EU politics: Fabians fight back?

05/08/2014

Labour is getting so worried about immigration that it has reincarnated Mark Leonard to write a booklet for the Fabian Society, offering suggestions about how to deal with the issue, all within the framework of the EU.

The good thing about this ploy is that Leonard is so much of a bubble-dweller these days that he only talks to other bubble-dwellers, ending up with thought processes so constrained that he believes Open Europe to be "eurosceptic".

This is a man also who consistently refers to those who oppose the European Union as "europhobes", which means we have someone who is also trapped by his own rhetoric and has long ago ceased to think clearly. And since he is one of the more lucid thinkers amongst the Europhiles, we can get a sense of what a mess they are in.

With that in mind, we learn that Mr Leonard asserts that, "Europe was the future once – and it could be once again". But what troubles him, in his own words, is that: "The signature achievement of the Eurosceptics – merging the EU issue with migration – has allowed them to modernise their arguments and broaden their coalition". Meanwhile, he says, "the pro-Europeans have been living in the past, appealing to an ever-narrower section of society".

This is actually quite interesting as, from outside the bubble, we see the linkage between immigration and the EU – in the clumsy way that it has been done by UKIP - as a tactical error. It has aided UKIP politically, but damaged the eurosceptic cause.

Perhaps if Mr Leonard read his own booklet, he might come to the same conclusion. Having referred in his text to polling by the think tank British Future, he asks whether it is possible for Labour to "decouple the European issue from migration", only for him to provide his own answer.

Calling in aid the polling results, he tells us that the public can be segmented into roughly three groups. The first is 23 percent of the electorate, the young, affluent, metropolitan, hyper-diverse  who comprise the "liberal minority". They think immigration "makes a very positive contribution to Britain".

Then there is the "sceptical middle" who see a mixed picture on the benefits of immigration. At 54 percent, they are cross-class, cross generational and ethnically mixed. Finally, there is the "hardline minority", another 23 percent, but one which sees immigration as entirely negative. They tend to be old, working class and white.

This, would that he knew it, is rather like Spinelli's three categories: the innovators and the immobilisers, with the "swamp" in the middle. And, as with Spinelli, it is the middle ground over which the battle will be fought.

It is in the context that we have the "Farage paradox", which Leonard mentions but does not understand, the phenomenon where the more support UKIP gets, the less support there is for its core idea of leaving the EU.

What is happening here is that, as Farage has assumed the mantle of BNP-lite, support from the "hardline minority" has firmed up, but at the cost of alienating the "sceptic middle". These are the people who are intuitively opposed to the EU, but not want to be associated with a quasi-BNP agenda.

In effect, Farage's linkage between the anti-EU movement and immigration has strengthened his party but weakened the anti-EU movement as a whole.

On the basis of this, Leonard might work on the assumption that the stronger Farage manages to link himself, the EU and immigration, thereby creating an unholy trinity, the more likely it is that that the "out" proposition will be defeated in a referendum.

Perversely therefore, in trying to decouple the EU from immigration, Leonard might be working to the eurosceptic agenda rather than his own. But whether it achieves his desired effect remains to be seen.

According to Leonard, there must be a strategy to manage and mitigate migration costs, with "progressive politicians" needing to show that they are "as serious about mitigating against the negative side-effects of migration as they are about opening EU borders to citizens from other nations".

Labour, he says, should push for EU governments to issue European social insurance cards to citizens moving from other member states. Once this was done, the UK should push for the creation of a European migration adjustment fund in the EU budget.

With this in place, Leonard argues that local authorities could apply for help in increasing the capacity of schools, hospitals and public services, so that the indigenous population would benefit from an upgrading of local provision in areas with large levels of intra-EU migration.

Before we go any further, and explore some of his other ideas, we should look at this. Firstly, we note, this "European migration adjustment fund" is uncosted. Secondly, it has to be the case that all other member states taking a net inflow of EU immigrants will be able to draw down from the fund.

If the latter is true, which it must be, there are eighteen member states with net migrant inflows. The UK would have to join the queue for funds, the total costs of which would surely amount to billions – much of which the UK, as a gross contributor, would have to find.

Like as not, the fund that Mr Leonard proposes would actually cost the UK more than it got out of it. The effect, therefore, would be the UK paying into an EU fund in order then to draw from it lesser amounts of its own money to compensate public authorities for the effects of EU migration. Has he really thought this through?

Then we come to Mr Leonard's next brilliant idea: we should, he says, "explore a mechanism for restricting EU migrants' claims for benefits like child benefit and job seeker's allowance for at least a year. And after that he wants to, "further the cohesion agenda to lessen the salience of migration – a long-winded way of saying that we should seek to reduce the "pull" factors.

In this latter category, the "big idea" is the requirement for all migrants to take language lesions, a requirement which would no doubt apply to the two million or so British migrants resident in other member states. One can foresee a huge upsurge in demand for Spanish lessons.

Other ideas include looking at ways of turning George's Day into inclusive local celebrations of Englishness on the model of the Jubilee. Leonard suggests offering a tax breaks on the price of a pint of beer for landlords who hold events on the day, encouraging English cricket to hold its own equivalent of football's Charity Shield on St George's Day or making 23 April a bank holiday.

We are told that there have also been innovative experiments by local Labour parties such as Southampton to organise St George's celebrations across the constituency.

Standing back from this we have to wonder whether Leonard hasn't completely lost it. Does he really think that subsidised pints on St George's Day is going to turn UKIP supporters into rabid Europhiles?

Skipping from his turgid prose, we seek help from the Guardian, which isn't really much better. It tells us somewhat more succinctly that other of Leonard's suggestions include "sunset clauses" in future European legislation, stipulating that it must be returned to national parliaments after 15 years if national governments do not wish to see the law renewed, and a new digital bill of rights so that privacy is protected from intelligence agencies and large companies, including Google and Facebook.

Then, believe it or not, Leonard suggests that Ed Miliband should embark on a "European masochism strategy", by spending a week talking about a radical EU reform agenda that would be pursued by Labour.

The Fabian Society suggests this could feature a "four ports tour", travelling to docks in Thurrock, Dover, Southampton and Grimsby, linking the "plight of blue collar workers who have been at the sharp end of globalisation and migration but whose future is linked to trade".

And this seems to be the best they can offer. It really is. But if Mr Leonard thinks this is going to turn round public sentiment and bring us all to love the EU, he is perhaps being a tad optimistic. Given the "Farage paradox", he might be better off doing nothing at all and letting the UKIP leader make the running.

That brings us another paradox – what we have is both sides effectively queering the pitch, each attempting to pursue their own agendas. If Mr Leonard is as successful and Mr Farage, and I can't see him doing any better in his own cause, we could have the two sides cancelling each other out.

However, there may be help at hand. Labour, says Leonard, also needs to build a new kind of pro-European organisation that goes beyond elites.

For much of the last two generations, Europe was an issue that did not attract much interest from the public, he says. The issues were abstract, so voters were willing to defer to experts and follow the politicians and business leaders they respected the most. Now, he says, this theory of change now needs to be updated for an era defined by distrust of elites and the death of deference.

The search for narrative and policy must also be linked with a revolution in campaigning, drawing on American models of community organising pioneered in the Labour party by Arnie Graf, he says.

The "challenge" is "to work out a retail offer on Europe and migration that local Labour parties could implement". The right way to frame this is "to come at the future of Europe through a debate about the future of Britain – looking at how we cope with a changing world".

This could draw on some of the examples of innovative campaigning such as the "Hope, not Hate" campaign against the BNP and the rewriting of the Icelandic Constitution, which was done by a panel of citizens.

On second thoughts, Mr Leonard should give up and leave it to Farage. Otherwise, under his guidance, "Europe" will remain where it belongs, rooted in the past.

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