announcements that are designed to make the Government look tough on immigration. But I fear that the only impact this deeply divisive form of politics will have will be to create tension and mistrust towards anyone who looks and sounds foreign.

Instead of trying to grab cheap headlines, the Government would be much better advised to tackle the real issues that undermine confidence in the immigration system. Home Office statistics show that decision making by officials is extremely poor and leads to a quarter of initial decisions to refuse asylum being overturned on appeal. And many of those people who the Government are targeting with these policies are either those whose case has been mishandled by the Home Office, or who Ministers acknowledge cannot be sent home because they wouldn’t be safe.

Vulnerable individuals who are fleeing persecution and violence are treated with disbelief and a complete lack of compassion in a rigid and inhumane system. But rather than tackling these problems head on, Ministers are choosing to once more crank up the anti-migrant rhetoric.

These adverts are nothing less than straight forward intimidation and can only have bad consequences for communities like those I represent in Brent, where people from all faiths and races have mixed for decades. We will all be much poorer for it.

Well said, Sarah. The question is why there have been no similar utterances by any Liberal Democrat minister. After all, this is not merely some mildly unpleasant concession the Liberal Democrats have made as part and parcel of the coalition agreement. This is a fundamental issue of principle, where the Tories are indulging in blatantly racist and provocative tactics. It’s not even a practical policy; these billboards will have no impact on immigration but they will help increase racial tension. Any self-respecting Liberal should publicly disown this policy. Instead, not a word.

Might this be the explanation? In yesterday’s Guardian, John Harris noted how all the proud talk of Britain’s diversity we heard during last year’s London Olympics has been dropped by the government. He reported:

Ten days ago, the former Lib Dem education minster Sarah Teather broke cover, and talked not only about initial Tory intentions to restrict the bringing-in of non-European spouses to people earning £40,000 a year or more, but a new subcommittee of government called the Inter Ministerial Group on Migrants’ Access to Benefits and Public Services. No cabinet ministers attends its meetings, but it apparently includes such figures as the Lib Dem education minister David Laws and the Tory immigration minister Mark Harper, and its fingerprints are all over many of the proposals above.

What on earth is David Laws doing participating in such an exercise? Did he consult Liberal Democrat colleagues before agreeing to these racist policies? The man is a complete and utter disgrace to the party.

And why has Nick Clegg failed to respond to criticisms from within his party? In this instance, he would be well advised not to resort to his usual tactic, which is to patronise internal critics as naive children who don’t understand the practicalities of government. Party members already understand perfectly well what nasty game the Tories are playing – the question is, does Clegg?

Postscript: See Liberal Democrat Councillor Lester Holloway’s blog post: “Theresa May and her ministers and officials know full well the impact of this billboard will be on multicultural communities in general rather than the odd illegal immigrant who might be passing by. It reads like a message to the whole community, an attempt to divide communities and harvest the racist vote from UKIP.”

Sarah Teather: the revolution starts here?

Last Saturday’s Guardian included a remarkable interview with Sarah Teather MP about the coalition government’s immigration policy.

The interview is remarkable because no Liberal Democrat MP, not even the usual suspects, has previously made such a trenchant public criticism of government policy. Moreover, Sarah Teather has never had a reputation as a radical but has generally been regarded as a loyalist (although she has been increasingly critical since losing her ministerial job last year). If such fierce criticisms are coming from such a normally moderate source, it makes you wonder how much more dissent is bubbling under the surface of the parliamentary party.

In the interview, Teather explains at some length why the government’s new immigration policy is unworkable, even if you accept its dubious objectives. But then she gets to the heart of the matter:

The idea that these policies will save money is “patently nonsense”, she argues, looking torn between dismay and incredulity. “So what are we trying to do? To drive down the total number of immigrants, irrespective of what’s good for Britain. Everything is about getting the net immigration numbers down. That’s what’s driving this, nothing else. Even though it’s obvious that a lot of these people are not a burden on the taxpayer.”

When the spousal visa proposal came before the home affairs cabinet committee, she reveals that Tory members strongly argued for the minimum income threshold to be £40,000. “That would put you in the top 15% of national income!” Part of the problem, she concedes, is the gulf between the life experience of her coalition colleagues, and the reality of the lives they are legislating for.

During discussions to increase the delay in benefits eligibility for the newly unemployed from three to seven days, “there was a general idea that people would have their redundancy payments to get them through”. She allows a dry chuckle. “I’m not sure that my constituents coming out of short-term, low-paid work are getting big redundancy packages.” But she doesn’t believe that ignorance born of privilege is the real problem. “No. I think it’s more nakedly political than that. It’s about short-term tactics – and I’m deeply uncomfortable with a type of politics that is deliberately using people who are already relatively vulnerable, as outsiders, as a tool to demonstrate how tough we are. I don’t like that type of politics.”

If the problem were merely Tory ignorance, she says that would be relatively easy to solve. “What alarms me is that the immigration proposals feel as if they’re hewn from the same rock as welfare earlier in the year, where a lot of that again was about setting up political dividing lines, and trying to create and define an enemy. It’s got to a stage where it’s almost unacceptable to say anything else, and it bothers me that there is a consensus among the three party leaders that they are all making, well not quite the same speech – there are differences, significant differences – but there’s a consensus. It’s stifling the rest of the debate, making people afraid to speak. If you get to a stage where there is no alternative voice, eventually democracy’s just going to break down.”

The coalition’s flagship benefit cap has nothing to do with getting people back to work, she maintains. “It’s populist. It’s a headline. Just look at the evidence. You’ve got first the overall universal benefit cap, then you’ve got a 1% welfare cap, and then you’ve got the big macro welfare cap. So they’ve found something, a message that works in polling, it’s called a benefit cap. And then they’ve invented policy around it three times.”

This government policy reveals two fundamental problems. First, the subordination of policy to short-term public relations objectives, where unworkable and unethical policies are pursued to mollify popular prejudices irrespective of the financial or human costs. And second, the competition between all three main party leaders to mollify the same set of popular prejudices.

And this reveals Nick Clegg’s main failing as Liberal Democrat party leader: his fallacious belief that most voters basically agree with one another, therefore that the party’s strategy should be to compete with the Conservatives and Labour for this imaginary ‘centre ground’.

But there is no such thing as the ‘centre ground’, no opinion that “most people think”, no mass in the middle you can mollify to win power. Yes, every poll result shows an average, but an average is not necessarily normal or typical. As Brian of Nazareth famously declared, “You’re all individuals!” Every Liberal should know that.

To understand why Clegg’s belief in the ‘centre ground’ is so utterly, catastrophically wrong, it is worth studying the Cultural Dynamics system of mapping of people’s different values. Basically, people divide into three broad categories: ‘Settler’, ‘Prospector’ and ‘Pioneer’, each sub-divided into four ‘values modes’, 12 in all. Take the test here to see where you fit.

The Liberal Democrat heartland is among ‘Pioneers’, and in good times expands into ‘Prospector’ territory. Support is negligible among ‘Settlers’, even when the party’s poll ratings are high. The voters who are nervous about immigration are concentrated in the ‘Settler’ group and never vote Liberal Democrat anyway, so why on earth does Clegg imagine he has to mollify such people when he has no chance whatever of winning their support? It can only be because he imagines that the electorate is essentially homogeneous, hence his repeated references to the ‘centre ground’. It cannot be overstated what a disastrous illusion that is. It explains why Clegg is alienating the party’s natural base while predictably failing to encroach on UKIP’s territory, hence Liberal Democrat poll ratings remain stuck at 10%.

Despite Sarah Teather’s warnings, the party will probably have to learn the hard way why Clegg’s ‘centre ground’ strategy is so disastrous. Even then, will there be enough party activists left after 2015 to rebuild support among ‘Pioneers’?

Postscript: In a blog post for the Centre for European Reform titled Don’t let England’s poujadists kill London’s golden goose, Simon Tilford argues why pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment is wrong. Since anti-immigrant sentiment is concentrated among older people who never vote Liberal Democrat anyway, the Liberal Democrats have nothing to lose by attacking their ignorance and bigotry.

What are Tom Brake and Dan Rogerson playing at?

The Liberal Conspiracy blog reports that Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake has resigned from the Advisory Council of the Henry Jackson Society, a neoconservative and hawkish think tank, following anti-immigration statements made by the society’s senior executives.

Brake is the first parliamentarian of any party to sever ties with the society. Well done for taking a stand, but what on earth was he doing on the Advisory Council of such a group in the first place? And why is another Liberal Democrat MP, Dan Rogerson, still a member of this council?

And why, for that matter, have we heard nothing yet from the 11 Labour MPs and 4 Labour peers who are still members of the council?

Beyond parody

The front page of this morning’s Daily Express is beyond parody:

(Look in the top left-hand corner, where the red button proclaims: “Cheaper than the Daily Mail”. Yes, I think it probably is.)

Immigration: proof that The Sun is talking bollocks

Yesterday’s edition of The Sun claimed that foreigners would outnumber native British people in London by 2031.

Well, whaddya know? It turns out that The Sun’s claim is complete and utter bollocks. Full Fact has checked the facts and discovered a dubious form of statistical methodology:

(Abuse of research + absurd extrapolations =) bollocks + malevolence + dishonesty = complete bollocks.

Complete bollocks + desire to make money by feeding prejudices = complete and utter bollocks.

Nick Clegg’s dog-whistle politics

How often does it need saying? There is no need, repeat, no need for the Liberal Democrats to be spooked by UKIP or to appease xenophobic opinion.

UKIP is basically the Conservative Party’s problem. It is threatening the Tories’ right flank, giving Tory backbenchers the jitters and prompting the Tory leadership to react with rightward moves on various issues (as today’s Queen’s Speech demonstrates, with its emphasis on immigration and the dropping of policies on plain cigarette packaging and overseas aid).

UKIP is not the Liberal Democrats’ problem. There is no rational reason why the Liberal Democrats should move rightwards on immigration or Europe. If anything, the effect of UKIP on the Tories opens up a greater space for liberal opinion. The opportunity is there for the taking, to appeal to voters who don’t buy into the UKIP/Daily Express ‘drawbridge up’ agenda.

Nick Clegg obviously doesn’t see things that way. The Daily Express reports:

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, the Liberal Democrat leader said: “We need to be an open country in terms of welcoming people who want to make a contribution to the United Kingdom, but of course we should stamp out abuse.

“We need to stamp out levels of illegal immigration and of course we need to make sure that our public services and our benefits are not simply a free-for-all when of course there needs to be some relation to what you put in and what you get out.”

The idea that hordes of immigrants are coming to Britain to sponge off the welfare system is a complete myth. There is no “free-for-all”. It’s a non-problem. Despite this, Clegg seems to think that action to combat this imaginary threat is vital (and it’s a topic on which he has recent form).

Clegg continued:

“My advice to the Conservative party, if they’d listen to it, is don’t run after Ukip as it would just strengthen Ukip’s hand.”

In which case, why is Clegg ignoring his own advice and indulging in this unpleasant dog-whistle politics?

Immigrants and Princess Diana – a winning combo

The Daily Mail is obviously trying to outdo the Daily Express in the anti-immigration stakes. And with this headline (which brings Princess Diana into the mix), the Mail is surely onto a winner:

All the Mail has to do now is find a cancer angle, and it will have a headline worthy of the Daily Mail-o-matic.

Move along folks, nothing to see here

David Cameron won’t like it. The Daily Express won’t like it. But their favourite scare story will be a non-event.

It turns out that there will probably not be hordes of Bulgarians and Romanians descending on Britain on 1st January 2014 (when restrictions on the free movement of workers from Bulgaria and Romania will be entirely lifted across the European Union).

EurActiv reports:

A Foreign Office-commissioned report has directly challenged claims by UK Prime Minister David Cameron that Britain faces a massive wave of immigration from Bulgaria and Romania when labour restrictions applying to these countries are lifted next January.

The 60-page report [pdf] by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) says that Britain is unlikely to be the preferred destination for Bulgarians and Romanians when labour restrictions are lifted.

And those who do plan to come are unlikely to take advantage of the UK’s social security system, it adds in a direct rebuttal of arguments put forward by the UK Prime Minister.

So, panic over.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite the end of the story. The Daily Express refuses to have its fox shot. It dismisses the NIESR report as a “whitewash” and has found a red under the bed:

The NIESR, whose director is Left-leaning economist and well-known immigration enthusiast Jonathan Portes, unsurprisingly seems to talk down the potential downsides of this impending migration.

Not just reds, but “liberal intellectuals”:

Instead of being soothed by warm words from cabals of liberal intellectuals, ministers should wake up to a looming disaster.

Well, it’s a free country and you are free to choose who to believe: “intellectuals” who have conducted serious research and produced a detailed and reasoned report, or an anonymous third-rate hack employed by a “porn baron” to churn out ignorant, hateful, racist bile.

Secret courts and the Stockholm syndrome

More information has come to light regarding Tuesday night’s votes in the House of Lords on secret courts. And it seems there is a fundamental problem of Liberal Democrats on the government payroll (i.e. ministers and whips) behaving as if they are suffering from a coalition equivalent of the Stockholm syndrome.

There were three key amendments in the Lords debate:

1. Amendment 6A (proposed by Labour peer Jeremy Beecham, which would have made secret courts a “last resort”). This amendment was narrowly defeated by 174 votes to 158, a margin of 16. 26 Liberal Democrat peers defied the whip and voted for this amendment, while 29 supported the government by voting against party policy.
2. Amendment 6B (proposed by Liberal Democrat peer Ken Macdonald, which would have empowered judges to balance demands for closed hearings with the public interest in open justice). This amendment was not moved to a vote.
3. Amendments 19A to 19D (proposed by Liberal Democrat peer Jonathan Marks, which concerned the review and renewal of the legislation). Amendment 19B was heavily defeated by 141 votes to 65, a margin of 76. 31 Liberal Democrat peers defied the whip and voted for this amendment, while 22 supported the government. The other Marks amendments (19A, C and D) were not moved to a vote. The increased size of the rebellion was largely due to the party leadership in both Houses privately agreeing that it was OK to rebel on this amendment, so the vote was not the display of cojones it might first appear.

Of those Liberal Democrat peers who backed the government, 12 of the 29 on the first vote and 10 of the 22 on the second vote were part of the so-called payroll vote (including whips who don’t actually receive any pay). The rebels therefore had a clear majority of those Liberal Democrat peers who were free agents.

There are reports that about 20 Liberal Democrat peers were in the building but abstained on both votes, while others stayed at home. Given the first vote was so narrow, it would not have required many more Liberal Democrat peers (and/or Labour peers) to secure victory. On the second vote, however, Liberal Democrat peers could not have salvaged the amendment no matter how many rebelled; the problem was the failure of enough Labour peers to vote. The timing was also a problem. The two votes took place later than expected (at 9.21pm and 10pm respectively, instead of 7pm).

The ‘what ifs’ extend beyond the conduct of Tuesday night’s votes. Liberal Democrat peers were put in a difficult position by their colleagues in the Commons. And the circumstances of being in coalition will in any case create frequent conflicts of loyalty.

But let us say you are a Liberal Democrat peer who feels that the discipline of being in coalition always overrides questions of liberal principle. You ought at least to vote for things like secret courts with a heavy heart and not act like one Liberal Democrat whip did on Tuesday night by being openly jubilant when the amendments were defeated.

This enthusiasm when fundamental liberal principles are abandoned suggests that being in coalition has created something akin to the Stockholm syndrome among Liberal Democrat parliamentarians who are either on the government payroll or aspire to it. They should remember that the coalition is a creature of circumstance and not political nirvana. If swallowing bitter pills makes you light up with joy, you really do need a good slap.

Talking of people in need of a good slap, there is more information on Nick Clegg’s recent immigration speech. Simon Hughes was shown the text only one hour before it was delivered and, in the short time available, is said to have prevented it from being even worse.

Migrants and benefits: fact or myth?

David Cameron made a speech yesterday promising a crackdown on abuse of the welfare state by migrants. If you suspected that this crusade is based on dodgy assumptions, you’d be right.

Full Fact has analysed the facts and found that this is not exactly a case of evidence-based policy making. But then it rarely is in this age of tabloid hysteria and poll-driven policy.

No wonder Cameron’s speech is already unravelling. And as with Nick Clegg’s recent speech, no matter what protestations they make about the good side of immigration, merely to discuss the subject in terms of the anti-immigrant agenda is to validate that agenda.


Postscript: Chris Dillow has published a very good blog post on the facts about immigration, and the causes of popular irrationality.

Nick Clegg and the politics of immigration

Yesterday, Nick Clegg made a speech about immigration. Since it has been the subject of much misinterpretation and anger, it is advisable to read the actual whole speech before going any further.

At first, the speech seems quite reasonable. In the face of extremism, Clegg wants to move the debate onto “practical and sensible ground”, talks about wanting to maintain “an open and tolerant Britain”, and promises “the Liberal Democrats will never seek to outflank our opponents because we think that’s what people want to hear”.

Yet the more you study the speech, the more it reveals fundamental flaws in not only Clegg’s thinking but also his whole strategic approach. Taken together with the recent dispute about secret courts, both the speech and the reactions from within the party suggest that the party is falling out of love with its leader and that the feeling is mutual.

So far as the question of immigration itself is concerned, others have already criticised the speech in detail. On Liberal Democrat Voice, Caron Lindsay tried to be even-handed in a post titled ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ but concluded there was more bad and ugly than good. Her LDV colleagues Stephen Tall and Nick Thornsby had no inhibitions, making the case against Clegg in no uncertain terms. They were joined in a thorough demolition job by Lester Holloway.

It was a fortunate coincidence that Liberal Democrat Voice conducted a poll of party members on this very topic a few days before the speech. It showed that these hostile reactions to Clegg’s speech were not the views of an unrepresentative minority but that the membership’s view of immigration remains highly liberal.

Rather than repeat what others have said about the issue of immigration per se, I want to look at the politics of this speech and what it tells us about the party leadership.

The first problem with Clegg’s speech is that, although it purported to show leadership, it did the opposite. Clegg was ostensibly critical of the anti-immigration agenda but, by debating the issue on anti-immigration terms, he effectively validated that agenda. He made little attempt to tackle the popular myths about immigration, let alone enthuse about the positive things immigration brings to society. This approach makes anti-immigration sentiments more respectable and shifts the debate from morality (“right or wrong”) to management (“how much?”).

Most mainstream politicians are in a flat panic about popular opinion on immigration (recall the fiasco during the 2010 general election when Gordon Brown encountered the “bigoted woman”). Hostility to immigration is not a new problem nor is it unique to Britain. What has made the problem more acute is the recession (resentment of outsiders always grows in hard times) and the rise of UKIP.

As Nick Thornsby argued in the Independent, it is at times like these that we look for true leadership, even when the liberal position risks unpopularity. Unfortunately, we live in an era when politicians tend to be driven by opinion polls and focus groups. If politicians had thought like that during the 1960s, we would never have had the abolition of capital punishment or the legalisation of homosexuality.

This brings us on to the second problem, which is the concept of the ‘centre ground’. Tory MP Bernard Jenkin recently criticised this idea:

Politicians often talk about “the centre ground” of British politics, as though there is some big bell curve of voters in the middle where we have to be in order to get elected. The three main parties are crowded there in the facile belief that being anti-immigration, anti-EU, pro-business, tax cuts and tough on crime is “right wing”; while more spending, concern about the poor, pro-EU, pro-human rights and CND is “left wing”, and therefore sensible moderate people weigh up these “extremes” and finish up somewhere in between. And, of course, most people are sensible.

The Clinton/Blair people called it “triangulation”. The architects of Conservative modernisation copied it and made David Cameron in this respect the “heir to Blair”, but the result is that all the parties are now losing to “extremes”. Eastleigh showed there is no such thing as the centre ground – a great pile of voters in the middle waiting to be harvested by politicians’ cynical positioning. Nor is there a magic bullet labelled “immigration” or “Europe” either.

Clegg frequently bangs on about the ‘centre ground’ (indeed, he would have you believe that he is a non-ideological pragmatist) and this latest speech merely underlines the fact that he sees the voters in terms of Jenkin’s ‘bell curve’. His speech can therefore be seen as an attempt at triangulation. But as Jenkin pointed out, this won’t make him more popular or respected. You can only do that by standing up for what you believe in and accepting that this risks making as many enemies as friends.

Anti-immigrant sentiment cannot be ignored, of course. Many voters say they are against immigration, although on closer inspection it is hard to disentangle whether they are concerned more about new immigrants or the ethnic minorities already settled here, and whether immigration directly affects them or is merely something they’ve read about in the papers.

There is a valid non-racist argument that immigration must be managed, but management does not seem to be a major source of popular concern. The one occasion in recent years when the volume of immigration threatened to overwhelm local services was the large influx of Poles following Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004, yet Polish people have rarely been the target of racist sentiment. If you want to tout for racist votes, you would be more successful calling for the repatriation of black and Asian people than Poles. I am sure Nick Clegg would baulk at that, even if the polls and focus groups said it would be popular.

The third problem is Clegg’s attitude to the party and its policy-making process. His speech follows on closely from the notorious vote in favour of secret courts in the Commons earlier this month. Party members are starting to see a pattern of top-down policy-making that contradicts their wishes.

Strictly speaking, Clegg’s speech has not changed party policy. Policy is developed by the party’s Federal Policy Committee (FPC) and approved, democratically, by the party’s Federal Conference. In terms of the party constitution, Clegg was doing no more than kite-flying and, to be fair, he actually only called for existing policy to be “reviewed”. Try explaining that to the media. The Guardian talked of Clegg “abandoning” existing party policy on an amnesty, the Telegraph of him “dropping” it, the Mail of him “ditching” it. So far as the outside world is concerned, an ex cathedra statement by the leader is enough to change party policy – and Clegg and his media advisers must have known it.

Worse, Clegg’s new policy to replace an amnesty is half-baked. His big idea is that visa applicants from ‘high risk’ countries should pay a ‘security bond’ in the form of a cash deposit (Clegg mentioned no specific amount in his speech although the sum of £1,000 is being bandied about), which would be repaid when they leave the UK. This obviously hasn’t been thought through, as various knowledgeable people in the party could have told him if he had bothered to consult anyone beforehand. It’s not as if Clegg lacked the time or the opportunity; the speech was originally due to have been delivered in mid-February but was postponed (presumably because of the Eastleigh by-election), so a draft of the speech has been sitting around on his desk for over a month.

The lack of consultation is particularly inept, since the FPC recently appointed a policy working group on immigration, asylum, and identity, chaired by Andrew Stunell MP. This working group has so far met twice and is due to report to the spring 2014 party conference. Clegg’s speech was not presented to the working group at all, while the Federal Policy Committee was made aware of the speech’s existence but not its contents. Which is all a bit odd when you consider that Clegg, expressing his dissatisfaction with the current party policy on an amnesty, said in his speech, “I have asked Andrew Stunell, the former Integration Minister, to lead a review of this and our other immigration policies in the run up to 2015”. It is unclear whether Clegg was announcing the setting up of a working group that already exists or announcing the appointment of Stunell to conduct a separate review in parallel with the working group.

Of course, the reason for Clegg’s failure to consult the working group might be that he is unhappy with it for some reason. If so, he could have discussed his reservations with the chair of the FPC, Duncan Hames MP, who also happens to be Clegg’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. Or since Clegg is a member of the FPC himself, he could have come along to a meeting and expressed his views in person. He did neither.

Meanwhile, any outsider puzzled about what current Liberal Democrat policy on immigration actually is should consult the motion (‘Immigration in the 21st Century’) debated at the party’s 2007 autumn conference. It was proposed by the party’s then Shadow Home Secretary – one Nick Clegg.


Postscript (1): Nick Barlow has written a very perceptive blog post, which questions whether the arguments for remaining in coalition still hold water, and ponders what depths Nick Clegg will next plumb.

Postscript (2): Several members of the party’s FPC and policy working group on immigration have written an open letter to protest about the speech.

Why not move to Romania?

A Romanian newspaper has responded to the suggestion that the British government should run an advertising campaign dissuading would-be Romanian immigrants from coming to Britain – with a spoof advertising campaign inviting Britons to move to Romania.

“Half our women look like Kate. The other half, like her sister” says one of these Romanian ads.

Romanian and Bulgarian citizens will enjoy the same freedom of movement as any other EU citizens after 31st December, when temporary restrictions on moving to Britain expire.

This has prompted some right-wing tabloids to run scare stories suggesting that millions of Romanians and Bulgarians will descend on Britain the minute the restrictions end.

The number of immigrants is unlikely to match the absurd estimates published by the Daily Express. Even if it did, would the coalition government seriously wish to advertise its achievements by telling the world how awful Britain is?

Nice try, Theresa May, but I’m still British

Theresa May has rewritten the UK citizenship test to conform to Tory prejudices. And according to the Sunday Telegraph, the Life in the UK handbook for migrants taking the test has also had a makeover:

Out go politically correct sections on how to complain about being arrested and “mundane information about water meters”, and in come “the events and people who have helped make Britain a great place to live”, ministers said.

So I took the quiz included in the Telegraph’s report and scored 100%. That’s probably because I know slightly more about Admiral Nelson than water meters, which is obviously what matters in contemporary Britain.

No Liberal Democrat minister appears to have been on hand to offer a comment on this reform. In any case, there was no mention of Admiral Nelson or Stonehenge in the coalition agreement.

Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday reveals that the new citizenship test includes questions about Monty Python. Does this mean the test has been drawn up not by the Home Office but the Ministry of Silly Walks?