“My rivals are all wringing their hands about immigration. They seem to think (wrongly) that it lost us the election. But I have done more immigration casework than all my rivals put together. On the one hand, I know about the continuing inefficiencies and delays in the system that breed abuse. But I also know that we need to face up to the real reasons behind (black and white) working-class unhappiness about immigration. We have to talk about housing, the rise of agency (and casualised) labour and the incremental undermining of the welfare state, which have left working people feeling so insecure.”
Diane Abbott on CiF: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/20/diane-abbott-labour-leadership
“Certainly, the view that the cause of most of the country's ills are down to immigration is very widespread (this depressing survey suggests that 61% of the UK population think that all immigration should be halted immediately). But it's Miliband's concession to this narrative that's dispiriting: as if this view of immigration spontaneously arose out of people's experience, rather than as a consequence of a framing of experience which has been very deliberately constructed with the assistance of a popular media. Most of the alleged "concerns about immigration" could easily be reframed as anxieties about global capitalism or poor (and inadequately targeted) public services. Indeed, the "immigration" question assumes such importance because it allows global capital to remain obscured.”
From k-punk: http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/
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