By Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden | 6 May 2026 (IDN) — Every developed country is importing cheap labour, although much less so during this time of near recession, yet all too rarely are the pro and con arguments discussed with real profundity.
In his incisive book, “The British Dream”, David Goodhart, the founder of the British intellectual magazine “Prospect”, dares to tackle the shibboleths. Many commonalities in Britain apply to countries as varied as France, the US, Germany and Qatar.
Goodhart’s conclusion about immigration is that what we might generalise and call the “working class” point of view is essentially correct: “We have had too much of it, too quickly, and much of it, especially for the least well off, has not produced self-evident economic benefits.”
Anathema to the liberals
This viewpoint is anathema to the liberal intelligentsia, businesses and many governments. In Britain, after years of gate-closing under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, her successor, a well-trodden liberal, opened the gates wide.
The unspoken argument was that businesses could smooth the wheels of the economic motor by having workers willing to work for lower wages, work night shifts, and do unpleasant jobs, thus greasing the wheels of the economy.
Liberals focused on the argument for giving a helping hand to some of the world’s poor and on how immigration led to a welcome broadening of the culture, with new foods, restaurants, and music in the UK.
Liberals can argue persuasively that racial hostility has declined over the 70 years of immigration. Munira Mirza, an ex-deputy mayor of London, says, “Racism still exists, but things have improved to a point where many ethnic minority people in Britain do not experience it as a regular feature of their lives.”
A working-class side of the coin
But there is another side of the coin—and I say this as someone who lived in a working class cum, immigrant, non-gentrified, poor neighbourhood of London for 14 years- that doesn’t shine so bright. The native working class has had to carry the load. It is their schools which have had to deal with an influx of non-English speakers, workplaces that are no longer so easy to socialise in, jobs whose wages don’t seem to rise as much as they should and pubs and football stadiums that are no longer “theirs”.
What is impressive is how self-controlled the racism that immigration produced has been. Neo-fascist, anti-immigrant, political parties and movements have not done well until the recent birth of a far-right-wing party, “Reform”. Parts of the usually left-leaning working-class voters who traditionally favoured the social democratic Labour Party have done the unthinkable and voted Conservative, and now Reform.
Many, if not most, working-class people, even if their everyday behaviour doesn’t show it, feel they have been sold out. They believe that without immigrants, their wages and job opportunities would have been better (which they probably would have been), schools would not be so overcrowded and demoralised, crime rates would be lower, and the welfare rolls would be much reduced. Reform is capitalising on this new mood. (Finland is a dramatic example of how to run a country well without much immigration.)
Much of this stems from uninformed prejudice. New immigrants are rarely committing crimes, and they are young, so they don’t use social services as much as locals do. But it is true that as a discriminated against second generation grew up and didn’t share their parents’ “a job at any price” mentality, too many took to crime and rough behaviour. Moreover, Muslim immigrants- except Sikhs, Gujaratis (from India) and former East African Asians, especially those who have come from off-the-beaten-path villages- have been mistakenly allowed to withdraw into cultural- and often geographic-ghettos. So-called “multiculturalism” has not worked.
Is there a solution?
Immigrants, like everyone, do age. So over time, they have become a greater burden on the social services. The “cost free” price of the new immigrant is dissipated—which is why those who argue that to combat an ageing native population we need more young immigrants have simplified their maths. More immigration is self-defeating because as these new immigrants become old, then even greater numbers of new immigrants will be needed, almost to the point where natives are no longer a majority in their own land- and that really is a recipe for a social crisis.
Is there a solution? It is to continue with anti-racist government policies, to raise the retirement age fast, to 70 immediately and 75 within five years.
So new immigrants are not so needed to improve low-paid jobs and job retraining, so natives will want to take them, to be tougher about immigrants, ignoring the home culture of the receiving country, and to give aid and encourage trade, so sending countries can develop. (No longer is high-growth Mexico exporting migrants to the US, thanks to US aid, trade deals and welcoming markets.)
Why should the native working class pay for the liberals’ dreams? Liberals have little sense of what their highfalutin policies have done and are doing. [IDN-InDepthNews]
Copyright: Jonathan Power