Part 4
Errors of the Labour
Party and the Remain Camp: We Recognize Your Interests, But This Is Not Your
Country.
A
fictionalized exchange on television between any Labour candidate for MP and an
audience member during the 2015 general election ...
Labour
Candidate for Parliament: We hear your
pain.
Audience
Member: My neighbourhood is being
transformed by mass migration. I don’t like many of these changes.
Labour
Candidate for Parliament: I
understand. New immigrants—frequently coming without skills that fit the modern
U.K. economy—cause wage compression at the low end of the wage scale. We will
make sure employers pay the minimum wage; we will ensure that your economic
interests are protected.
Audience
Member: No, that’s not my point (at
least, that’s not my only point). I don’t like how our society is being changed
by mass immigration. I don’t like polygamy. It is illegal, but no one gets prosecuted
for it. I don’t like FGM. It too is illegal, but it is not actively prosecuted.
I don’t like it when the immigrants’ customs are accommodated in these ways—I
don’t want our criminal laws ignored by the immigrants or by the police and the prosecutors.
It makes me feel unsafe—it makes me think the immigrants’ way of life is
preferred over our way of life and our Parliament’s laws. The immigrants should be integrated into our communities and our culture,
not the other way around.
Labour
Candidate for Parliament: I
understand. We will work to ensure that your wages are not compressed.
Audience
Member: You’re not listening. That’s not
what I said: I don’t like the direction your party’s immigration policies under
Blair & Brown have taken our country. I don’t like where we are now as a
result—not that Cameron has done anything to modify those policies.
Labour
Candidate for Parliament: No, that’s
not right. My job is not to ensure your vision of the good society. I live
in the real world, in the EU which determines U.K. immigration policy, not in your
antiquated vision of Little England and William Blake’s Jerusalem. My job is to protect your objectively rooted
economic interests. I will do that by monitoring and controlling the behaviour
of employers via the minimum wage laws, unions, and government-mandated collective bargaining. But once
that is done, then we must take all newcomers on an equal basis, particularly
those claiming asylum. We should not pick and choose immigrants based on their
likelihood to integrate into the extant political community. Picking and
choosing immigrants based on their values (or language, or willingness to learn
our language) is unfair to immigrants. Of course, as a result, society may
evolve in a direction you don’t like. That could happen. But we are morally
obliged (as we are obliged under international law) to take that risk. Your trying to block such a development in favour of
your parochial Little England values is morally objectionable. Your values are
no better than my values and no better than the immigrants’ values. Your
language (English) should not be favoured over the immigrants’ languages. Our
diversity must respect these differences. In fact, your trying to determine your society’s demographic future—through immigration controls—is (white van man) racism.
<pause>
Simply
put, you don’t have a right to decide what sort of society this will be: you
don’t have a right to hold such an opinion. Sorry—that was over broad. I suppose you may hold any opinion you want; you can even voice it in private and public. What I
mean is that I—as your member of Parliament—will not and should not value your opinion.
This country, i.e., this country’s future, is not yours. You and your family just
happen to live here.
Audience
Member:
My grandparents voted for Bevan & Gaitskell,
and my parents voted for Frank Field & Tony Benn. You have lost my support,
and I guess I want my country back.
Seth
PS: See Letters Section, The Daily Telegraph (London, 30 September 2016) (Margaret Robinson’s letter), http://tinyurl.com/zqp4ldg ("My grandparents were the first generation").
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SethBTillman (@SethBTillman )
PS: See Letters Section, The Daily Telegraph (London, 30 September 2016) (Margaret Robinson’s letter), http://tinyurl.com/zqp4ldg ("My grandparents were the first generation").
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SethBTillman (@SethBTillman )
My primary Brexit posts include:
Seth Barrett Tillman, The Libertarian/Popperian Case for Brexit: A Response to Professors Somin, Levy, Norberg et al., New Reform Club (July 19, 2016, 11:16 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-libertarianpopperian-case-for.html>.
Seth Barrett Tillman, Reflections on the Revolution in the UK: Part 4: Errors of the Labour Party and the Remain Camp, New Reform Club (July 1, 2016, 3:10 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2016/07/reflections-on-revolution-in-uk-part-4.html>
Seth Barrett Tillman, The Libertarian/Popperian Case for Brexit: A Response to Professors Somin, Levy, Norberg et al., New Reform Club (July 19, 2016, 11:16 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-libertarianpopperian-case-for.html>.
Seth Barrett Tillman, Reflections on the Revolution in the UK: Part 4: Errors of the Labour Party and the Remain Camp, New Reform Club (July 1, 2016, 3:10 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2016/07/reflections-on-revolution-in-uk-part-4.html>
Seth Barrett
Tillman, Reflections on the Revolution in
the UK: Part 3: Farage’s Poster Is Racist, The New
Reform Club (July 1, 2016, 3:02 AM), <http://reformclub.blogspot.com/2016/07/reflections-on-revolution-in-uk-part-3.html>
Seth Barrett Tillman, Reflections on the Revolution in the UK: Part 2: The U.K.’s Bradley/Wilder Effect Is Enough To Swing Elections, The New Reform Club (June 30, 2016, 3:54 AM), <http://reformclub.blogspot.com/2016/06/reflections-on-revolution-in-uk-part-2.html>; and,
Seth Barrett Tillman, Reflections on the Revolution in the UK: Part 1: It Is All Cameron’s Fault, The New Reform Club (June 30, 2016, 3:40 AM), <http://reformclub.blogspot.com/2016/06/reflections-on-revolution-in-uk-part-1.html>.
4 comments:
Add to that the fact that some Labor MPs knew of the grooming of young English girls in their communities and did nothing about it. Seems a lot of politicians are very out of sync with the voters.
you don’t have a right to decide what sort of society this will be
Yet many of today's elites arrogate this right to themselves. Obama's "fundamentally transformed" remark was merely the most inartful statement of a typical attitude. No mere stewards of the public welfare, they are eager to rule.
was about to write what he said
The baseline job of politics is to take situations that in a state of nature would result in violence and find and implement solutions that minimize violence by satisfying large and important constituencies. What the labor MP candidate was doing in that conversation, if replicated across the entire political spectrum of parties was making war. The candidate was explicitly rejecting important interests that traditionally lead to violence and dumping the responsibility on a layer of government that is infamously unresponsive to democratic control.
You don't *do* that. It is incredibly irresponsible. It is obviously something that the candidate was instructed to say and if that's what Labour was doing across the UK, I would be surprised that they wouldn't lose more MPs than the one they actually did (God rest her soul).
The political class *must* obey the baseline requirements and do their jobs in order to settle things peacefully or violence will be the order of the day and eventually a revolution will follow. I hate the prospect and cannot understand why this observation is not blindingly obvious to all concerned but, clearly, the observation is *not* obvious otherwise that MP candidate would not have had that conversation.
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