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“Gramping on immigration” in response to a reaction from voters is an older British political tradition than universal suffrage. Indeed, it is older than the modern passport – and, in fact, why the modern passport exists in the first place.
In response to the arrival of Jewish immigrants at the end of the 19th century, the British government erected the first modern border. Similar political counterpouss continued, including the reaction to the circulation of people within the British Empire in the post-war period and the Brexit vote in 2016 of the country after the arrival of a large number of central and eastern Europe. The announcement of Sir Keir Starmer of A repression After a period of increased immigration, it was part of a former political heritage.
The United Kingdom is in no way exceptional here, although of course some of the forms it has taken (like voting to leave the European Union) have surprised people. But the belief that the signaling “things will change” should lead to an error to re -election the labor party.
Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister of Labor, of which Starmer looks most, was also part of the tradition of the repression of migration. He made an important and important adjustment for his group policy By kissing the introduction by the previous government of a color bar, stripping certain Commonwealth immigrants from their automatic right to live in the United Kingdom. During his mandate, he also introduced variable costs for those who live outside the British islands, introducing the costs of students abroad in 1967.
One way to look at the modern work strategy is to see it as part of this pragmatic approach to push, get on immigration. This is how labor strategists often like to present it in private. Given another way – the way Starmer likes to talk about it in public – is a practical necessity and the end of a “failed experience” in liberal immigration policy.
The two explanations are wrong. A big difference between Wilson and Starmer is that the first managed a country whose defense expenses met the needs of an empire that she had not, where the average person was 33 years old, life expectancy was 70 years and the state pension was launched a few years earlier.
Starmer leads a country whose defense expenses must increase, where the average person is 40 years old, where life expectancy is around 80 years and most of us can expect to have at least a decade of life during which we receive the state pension. (An additional problem is that for many of us, this period is the one in which we will have trouble with poor health, rather than taking advantage of a gold retreat, but it is another problem.)
The reduction in freedom of movement – of people, goods, capital or services – is at the cost of growth. He always has. Governments should not claim the opposite. The borders of the free movement of people, whether in 1905, 1966 or 2019, inevitably had a cost for the country.
But the United Kingdom of 2025, with its older population, its much greater state, and its larger expectations with regard to the standard and the quality of public services, is even more sensitive to growth successes than the United Kingdom of 1905. This is true worldwide: this is why the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni-Net migration in Italy was not bored.
Starmer’s party has a political position which is, to put it slightly, unusual. The work says that the conservatives have created too small a state – it has not built enough, provides enough GP, hiring enough school or sorting the cost of living too high. He also says that solving these problems can be done with fewer people than managed conservatives.
In addition, the government of labor seems to believe that it can achieve all this with a more rigid labor market and by increasing the cost of hiring at all levels. The major increases in the power of automatic learning may stimulate this particular circle. Again, it may not be. If the future of artificial intelligence is that in which we work alongside AI rather than replacing it, then they will never do it.
The difficult truth for work, and for European nations in general, is that when you are as old as our nations now, and your expectations for state size are what they are now, the reduction of immigration has become luxury. This is the one you just can’t afford if you are not willing to cut your fabric elsewhere. The United Kingdom has tasted that it would involve Rachel Reeves’ first budget and hated that. The country shows no sign of growth to love the drug in additional doses. Other aging democracies should take note. The United Kingdom’s approach is a sign of what should not be done.
