James Somerville-Meikle is a former Chairman of Canterbury Conservative Association and a Conservative Campaigner in the South East.
Labour was widely expected to win the 1992 General Election, but they came up short. Tony Blair realised that crime and anti-social behaviour had been an Achilles Heel for his party. He understood that Labour needed to find a set of policies and a language that could connect with people on these issues.
In his 1993 Party Conference speech, Blair said that a future Labour Government would be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. It was a classic New Labour phrase, and brilliant in many ways. It not only committed to match what the Conservatives had been doing on law and order, but took it a step further by tackling the underlying causes of the problem.
As the Conservative Party reflects on this year’s election results, it’s clear that we have our own Achilles Heel to deal with. Immigration, or the failure to control it, came up time and time again on doorsteps during the campaign as one of many issues where the public just didn’t trust us to deliver.
Going into an election campaign with net migration at record highs was not going to wash with an electorate that had given us clear instructions to control it. Revised figures for last year showed net legal migration into the UK was 685,000. Aside from stopping unlawful migration, the failure to control lawful migration was perhaps our biggest problem and saw over 4 million people vote for Reform.
Yet it would be a mistake for leadership contenders to purely focus on the numbers of arrivals into the country and on securing our borders – as important as these are. We need to understand the justifiable anger of voters and look at the underlying causes that have pushed net migration up so dramatically in recent years.
Population movements are complex, and there is rarely any single or simple explanation for why people move in and out of a country. Unlike Reform, we should not pretend that a radical reduction in the number of people coming to this country will be easy.
Rather than rhetoric, we need a detailed plan to control lawful migration. While politicians cannot control all the factors at play, there are several areas where they can have an influence – requiring an economic, social, and cultural response. If we engage with these points in opposition then we will have a compelling case to make at the next election, not only for reducing net migration but for tackling the underlying causes as well.
A future Conservative government should be “tough on high migration, and tough on the causes of high migration”. It will require some searching questions about our country and some challenging answers, but if we are serious about meeting the challenge from Reform and getting back into government then it is a task we cannot ignore.
A large factor in driving up migration has been the appeal of workers from abroad, sometimes to fill the skills shortage and sometimes because it was cheaper and easier. As Conservatives, we believe in free markets and enterprise, but this needs to be fair and done in a way that will not undermine our domestic workforce.
Too often in Government, we rolled over when businesses and public services said they needed workers from abroad to survive. Some sectors such as agriculture and higher education will rely on seasonal/temporary migrants, but we need to be much firmer with other sectors. In some areas, such as social care, this may well require wages to rise to attract more people.
Expanding the use of visa levies, introducing a taper system on visa numbers in some sectors, and tighter rules on dependants could form all part of the solution. We also need to look at the skills and training being provided in our schools, colleges, and universities, and whether these match the needs of our economy.
We cannot have a conversation about migration, without looking at current population trends in our country. It is perhaps no coincidence that last year’s high net migration figures also coincided with a twenty-year low in the number of babies born in England and Wales.
Successive governments have failed to support family life and the amazing work of parents and unpaid carers. In Jeremy Hunt’s Budget last year, his announcement on extra childcare funding was made in a part of his speech entitled “Barriers to work”. Our children and young people are surely our greatest asset, but sometimes we have treated them more as a burden that needs to be lifted.
We should use our time in opposition to consider how we can implement a tax and benefit system that properly supports children and family life. This should include backing fully transferable tax allowances and finally lifting the two-child cap on Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits – a policy that even Nigel Farage thinks should be scrapped.
There is also an important question of culture. For too long, our country’s leaders – both inside and outside Parliament – have not seen high levels of net migration as a problem, and in some cases have welcomed it as a means of furthering multiculturalism.
There is no doubt that migration can be a force for good and bring benefits to the communities where people make their homes. But there are also places where the levels of migration are putting a strain on services and making integration difficult. This was something seized on by Reform during the election campaign.
Despite having left the EU, we have not taken the opportunity to recast our attitude towards mass migration with a set of distinctive policies. The result is that we have largely continued the trajectory set by Tony Blair and the last Labour Government. A culture change is needed, focused on what can be done across the Government to bring levels of net migration down.
It would be all too easy to spend the next few weeks and months talking about numbers, caps, and quotas on immigration as this Conservative leadership contest gets underway. But if we do not address the fundamental question of why we have become dependent on high levels of migration, then we are failing ourselves and the country.
Voting Reform is a way to express anger, but it is not a solution. We owe it to the electorate to find a solution. If we commit to being tough on high migration and the causes of high migration, then we might just get the chance to be listened to again at the next election.
James Somerville-Meikle is a former Chairman of Canterbury Conservative Association and a Conservative Campaigner in the South East.
Labour was widely expected to win the 1992 General Election, but they came up short. Tony Blair realised that crime and anti-social behaviour had been an Achilles Heel for his party. He understood that Labour needed to find a set of policies and a language that could connect with people on these issues.
In his 1993 Party Conference speech, Blair said that a future Labour Government would be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. It was a classic New Labour phrase, and brilliant in many ways. It not only committed to match what the Conservatives had been doing on law and order, but took it a step further by tackling the underlying causes of the problem.
As the Conservative Party reflects on this year’s election results, it’s clear that we have our own Achilles Heel to deal with. Immigration, or the failure to control it, came up time and time again on doorsteps during the campaign as one of many issues where the public just didn’t trust us to deliver.
Going into an election campaign with net migration at record highs was not going to wash with an electorate that had given us clear instructions to control it. Revised figures for last year showed net legal migration into the UK was 685,000. Aside from stopping unlawful migration, the failure to control lawful migration was perhaps our biggest problem and saw over 4 million people vote for Reform.
Yet it would be a mistake for leadership contenders to purely focus on the numbers of arrivals into the country and on securing our borders – as important as these are. We need to understand the justifiable anger of voters and look at the underlying causes that have pushed net migration up so dramatically in recent years.
Population movements are complex, and there is rarely any single or simple explanation for why people move in and out of a country. Unlike Reform, we should not pretend that a radical reduction in the number of people coming to this country will be easy.
Rather than rhetoric, we need a detailed plan to control lawful migration. While politicians cannot control all the factors at play, there are several areas where they can have an influence – requiring an economic, social, and cultural response. If we engage with these points in opposition then we will have a compelling case to make at the next election, not only for reducing net migration but for tackling the underlying causes as well.
A future Conservative government should be “tough on high migration, and tough on the causes of high migration”. It will require some searching questions about our country and some challenging answers, but if we are serious about meeting the challenge from Reform and getting back into government then it is a task we cannot ignore.
A large factor in driving up migration has been the appeal of workers from abroad, sometimes to fill the skills shortage and sometimes because it was cheaper and easier. As Conservatives, we believe in free markets and enterprise, but this needs to be fair and done in a way that will not undermine our domestic workforce.
Too often in Government, we rolled over when businesses and public services said they needed workers from abroad to survive. Some sectors such as agriculture and higher education will rely on seasonal/temporary migrants, but we need to be much firmer with other sectors. In some areas, such as social care, this may well require wages to rise to attract more people.
Expanding the use of visa levies, introducing a taper system on visa numbers in some sectors, and tighter rules on dependants could form all part of the solution. We also need to look at the skills and training being provided in our schools, colleges, and universities, and whether these match the needs of our economy.
We cannot have a conversation about migration, without looking at current population trends in our country. It is perhaps no coincidence that last year’s high net migration figures also coincided with a twenty-year low in the number of babies born in England and Wales.
Successive governments have failed to support family life and the amazing work of parents and unpaid carers. In Jeremy Hunt’s Budget last year, his announcement on extra childcare funding was made in a part of his speech entitled “Barriers to work”. Our children and young people are surely our greatest asset, but sometimes we have treated them more as a burden that needs to be lifted.
We should use our time in opposition to consider how we can implement a tax and benefit system that properly supports children and family life. This should include backing fully transferable tax allowances and finally lifting the two-child cap on Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits – a policy that even Nigel Farage thinks should be scrapped.
There is also an important question of culture. For too long, our country’s leaders – both inside and outside Parliament – have not seen high levels of net migration as a problem, and in some cases have welcomed it as a means of furthering multiculturalism.
There is no doubt that migration can be a force for good and bring benefits to the communities where people make their homes. But there are also places where the levels of migration are putting a strain on services and making integration difficult. This was something seized on by Reform during the election campaign.
Despite having left the EU, we have not taken the opportunity to recast our attitude towards mass migration with a set of distinctive policies. The result is that we have largely continued the trajectory set by Tony Blair and the last Labour Government. A culture change is needed, focused on what can be done across the Government to bring levels of net migration down.
It would be all too easy to spend the next few weeks and months talking about numbers, caps, and quotas on immigration as this Conservative leadership contest gets underway. But if we do not address the fundamental question of why we have become dependent on high levels of migration, then we are failing ourselves and the country.
Voting Reform is a way to express anger, but it is not a solution. We owe it to the electorate to find a solution. If we commit to being tough on high migration and the causes of high migration, then we might just get the chance to be listened to again at the next election.