UK politics: ConHome manifesto

09/09/2014

With a great flourish, but with remarkably little publicity, the Conservative Home website has published a ten-point manifesto for the next election.

CH thus proposes "ten policies to make a difference", claiming the manifesto to be "for ordinary working people". It sets out a programme of reforms designed to support "home ownership, full employment and savings for all". Of particular interest to us, though, is a new deal on immigration, in which we are told that:

We need to stop talking about immigration as if it is all the same thing – with the same costs and benefits for everyone. This is manifestly untrue. Different kinds of immigration have markedly different impacts on different parts of the British population.

The authors, which include former editor Tim Montgomerie, note that arguments about the size of the overall net economic benefit of immigration rumble on, but they believe government policy should encourage immigration when it is to the advantage of Britain's ordinary working people and discourage it when it isn't. On this basis, CH then proposes:

That Britain regains full control of its borders – in particular, as a top priority in any renegotiation of the terms of Britain's membership of the European Union (or by withdrawing from it altogether).

A points-based system should be used to prioritise the immigration of workers with skills in short supply; assessments would be made by the same local bodies placed in charge of skills budgets (see below) – whose first duty would be to maximise the supply of skills from British citizens.

New immigrants would be required to purchase their own health and welfare cover through a system of social insurance – to which their employers would also contribute.

Full access to public services, benefits and tax credits would have to be earned – with access dependent on reaching a threshold level of tax contributions. The squeeze on "benefits tourism" would allow a less restrictive policy on visas for tourists and foreign students – greater numbers of which would be a boost to our economy and British "soft power".

CH then notes that, while most ordinary working people are fully exposed to the competition that comes from migrants, the same is not always true further up the income scale – where various professional restrictive practices act as a barrier.

Given the general enthusiasm that Britain's "top people" tend to have for liberal immigration policies, CH adds, they should be invited to contribute ideas to a deregulatory programme to open up their professions to the full benefit.

Turning to the general premise, which brings us into the fray, CH wants Britain to regain full control of its borders – "in particular, as a top priority in any renegotiation of the terms of Britain's membership of the European Union (or by withdrawing from it altogether)".

As we have pointed out so many times, though, removal of the "freedom of movement" provisions of the EU treaties are non-negotiable. If CH wants "Britain to regain full control of its borders", then we will have to withdraw from the EU altogether. There are no half measures. We will have to leave the EU.

But it is here that the problems start to multiply. If we unilaterally close down our borders, and withdraw from the treaties, we could see all the current UK citizens, relying on residential rights in EU member states, being stripped of those rights and being forced to return to the UK.

This is about 2.5 million people, but we could of course retaliated by chucking out all citizens of EU member states (other than those who have sought and been given UK citizenship). That would be fun.

Of course, the likelihood is that we would invoke Article 50, and then have to deal with all the ramifications of leaving. If we are to insist on closing borders, though, that means we quit the Single Market and have no chance of piggy-backing onto the EEA agreement. Freedom of movement is a condition of staying signed up.

Where else we would then go with the Article 50 negotiations is anyone's guess, but the likelihood of the "colleagues" being sympathetic to the UK, its wants or demands, is slight. We will be on the back foot, and unlikely to gain many concessions.

The thing is, for all that, leaving the EU does not regain us control of our borders. To start with, there are our internal administration arrangements – through what was once the Borders Agency – which stand between us and a million and more illegal immigrants. And there are more on their way.

So far, just the physical processes of regaining control over our borders seem to have eluded us, and they desperately need our attention. But leaving the EU isn't going to make any difference. This is something we need to do ourselves.

But then there is the issue of family reunification, which accounts variously for about seventeen percent of our inwards migration, and for most of the continued immigration from Kashmir. But leaving the EU isn't going to make any difference.

This is down to the ECHR and, to get out of that, we are going to have to renounce the Convention of Human Rights, and leave the Council of Europe. Interestingly, CH doesn't mention this.

Then, of course, there is the 1951 Refugee Convention, and the 1967 Protocol. These have considerable influence on the way we handle asylum seekers in our country. But leaving the EU isn't going to make any difference. To change that, we are going to have to abandon the Convention.

If we do not want to go that far, we will have to rely on the application of the Dublin Regulations. Here, leaving the EU is going to make the difference. We will no longer be part of the European system and without the support of the "colleagues", we will find life even more difficult than it already is.

For all that, on leaving the EU, we will at least be able to exclude migrants from EU member states. Our economy may be a shambles and our trading agreements in chaos but we get to decide who stays in Britain – assuming our physical border controls are actually working.

But this does not actually remove the need for migrants. As the Guardian points out, such has been the collapse of our education system, poor reading "could cost UK £32 billion in growth by 2025".

In the recent past, we have been able to rely on a constant supply of well-educated central and east-European immigrants. This has kept the effects of the education collapse at bay. Without new immigrants, that loss of £32 billion may become a reality. We may, after all, have to admit a constant supply of well-educated central and east-European immigrants, negating the reasons for leaving the EU.

Standing back and looking again at this issue, the reality is that leaving the EU does not afford the relief from our immigration problems that many think it will. The problems are more complex and diverse than is generally imagined. But the upside is that there is much we can do and need to do without leaving the EU.

Over and above what we've mentioned here, there is a whole range of "push" and "pull" factors that we could address, some of which are already in hand, and some of which can be implemented over time.

The question we need to consider, therefore, is whether we can do better than the marginal advantages of cutting off freedom of movement, thereby occasioning a forced exit from the EU under less than advantageous terms. We need to ask whether a negotiated solution could give us a better overall result than unilateral forced action.

This is not an easy question to answer. On the other hand, simple solutions may look beguilingly attractive, but they are not necessarily the best way of managing our affairs.

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