Not debating immigration

How should we debate immigration? Here's my advice: don't.

Debates don't work, at least not as they should. They don't favour the truth, but plausible liars and for those who can best appeal to prejudice and cognitive bias. Jonathan Portes, who is doing great work in trying to bring facts and rationality to the issue, describes his opponents' strategy: "Flood the zone with a mixture of lies, half-truths, misleading claims and statistics taken out of context." Against this, rational discussion is bringing a knife to a gunfight.

We needn't look far for a parallel here. It's now obvious that Brexit was a bad idea: only 31% of voters say it was the right decision. But have Brexiteers retired in shame? No. Dan Hannan - who gave us the most absurdly cretinous fantasies - still has a seat in the House Of Lords and a newspaper column. The marketplace in ideas is broken; peddlars of crap do not exit as they would in a well-functioning market. Even if immigration scaremongerers could be proven wrong, they'd not shut up. And why would they when they have much of the media on their side? As the old(ish) saying goes, "never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel."

Put it this way. Imagine that net immigration were to fall to (say) under 200,000 by the next election, a drop of three-quarters from its 2023 peak. Would Reform 2025 Ltd then say "Labour's making great progress; we'll therefore give up"? Of course they wouldn't.

Or to put it another way, the UK has been receiving immigrants for decades - be it Jews in the late 1800s, Pakistanis and the Windrush generation in the 40s and 50s, Ugandan Asians in the 70s and so on: as one who remembers the latter, talk about immigration seems as relevant as Slade or power cuts. If the "debate" about immigration hasn't been resolved by now it's not going to be, because the evidence isn't decisive.

A second reason not to debate immigration (or at least to be very careful about doing so) lies in a distinction between two types of politics - that based on lived experience versus that based on abstractions often gleaned from the media. Some us us think of immigrants as our friends, uncles or the local shopkeeper. The right by contrast invites us to see them as an abstract threat. Hence the fact excellently described by Ben Ansell; people who live in areas with more non-UK born residents tend to be more likely to think immigration is a good thing. One reason, I suspect, why support for Trump's immigration policies has declined is that "immigrants" are changing from the demons mythologized by Fox News into actual real people.

Unless we're careful, debating immigration risks us being like a therapist who indulges his patient's fantasy thus threatening to make the psychosis worse. If we must do so, we must speak in concrete terms, about real people not abstractions.

So, what should we do instead?

Matt Goodwin inadvertently gave us the answer recently on Twitter. "London is over —it’s so over" he said, pointing to unreliable and overpriced trains, homelessness, crime, and struggling restaurants.

Which blurts out the truth. Immigration is not merely about immigration. "Concerns" about immigration are linked to a wider sense of national decline, of economic stagnation and government failure.

Sure, Goodwin might be seeing what he wants. But we now have abundant evidence that economic stagnation fuels the far right. Back in 2006, Ben Friedman showed that, historically, slower economic growth led to increased racism and intolerance. Markus Brueckner and Hans Peter Gruener have found that, across Europe "lower growth rates are associated with a significant increase in right-wing extremism." Thiemo Fetzer showed how areas hardest hit by austerity were more likely to vote for Brexit. He and his colleagues have shown that shop closures are correlated with support for rightist parties. And Diane Bolet has found that areas seeing more pub closures are more likely to support Ukip (as was).

A place in decline invites the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: "since the immigrants arrived, this place has gone to the dogs". We could reverse this: if the cost of living were declining and places thriving, it would be harder for people to see immigrants as a problem - unless of course they were mere racists.

Which points to the way to fight the immigration battle: stop places going to the dogs. We should be saying to voters: "we get that many areas seem in decline, but this isn't because of immigration: here's what we should be doing instead." The better Labour MPs see this. Jeevun Sandher recently wrote:

If we want to win the next election, we need to make life affordable for our voters. Investing to get energy and housing costs down while creating good non-graduate jobs for Reform-curious voters will put more money in these voters’ pockets. If we get cash in peoples’ pockets, we win the next election. If we don’t, we lose.

This is easier said than done. One problem is that these aims are undermined by the government's plan to raise military spending; doing so requires lower spending than would otherwise be the case elsewhere - on either public services or private consumption. And cuts in the latter would exacerbate the pub and shop closures which fuel the far right.

A second obstacle is the large number of vested interests blocking growth. I'm thinking not just of nimbys opposed to infrastructure spending and housebuilding but: incumbent companies opposing tougher competition policy; lawyers, accountants and financiers opposed to simpler taxes; landlords opposing a shift from taxing incomes to taxing land; utility companies opposed to fairer prices; Brexiteers opposed to rejoining the single market; and a financial system generally that likes the low real interest rates that accompany stagnation.

A further problem is the quality of British management. It has become so accustomed to rent-seeking and bullying that it has largely lost the ability to raise productivity.

And all this is before we mention the possibility that capitalism itself might be a barrier to growth. The problem isn't just that low profitability deters investment-enhancing growth: why do so many industries from steel to nuclear require government subsidies? It's also that some investments don't happen because capitalists fear that they will get only a "minuscule fraction" (William Nordhaus's words) of the payoffs from them, whilst others are undertaken out of misplaced optimism rather than a rational assessment of their returns.

Perhaps my pessimism is misplaced. But that's the debate we should be having. And the right don't want it because they don't want to discuss the failure of British capitalism. If they do, they only show the vacuity of their own thinking, be it about Brexit or "Britannia cards". They'd prefer that we demonized migrants than looked at the root causes of stagnation - and certainly prefer that we divide people along ethnic rather than class lines.

We should ask Reform: "why should we talk about your hobby horse when we know that your last pet obsession (Brexit) was a failure, and when we have more important things to think about?"

You might object that we should stand up for the rights of migrants and indeed - given that immigration controls also reduce their liberty - the rights of citizens too. Morally yes, but we have to choose our battles. When we discuss immigration, we are fighting the battle the right wants to have. That ignores Sun Tzu's advice: "he will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight." Setting the agenda matters, and we should not concede this to the right but rather set our own.

Discussing immigration steals cognitive bandwidth. The opportunity cost of doing so is that we don't discuss more important matters - matters that, if we could at least partly resolve them, would boost economic growth and so defeat the far right.

Comments

[Martin]

Very shrewd analysis

[ltr]

'Immigration is not merely about immigration. "Concerns" about immigration are linked to a wider sense of national decline, of economic stagnation and government failure.'

Perfect. The point is economic policy in the UK that is increasingly turned away from meeting the needs of ordinary citizens or residents. UK policy needs must extend beyond meeting the wants of the rich and richest.

[Boy]

> How should we debate immigration? Here's my advice: don't.

> The marketplace in ideas is broken.

> Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.

Chris, what you’re describing here is an information environment so distorted and polluted by misinformation that democracy itself is untenable, not just immigration debates.

I’d only ask: was it ever any different? Did debate only ever serve an illusion of consultation?

[Jan Wiklund]

Fair enough – except that those countries who ARE in the single market are equally in decline as the UK.

It's not about single market or not, it's about how to use or to have the productive capacity. We have all been in decline, more or less, since we gave up on developmentalist politics and let the rentiers rule as they wanted.

And they don't want production, they want to sit on their arses seeing money coming in from simply owning.

[ltr]

Wikland:

"It's not about single market or not, it's about how to use or to have the productive capacity. We have all been in decline, more or less, since we gave up on developmentalist politics and let the rentiers rule as they wanted."

Perfect.

[ltr]

Boy:

"Chris, what you’re describing here is an information environment so distorted and polluted by misinformation that democracy itself is untenable, not just immigration debates."

Read or watch "Page Eight" by David Hare.

The change in the UK press began with Murdoch and came decisively under Tony Blair.

[ltr]

When Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the entire suite of Labour economic advisers resigned. Possibly they are learning or have learned now, but where are the voices other than Chris?

Keir Starmer is Margaret Thatcher, with a class disdain for historical Labour principles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/world/europe/keir-starmer-uk-polls-labour.html

June 30, 2025

A Year After ‘Loveless Landslide,’ U.K. Leader Is Even Less Popular

With scores of Labour Party lawmakers in open revolt and voters signaling their distaste, some are urging Prime Minister Keir Starmer to abandon caution and pivot left.
By Mark Landler

A year ago this week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain swept into 10 Downing Street with a landslide majority of 172 seats. As his first anniversary approached, more than 120 of those Labour Party members of Parliament threatened to vote down their leader’s signature welfare legislation...

[AJW]

Bravo Jan Wiklund;
"We have all been in decline, more or less, since we gave up on developmentalist politics and let the rentiers rule as they wanted."

This steers us to the issues we need to address in order for us ALL, as ltr said, to reverse the 'wider sense of national decline, of economic stagnation and government failure' we feel now.

The effects of Thatchers dogma must be unwound for the whole country to prosper once again. I accept the narrative may need to be one of a positive 'new' frame rather than a return to the postwar consensus but in essence we need to dismantle rentier and financier power and all share the benefits.

State Retail bank. Financiers can play bingo with other people's money all they want but only within investment vehicles. Glass-Steagall Mark II. Policed by a rod of iron.

Renationalise water, most energy and transport sectors. While we're at it reshape corporate auditing rules to empower all stakeholders not just shareholders; time to call time on corporate ability to ignore exogenous variables.

Social housing building; starting with brownfield sites.

Remove almost all higher education millionaire chancellors and vice-chancellors paying themselves as bankers and replace with educators, researchers and tutors to re-expand our university offerings to the world.

Staff the health and welfare sectors for the long term thereby removing vast swathes of privately-owned rentiers.

Oh and by the way, set in concrete legally-binding principles which reflect almost everyone's view that public servants who can't remember key facts are not immune to accepting responsibility; they had the pay, they should pay the price for organisational failure on their watch.

That's a start. I'd vote for that policy agenda and I suspect enough other people would as well.

[CGT]

It's fine (and sensible, sadly) for most people to not discuss immigration with those who have different perspectives on the topic. But that's not a luxury politicians have, when immigration - like it or not - is a big issue for voters. I don't fancy the electoral chances of the politician who won't talk about their immigration policy so that they can share their exciting new industrial policy ideas.

200k net migration was about the average for the UK over 2001-11 (it was 61k in the 90s, a pretty good decade for the UK economy). It is hardly a radical idea to get net migration back to the level seen under Blair and Brown.

It's strange to see those in favour of migration feel so embattled. After all, they got what they called for in unprecedented abundance in recent years. Perhaps they feel defensive about what this has achieved for the UK?

[Blissex]

«The change in the UK press began with Murdoch and came decisively under Tony Blair.»

It was more a change in style, in being more overtly "within the guardrails":

H. MacMillan, 1963: «It is wonderful not to read the newspapers — except a rapid glance through The Times. It makes such a difference. One feels better, mentally and morally, not to be absorbing unconsciously, all that steady stream of falsehood, innuendo, poison which makes up the Press today, apart from purely informative sections.»

G. Orwell, 1943: «Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. [...] and I saw newspapers in
London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’»

G. Orwell, 1945: «Victor Raikes, the Tory M.P., who is an able and outspoken
reactionary, made a speech which I should have considered a good one if it had referred only to Poland and Jugoslavia. But after dealing with those two countries he went on to speak about Greece, and then suddenly black became white, and white black. [...] The Daily Worker disapproves of dictatorship in
Athens, the Catholic Herald disapproves of dictatorship in Belgrade.
There is no one who is able to say - at least, no one who has the chance to say in a newspaper of big circulation - that this whole dirty game of spheres of influence, quislings, purges, deportation, one-party elections and hundred per cent plebiscites is morally the same whether it is done by ourselves, the Russians or the Nazis.»

People who write along these lines:

«Debates don't work, at least not as they should. They don't favour the truth, but plausible liars and for those who can best appeal to prejudice and cognitive bias. Jonathan Portes, who is doing great work in trying to bring facts and rationality to the issue, describes his opponents' strategy: "Flood the zone with a mixture of lies, half-truths, misleading claims and statistics taken out of context." [...] The marketplace in ideas is broken; peddlars of crap do not exit as they would in a well-functioning market. Even if immigration scaremongerers could be proven wrong»

seem to me usually to be "There Is No Alternative" liberal-thatcherites with a strong belief in rule by philospher-kings (like Portes...).

[Blissex]

«But that's not a luxury politicians have, when immigration - like it or not - is a big issue for voters.»

I reckon that the vast majority of voters do not care about immigration either way and have little or no hostility to immigrants but they care about the impact; in particular I think many care about lower inflation (of wages) and higher growth of incomes (from property and business) which are the most important advantages of population growth (demand for jobs and housing) being higher than capacity growth (supply of good jobs and good housing) when immigration surges.

Then there is quite a bit of propaganda effort about pretending that most voters do care about things like identity and values and race, especially in relation to immigration, and some do but that is I think a small minority on either side.

Consider race and culture: the immigration debate has been the same whether the vast majority of immigrants were white aryan christian europeans for so many years or people-of-global-majority muslims etc. in recent years.

«200k net migration was about the average for the UK over 2001-11 (it was 61k in the 90s, a pretty good decade for the UK economy). It is hardly a radical idea to get net migration back to the level seen under Blair and Brown.»

But that might lead to significant higher inflation (of wages) and to slower growth of incomes (from property and business), as demand for jobs and properties would fall. The single greatest engine of "productivity" growth in England for example is doubling-up.

«It's strange to see those in favour of migration feel so embattled. After all, they got what they called for in unprecedented abundance in recent years. Perhaps they feel defensive about what this has achieved for the UK?»

Given far lower rates of capacity growth than of population growth the latter has achieved significant and popular benefits for english people (incumbent property and business owners), but that could reverse if the rate of population growth falls.

T. Wrigley, "Energy and the english industrial revolution", page 142
“However, when population growth exceeded 0.5 per cent annually, real wages plummeted”

https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/21/bring-back-boris
“High immigration? Blame Mr Sunak for that too. On Treasury spreadsheets, immigrants go in one end and gdp comes out the other.”

https://policyscotland.gla.ac.uk/blog-sir-ivan-rogers-brexit-speech-text-in-full-october-2017/$
“But let’s track back to 2004 when Blair took the decision to open the UK Labour market without any transition period to the citizens of the A8, and you have a decision – I was there, I know… - taken on both moral and domestic macro-economic grounds. None other than Mervyn King at the Bank of England, was personally pushing hard the need to address skills shortages and bottlenecks to head off the risk of inflation [...] this was a policy on borders and free movement driven by the perceived need to address those shortages and to try and drive the UK’s trend rate of growth higher.”

[ltr]

Really fine comments.

[CGT]

@Blissex: "But that might lead to significant higher inflation (of wages) and to slower growth of incomes (from property and business), as demand for jobs and properties would fall."

Agree that lower migration will tend to increase wage inflation. But those in favour of high immigration almost never sell it as a means to keep inflation down (though I think Boris Johnson did). Why might that be?

The pro-immigration left are caught in a vice that they don't (can't?) acknowledge: immigration is good for the immigrants, and possibly for rentiers, but is costly for domestic workers (lower wage inflation). They have to get into incredible contortions to avoid talking about this, like claiming domestic workers just won't do certain jobs. (Though this argument seems to have disappeared - maybe it became too obvious an expression of disdain for the working class.)