The Migration Dilemma
Blunkett's case for migration may not inspire, but it does offer a more honest social balance. David Goodhart began writing his essay on liberal dilemmas about solidarity and diversity towards the end of 2003.
David Goodhart began writing his essay on liberal dilemmas about solidarity and diversity towards the end of 2003. So he can have had no idea that his cautionary thoughts on multiculturalism would eventually appear in this newspaper yesterday, on the precise day that the Blair government took a decision that illustrated those dilemmas in the most graphic terms.
The home secretary's announcement of new benefit restrictions on migrants from eight east European nations that will join the European Union in May might have been scripted to suit Goodhart's argument. According to Goodhart, modern democracies have failed to resolve the tension between solidarity - the responsibility we all share towards everyone who lives here - and diversity - the fact that different individuals and groups live in different ways and according to different values within the same society.
David Blunkett's statement to the Commons on Monday embodied exactly that tension. When the EU expands from 15 to 25 member states on May 1, its population will rise from over 370 million to nearly 450 million. Most of the new citizens are dramatically poorer than those from the existing EU. So the existing member states have been faced with an intensely practical exercise in Goodhartism. Do they recognise these new citizens on equal terms, as solidarity requires? Or do they decide that the sharper diversity of the new union dictates some sort of limits?
Britain's initial answer to this question was to say that solidarity mattered more. If a country joined the EU, then its citizens joined on equal terms - which included the freedom to work throughout the union. The Nordic EU states, along with Ireland, agreed. But countries bordering the new member states saw things differently. Germany, already in recession and with high unemployment in its eastern Länder, argued for transitional restrictions. Likewise Austria. (You would never know it from reading the self-absorbed British press, but Germany is looking at 220,000 east European migrants next year, and Austria 30,000, compared with Britain's estimated 17,000.) Yet, where Germany and Austria led, the others followed, including the initially reluctant Nordics. So, on Monday, Britain tightened its rules too.
This episode provides wider lessons for the debate provoked by Goodhart's essay; but they are not edifying ones. For years, the Labour government has been strongly in favour of EU enlargement. So has the Tory party and the other opposition parties. So has public opinion. Yet in a matter of weeks, the government has been harried into the decision it announced on Monday. But it was not harried by the facts about what would happen after May 1. It was harried by the fictions.
The central fact is that Britain is not likely to face significant migration from the new EU states in the east after May 1. Every attempt to study this issue has come to the same three conclusions: first, that migration potential from the new states is likely to be limited; second, that much the greatest impact of the migration will be felt in Germany; and, third, that the relative impact on Britain will be lower than our size and wealth might suggest. If the EU's experience after Greece, Spain and Portugal joined in the 1980s is any guide, then at some stage there may even be a flow in the opposite direction as eastern European nationals already in the union are lured home by growing prosperity.
All these arguments were rehearsed at length in parliament last year, and in May 2003 a European Union (accessions) bill, authorising union with the new states, passed the Commons by 491 votes to none. But what was good enough for 491 MPs was not good enough for the tabloid editors. Over the winter, several of them confected a panic about east European migration. Michael Howard jumped on their bandwagon. Unwilling to fight on an issue which is already causing sleepless nights for Labour election strategists, Tony Blair bowed the knee too.
Apart from anything else, this was all a textbook example of how Britain's press now sets itself above parliament. But it was an example of other disturbing aspects of our politics too. Part of the reason why the press feels it can bully the political process with such impunity is that the political process has become so addicted to the pre-emptive cringe. A lifetime of experience, along with Philip Gould's polls, tells Blair and Blunkett that this is a fight they cannot win. Nevertheless, until victims stand up to bullies, bullies will make the rules.
Yet it is important for critics not to exaggerate or caricature what has happened. That, too, is one of the curses of our current politics. Blunkett's style is always to seek the headlines that he then attracts. He likes to be seen as the tough home secretary that the tabloids crave. Yet if you actually read what he told the Commons this week you will find a temperately expressed statement of the case for a liberal approach to migration, in which the welcome mat is at least as prominent as the security chain on the front door.
Look behind the headlines and, throughout his Home Office tenure, you will find Blunkett repeatedly stressing the "positive aspects of migration". This labour-market-driven approach underpinned his migration white paper two years ago, and was prominent in everything he said this week. According to Blunkett, there are now more than half a million job vacancies in the UK. In some parts of Britain, the case for new workers is even starker. Scotland, for instance, needs to attract more than 635,000 new migrant workers over the next 20 years.
As all this implies, Blunkett is more at ease making the case for migration in these economic terms than in terms which celebrate ethnic diversity for its own sake. That will not be good enough for those who want a home secretary who promotes a more upbeat multicultural message. But it is not a message to be sneered at. Blunkett's mantra, that we should welcome those who come to contribute, while rejecting those who come to take advantage, is simple fairness.
Blunkett's policy towards eastern European migrants needs to be seen as Goodhart's essay in practice. In Blunkettian terms, the challenge is about being firm but fair. In Goodhartian terms, it is about an attempt to balance the realities of modern diversity and the fragilities of modern solidarity. Inspirational this is not. But it is not unprincipled either.
Blunkett's approach is also a vindication of something that Goodhart himself stresses: the irreplaceable role of the nation state. The arrival of 75 million eastern Europeans within the EU is an awesome moment for post-cold war Europe. Yet, even within an EU that unites the prosperous west with the impoverished post-communist east, the nation state continues to deliver most of the welfare, security and democracy and even many of the values that Europe can offers its citizens.
All this is a reminder that our debate about Europe has crossed a watershed. For more than 30 years, there has been an endless argument, especially in this country, about the proper balance of power between the EU and its member states. But enlargement from 15 to 25 has settled that dispute. It makes the old existential battle an anachronism. All of us are Europeans. And the nation state is never going to disappear either. We are not exclusively one or the other. We are both. Hold a referendum on the obvious? It hardly seems necessary.
The home secretary's announcement of new benefit restrictions on migrants from eight east European nations that will join the European Union in May might have been scripted to suit Goodhart's argument. According to Goodhart, modern democracies have failed to resolve the tension between solidarity - the responsibility we all share towards everyone who lives here - and diversity - the fact that different individuals and groups live in different ways and according to different values within the same society.
David Blunkett's statement to the Commons on Monday embodied exactly that tension. When the EU expands from 15 to 25 member states on May 1, its population will rise from over 370 million to nearly 450 million. Most of the new citizens are dramatically poorer than those from the existing EU. So the existing member states have been faced with an intensely practical exercise in Goodhartism. Do they recognise these new citizens on equal terms, as solidarity requires? Or do they decide that the sharper diversity of the new union dictates some sort of limits?
Britain's initial answer to this question was to say that solidarity mattered more. If a country joined the EU, then its citizens joined on equal terms - which included the freedom to work throughout the union. The Nordic EU states, along with Ireland, agreed. But countries bordering the new member states saw things differently. Germany, already in recession and with high unemployment in its eastern Länder, argued for transitional restrictions. Likewise Austria. (You would never know it from reading the self-absorbed British press, but Germany is looking at 220,000 east European migrants next year, and Austria 30,000, compared with Britain's estimated 17,000.) Yet, where Germany and Austria led, the others followed, including the initially reluctant Nordics. So, on Monday, Britain tightened its rules too.
This episode provides wider lessons for the debate provoked by Goodhart's essay; but they are not edifying ones. For years, the Labour government has been strongly in favour of EU enlargement. So has the Tory party and the other opposition parties. So has public opinion. Yet in a matter of weeks, the government has been harried into the decision it announced on Monday. But it was not harried by the facts about what would happen after May 1. It was harried by the fictions.
The central fact is that Britain is not likely to face significant migration from the new EU states in the east after May 1. Every attempt to study this issue has come to the same three conclusions: first, that migration potential from the new states is likely to be limited; second, that much the greatest impact of the migration will be felt in Germany; and, third, that the relative impact on Britain will be lower than our size and wealth might suggest. If the EU's experience after Greece, Spain and Portugal joined in the 1980s is any guide, then at some stage there may even be a flow in the opposite direction as eastern European nationals already in the union are lured home by growing prosperity.
All these arguments were rehearsed at length in parliament last year, and in May 2003 a European Union (accessions) bill, authorising union with the new states, passed the Commons by 491 votes to none. But what was good enough for 491 MPs was not good enough for the tabloid editors. Over the winter, several of them confected a panic about east European migration. Michael Howard jumped on their bandwagon. Unwilling to fight on an issue which is already causing sleepless nights for Labour election strategists, Tony Blair bowed the knee too.
Apart from anything else, this was all a textbook example of how Britain's press now sets itself above parliament. But it was an example of other disturbing aspects of our politics too. Part of the reason why the press feels it can bully the political process with such impunity is that the political process has become so addicted to the pre-emptive cringe. A lifetime of experience, along with Philip Gould's polls, tells Blair and Blunkett that this is a fight they cannot win. Nevertheless, until victims stand up to bullies, bullies will make the rules.
Yet it is important for critics not to exaggerate or caricature what has happened. That, too, is one of the curses of our current politics. Blunkett's style is always to seek the headlines that he then attracts. He likes to be seen as the tough home secretary that the tabloids crave. Yet if you actually read what he told the Commons this week you will find a temperately expressed statement of the case for a liberal approach to migration, in which the welcome mat is at least as prominent as the security chain on the front door.
Look behind the headlines and, throughout his Home Office tenure, you will find Blunkett repeatedly stressing the "positive aspects of migration". This labour-market-driven approach underpinned his migration white paper two years ago, and was prominent in everything he said this week. According to Blunkett, there are now more than half a million job vacancies in the UK. In some parts of Britain, the case for new workers is even starker. Scotland, for instance, needs to attract more than 635,000 new migrant workers over the next 20 years.
As all this implies, Blunkett is more at ease making the case for migration in these economic terms than in terms which celebrate ethnic diversity for its own sake. That will not be good enough for those who want a home secretary who promotes a more upbeat multicultural message. But it is not a message to be sneered at. Blunkett's mantra, that we should welcome those who come to contribute, while rejecting those who come to take advantage, is simple fairness.
Blunkett's policy towards eastern European migrants needs to be seen as Goodhart's essay in practice. In Blunkettian terms, the challenge is about being firm but fair. In Goodhartian terms, it is about an attempt to balance the realities of modern diversity and the fragilities of modern solidarity. Inspirational this is not. But it is not unprincipled either.
Blunkett's approach is also a vindication of something that Goodhart himself stresses: the irreplaceable role of the nation state. The arrival of 75 million eastern Europeans within the EU is an awesome moment for post-cold war Europe. Yet, even within an EU that unites the prosperous west with the impoverished post-communist east, the nation state continues to deliver most of the welfare, security and democracy and even many of the values that Europe can offers its citizens.
All this is a reminder that our debate about Europe has crossed a watershed. For more than 30 years, there has been an endless argument, especially in this country, about the proper balance of power between the EU and its member states. But enlargement from 15 to 25 has settled that dispute. It makes the old existential battle an anachronism. All of us are Europeans. And the nation state is never going to disappear either. We are not exclusively one or the other. We are both. Hold a referendum on the obvious? It hardly seems necessary.
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