Immigration or inequality? | thearticle

The manipulation of public anxiety about immigration has become an important element in party politics here in Britain.  With the economy flatlining, against a background of a million job

vacancies, debilitating understaffing in the NHS and social care, hostility to immigration seems odd.  But at a time of economic distress, an appeal to xenophobia, subtle or open, and the

stoking of anger against urban elites, (sometimes merited) brings approval and votes — as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands has recently demonstrated. Anti-immigration rhetoric offers a

scapegoat for a plethora of ills, including the failure of governments to provide hope, justice and a sense of wellbeing for their citizens.  From an America further divided by Trump to

Orban’s authoritarian Hungary, democracy looks in bad shape.  The reasons are varied, the problems seemingly intractable but, as Donald Tusk’s electoral victory in Poland over the Law &

Justice Party (PiS) showed, the direction of travel is not always towards far-right extremism ((Denis McShane ‘Geert Wilders: far-Right bogeyman or old Dutch cheese’ 25 November 2023).  And,

yes, the far-Right can soften its position once in power. Worldwide, political parties believe that if they are to have a reasonable hope of electoral success they must promise to control

immigration.  In Britain the fear of “them” taking our jobs, our housing, places in our schools, is an understandable consequence of growing impoverishment and the accelerating erosion of

the welfare state with its universal public services.   Voters’ number one priority according to UK opinion polls is the cost of living.   For growing numbers in the lowest income decile in

the UK, the sixth largest economy in the world, this means the lack of basic material necessities, not being able to make ends meet.  Some 4.2 million British children are growing up in

poverty. Peter Mandelson, Gordon Brown’s Business Secretary, speaking in 1998, was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich — as long as they paid their taxes”.   By 2012 he had

retracted these sentiments and was worried about rising inequality and failure to increase middle class disposable incomes.  By 2021, the top decile in the UK owned almost half our national

wealth.  The bottom decile received c. 3%. Or put even more starkly, the richest 1% of the population were worth £2.8 trillion, more than the £2.4 trillion owned by 70%, some 48 million

people. Mandelson warned against “business and bank bashing”, yet banks make themselves targets. Money tucked away in tax havens is measured in billions, while investment in the UK continues

to stagnate and investment bankers get richer alongside the CEOs of public companies.  The salaries of CEOs in energy companies, and their shareholder dividends, are eye-watering — while

their customers struggle with bills. You will not find the word “inequality” in Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s recent Autumn Statement. Nor did he quote the words of King Lear: “So distribution

should undo excess, and each man have enough”.  Hunt’s “levelling up” measures mean an aspiration to equalise _growth_ around the country; our geographical inequality is the worst in the

OECD.  His updating of benefits by 10% still leaves them at their lowest level since 1990.  He does mention “poverty”, but close to the end of his speech and then only in the context of

measures “to get people back to work”. Britain has become one of the most unequal societies in Europe, more unequal than Romania and Latvia, according to the EU inequality index.  Does it

matter?  Yes. In a new _Cost of Inequality Report, _the Equality Trust, a public policy think-tank, asserts that such a level of inequality “has made the UK more unhealthy, unhappy and

unsafe than our more equal peers”. It puts the economic cost at over £100 billion. The sense of injustice, of being ignored and looked down upon, can result in voters directing the contempt

to which they feel subjected towards a political entity variously described as “the swamp”, “the blob”, “the chattering classes”, “the metropolitan elite”, and voting for the party that best

seems to express their anger. How else to explain voters’ enthusiasm for clever and dangerous, sometimes libertarian, clowns,  unsuited for high office, who play the populist cards of

immigration, Islamophobia, wresting control from the contemptuous elites? They include Wilders in the Netherlands, Trump in the USA, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Milei in Argentina, Duterte in the

Philippines, Meloni in Italy, Braverman in the UK.  All march onto the political stage to the drumbeat of a dangerous form of nationalism. The Indian academic Pankaj Mishra traces these

developments back to the Enlightenment, which he sees as creating the myth and expectation of progress. His _Age of Anger: A history of the Present, _Penguin 2017_, _tracks what he terms

_ressentiment, _an amalgam of anger and resentment created by socio-economic structures experienced by people treated as “superfluous”.   The invention of the microchip in 1971 opened a new

era in the history of _ressentiment_.  The revolution in communications technology and social media, its virtual solidarities, have enabled both the spread and intensification of

_ressentiment,_ contributing to retrograde and tribalist forms of nationalism and generating violence. Witness the recent anti-foreigner riots in Dublin. There can be no doubt that poverty,

wars, and climate change will increase international migration.  One of the great failures of Western leadership is the lack of any “strategic plan” (the words used by the Archbishop of

Canterbury during the debates on the Government’s illegal Rwanda policy) to stabilise vulnerable economies in Africa and Asia, enabling their populations to stay at home and make a living. 

This requires the provision of a level of aid commensurate to the financial flows into Europe after World War II, and means debt relief, a generous Loss and Compensation Fund and more. Just

as Austerity in Britain since 2010 and indifference to inequality and poverty are a national economic choice, with consequences we can see, so is refusal to face the magnitude of the

problems confronting vulnerable countries around the world. This failure of vision and courage has deep roots.  Mishra, a secular socialist, describes Pope Francis — remarkably — as the

“most convincing and influential public intellectual today”.  He believes that Francis’ moral stature rests on his critique of the “ostensibly autonomous and self-interested individual’, a

figure emerging during the Enlightenment and now confronting “an impasse”.   In the current phase of globalisation, Mishra writes, this figure has descended into “either angry tribalism or

equally bellicose forms of antinomian individualism”, the denial of shared  moral values. His is a provocative but compelling portrait of populist politics. If we are to survive the 21st

century as civilised, diverse, and democratic societies, recognising our obligations under international law and preserving humanitarian values, voters must keep the clowns and extremists,

the libertarians and newly minted “anarcho-capitalists”, and the recycled fascists, out of high office. It is a political imperative in this age of anger to seek leaders with a moral core of

honesty, empathy, solidarity and responsibility, capable of reducing inequality. This quest must not remain a form of utopian eccentricity. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only

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