Anti-Migrant Snake Oil

People should be free to come and go

EXTRACT: In fact, nothing the SWP says about Ukip or immigration makes any logical sense. We also read in the aforementioned articles about the urgency of resisting racism “from Ukip and the mainstream parties”. In which case, why set up an organisation (ie, Stand Up To Ukip) that implies we should vote for anybody except Ukip? On the other hand, we find out that the SWP has “always argued that it’s impossible to have immigration controls that aren’t racist - we have to oppose all of them”. Very praiseworthy. Hang on though. The comrades support the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, which is only opposed to “racist” immigration controls: ie, presumably Tusc (like No2EU) is in favour of non-racist immigration controls, which are “impossible”. We look forward to the next SWP central committee missive on this issue.

However, what is qualitatively different about Ukip concerns what you actually do about migration. If you genuinely think migration is a problem, for whatever reason, then there is only one logical solution - you have to pull out of the EU. No ifs, no buts. As Cameron ruefully noted, the fact of the matter is that there are treaty obligations concerning the free movement of labour that will not magically go away - Berlin, for one, will make sure of that. Therefore Ukip is quite right when it says if Cameron was sincere in his previous pledge to get migration down to the “tens of thousands” by 2015, then obviously you have to do precisely what Ukip calls for - come out of Europe, erect border controls and take the consequences, which will be considerable. But, as we all know, Cameron’s pledge was a foolish and idiotic bit of posturing - he never had a hope in hell of getting migration down to such levels, and everyone knew it (including him).

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