Some thoughts on the UK and immigration
Jun. 1st, 2025 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerBritish Voters are happy that UK net migration is down. But they still think it's too high. Sadly, there is no information about how much immigration voters would like, but I suspect that they think that zero is good. And probably that negative is better.
And a fair chunk of this is because Labour and the Conservatives are both backing the idea that immigration is a bad thing. Lib Dems are in favour of being more humane about it than either of them, but only the SNP seem to have a policy that recognises that if immigration doesn't go up the economy is fucked.
Britain is aging. With serious economic consequences, with insufficient people entering the workforce to make up for the people leaving it, and increasing healthcare costs.
If we want the economy to function then either we will have to have more children or to bring more people in to work here. Those are the two options. And nobody has successfully managed to get a developed society to do the former*. So either we deal with an insupportable economy or we increase immigration. But neither of the big political parties wants to deal with the Daily Mail screaming at them, so we're going to spend the next few years doing the economically** stupid thing.
* Except Israel. Who we are unlikely to emulate.
** Obviously I haven't touched on the moral case here.
And a fair chunk of this is because Labour and the Conservatives are both backing the idea that immigration is a bad thing. Lib Dems are in favour of being more humane about it than either of them, but only the SNP seem to have a policy that recognises that if immigration doesn't go up the economy is fucked.
Britain is aging. With serious economic consequences, with insufficient people entering the workforce to make up for the people leaving it, and increasing healthcare costs.
If we want the economy to function then either we will have to have more children or to bring more people in to work here. Those are the two options. And nobody has successfully managed to get a developed society to do the former*. So either we deal with an insupportable economy or we increase immigration. But neither of the big political parties wants to deal with the Daily Mail screaming at them, so we're going to spend the next few years doing the economically** stupid thing.
* Except Israel. Who we are unlikely to emulate.
** Obviously I haven't touched on the moral case here.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-01 06:06 pm (UTC)All lies, but Labour aren't interested in actually dealing with the lies of the popular press.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-01 06:12 pm (UTC)I thought somewhere between 30% and 40% of NHS doctors/nurses and other NHS medical staff, not to mention the hospital cleaners (who save lives by preventing Multi Drug Resistant Staph infections)
***were*** immigrants!
I definitely get the feeling from things I've read that if everyone who had migrated to Britain in the last 10 years disappeared tomorrow via a Thanos style snap, the NHS would collapse from lack of staff.
I've seen a lot of news articles about poor countries in Africa and elsewhere complaining about Britain (and also Australia) stealing their nurses away with higher wages,
resulting in an even more desperate shortage of doctors/nurses in developing countries than there would be otherwise.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-01 06:14 pm (UTC)81% British, 8.5% Asian, 5% EU, 4% African.
In London, it's 70% British. So there you're correct.