Tuesday 20 November 2018

Desperate May plays the Immigration card again.

The extent to which the Brexit vote was won due to anti-immigration and indeed racism has not been fully investigated or rather reported 

In a report in the Independent last year it is claimed that findings from the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey published on Wednesday show Brexit was the result of widespread concern over the numbers of people coming to the UK – millions of whom have done so under the EU’s freedom of movement rules in recent years. 

Nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of those who are worried about immigration voted Leave, compared with 36 per cent of those who did not identify this as a concern, the research found, showing the discrepancy in views about immigration between Remain and Leave voters.

But I wonder whether it was not so much about White Europeans coming here  as opposed to elsewhere.Maybe those who conducted (and still do) are afraid of what the result will show.

Who can forget the clearly racist poster  promoted by Nigel Farage which in a Referendum on membership of the EU showed lines of Asians.





Farage knew his audience and that highlighting immigration from the Commonwealth (apart from the likes of Canada , Australia and New Zealand) was the way to exploit peoples fears over Immigration and give racists an excuse  when challenged.


But as Mrs May proved this week, the anti-immigration card is one that will constantly played if there is any chance LEAVE looks like losing support.  Though she seems to have as Munguin points out below tried to shift immigration fears back to Europe if it ever were really the main issue. implying that Eyropeans would seek to jump the queue .

The BBC reports that 
""Theresa May has renewed her efforts to sell her draft Brexit withdrawal agreement - arguing it will stop EU migrants "jumping the queue".
She said migration would become skills-based, with Europeans no longer prioritised over "engineers from Sydney or software developers from Delhi".
The PM also insisted to business leaders at the CBI that the withdrawal deal had been "agreed in full".
 Mrs May told the CBI's annual conference in London that her plan would provide a fair immigration system that would help young people in the UK get jobs and training.
"It will no longer be the case that EU nationals, regardless of the skills or experience they have to offer, can jump the queue ahead of engineers from Sydney or software developers from Delhi."Instead of a system based on where a person is from, we will have one that is built around the talents and skills a person has to offer."
Nicola Sturgeon said the PM's remarks on EU free movement were "offensive".
The Scottish First Minister said for the prime minister to use such language to describe reciprocal arrangements entered into freely by the UK - allowing EU nationals to live and work in the UK and vice-versa - was "really disgraceful"."
Where were Labour on this? Indeed the best response to Mrs May seems to be coming not from the Labour Party but from Blogs like MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC  Scottish Blog (to my mind the best ) which mixes suport for Independence with a progressive argument but also humour.

Munguin's owner writes  that
"May sank to a new level today, even for her, and that is quite an achievement.
She was speaking to business, trying to sell her half-baked Brexit plan and, with very little to sell, and certainly nothing concrete, she remembered that we held all the cards and she played the Xenophobic joker.
In future, she said, EU citizens would not be able to “jump the queue” to get into the UK.
She seems to be unaware that no EU citizen jumped any queues to work anywhere in the EU, or indeed in the EEA. There were no queues. No more of a queue than there would be if I, in Dundee, decided to apply for a job in Stornaway, Riga, Vaduz or Bognor.

"It will no longer be the case that EU nationals... can jump the queue ahead of engineers from Sydney or software developers from Delhi."
Theresa May says "once we've left the EU, we will be fully in control of who comes here."
She managed to imply that these sneaky Europeans had been taking the best of the jobs in place of people from her Empire. Canadians or Kenyans had to get in line behind people from the European Union.
Of course, if she knew anything about recruitment at a high level, she would know that that’s not how it works. But then, had she known anything about recruitment she might, as Home Secretary, not have put all the barriers in the way of employing scientists from Sydney, doctors from Durban or techies from Tiruchirappalli.
Mrs May, of course, has several hurdles to cross before her plan becomes “the” plan. The EU is meeting this weekend to look at it and may or may not approve it without change; she has to deal with the rebels in her own cabinet, Leadsome, Gove, Fox, Mordant and Grayling, who are determined that they could have negotiated another, better deal and are writing one as we speak despite being told not to be the PM and by Europe… Who knows what will happen if they are ignored. And then she has to sell it to the DUP, the Commons and the Lords. On top of that, it has to pass the parliaments and in some cases devolved parliaments of the 27 member states of the EU.
I’m not holding my breath.

Why anybody from Europe would want to move to an UK that will be facing economic disaster after Brexit?  Is  an intresting question

 But you don't have to be a cynical bastard like myself to think that Mrs May's, true audience was her own MPs who are wavering and using the I word to get herself out of a hole.

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