All we need now is Spandau Ballet

              I am sat writing this the evening before the first full budget of our 2nd Tory chancellor of the last 20 years, Philip Hammond MP. We have now had a full 6 years of Tory chancellors - even if for 5 of those they were supported in Parliament by a weak and ineffective coalition partner in the Lib Dems. So, it is probably worth looking at how well those Tory chancellors and governments have done for us. By us, I mean the great British working classes. I include in that those of us lucky enough to be working, and those of us who for whatever reason can't or aren't working at the moment. It is also right and fair to measure those chancellors against what they set out as their own priorities. After all, it is not fair to only measure them against things they never promised to do.

              Like most economists (and other political writers) it would be really easy for me to fall into jargon and measures that most people don't understand. Who really feels GDP, deficit, debt ratios? Whilst I want to steer clear of these as much as possible - they are necessary to consider. Mainly because these were the measures which George Osborne and then Philip Hammond have measured themselves against. But there are other measures that they feed into - and these do matter. These are how well-off we as individuals feel, and the future prospects for the economy. As well as these, there are other factors that matter - how well funded and effective our public services are; how much tax we pay and how many of us are in gainful employment.

              Coming into power in 2010 was never going to be easy for any government. The world was still reeling from a financial crisis, caused by global banks, that was as severe as The Great Depression. This was impacting pretty much every country - though some worse than others. In the UK because we had bailed out the banks here we had a massive public sector debt (the amount the government owes) that had risen from under 40% to around 65% a the time of the General Election. This was the worst of all worlds - it was driven by an increasing amount of debt from bailing out the banks, a shrinking economy and a growing deficit. The deficit or surplus is the difference between how much the government is earning (basically through taxation) compared to how much it spends (on services for the people). 

             So whichever Chancellor came in had to do one (or all) of 3 things - grow the economy, reduce the deficit and / or reduce the overall debt the government had. The prevailing idea from George Osborne (and presumably supported at that point by the public) was to reduce the deficit, within 5 years, and thereby start to pay down the debt levels. Surely we could return to surplus? After all, we had run a surplus for the overwhelming majority of the Blair years, after the deficit laden years of the Thatcher government. This therefore gave rise to the austerity agenda - the aim being to reduce how much the government spent to get in line with what they earned. 

             But the Tories also inherited a number of other problems and benefits at that time. For example, we had an NHS that was the best in the world, as proven by a number of international comparative studies. This was not only in terms of the service provided, but also how much it cost to provide. Gone were the days of waiting on trolleys in corridors. We had improved standards across schools. Whilst not all of the policies used were particularly popular, they were, mostly, working. Sure Start and EMA were supported by all parties as right and necessary because of the benefits to social well-being. The unemployment rate however had taken a marked increase - meaning fewer people were working - whilst this had stayed stable around the 5% mark for the majority of the Blair years this shot up as a result of the global banking crisis to 7.5%. This had been a massive improvement - during the Thatcher years it had been between 7.5% and 10% for almost the entire period. 

            So across those areas, how have the Tories done? Well, let's look at deficit and debt reduction, unemployment, amount we pay in tax, and those services mentioned above one at a time. 

Debt & Deficit

Since 2010, the debt as a share of GDP (the most reliable measure) has increased from 65% to 85%. In money terms, these 6 years have added £1trillion of debt. That is debt which our government must now pay back. More worryingly, the deficit is still at 3%. We were meant to be rid of both of those things by now. In fact, neither has been delivered on. We are worse off than we were. 

Unemployment

Here, it appears, we have good news. The unemployment rate has seen a steady downward trend. It has moved from a recent high of 8.5% to 4.8%. We should all be celebrating, shouldn't we? Well, it isn't quite so rosy. 700,000 of those new jobs are zero hours contracts. That is 700,000 people who don't know if they will have work from one day to the next. We may as well go back to the days of the Labour exchange. Workers earnings have not increased - which you would expect from high employment. More people can say they have a job, but more than ever don't have enough money coming in to actually survive. So we must remain cautious if we want to say this is good news.

Taxation

The level of government taxation - ie how much they take out of the economy each year to pay for public services has now increased back to levels last seen in 1986. So whilst they have spectacularly failed to reduce the deficit, they have done that whilst taking more of your money from you. Not only that, but the source of that tax has become far less friendly for you. Much less is being taken from big businesses and wealthy individuals. Instead, more tax is being taken from your wallet, by way of increases in VAT and Insurance Premium Tax. They have openly and actively taken from the poor to give to the rich. A true reverse Robin Hood. 

Public services

Well, Sure Start and EMA didn't survive the first year under the Tories. Our health service is once again falling apart. This winter we had the worst performance during the winter since we started measuring such things. Junior doctors went out on strike - previously unheard of. In education there are experts, councillors (of all parties), headteachers and MPs screaming at the government to address the lack of funding. What it the response of the current government? To instead set aside money for their pet project of grammar schools and free schools. Just consider that, any extra money they find is not going to your child's school - but to open a new one that you have no say over. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves, and recruitment of new ones is drying up. We are back to poor services where only the wealthy will be okay. 

                  So, it is amazing that we find ourselves here again. A government that can't get spending under control, where services are so poor they are a laughing stock, where only the wealthy are benefitting. Things haven't been this bad across so many measures since the early 1980s. Some would argue that there are other similarities - for example a Labour leader who is painted as a dangerous leftie by the media and who doesn't seem either willing or able to shake off the tag. What is worrying is that against this backdrop the Tories are still enjoying electoral success. This really should be a wake up call and warning to the Labour Party. The question is whether they are listening - or repeating the internal fights of the 1980s. Only time will tell. The problem is, how much of a country will we have left at the end of it?

Another Leadership Election

Sad that we are at this point really. I think it is pretty clear that nobody wants to be at this point. The membership of the Labour party certainly don't. The PLP certainly don't - hence their aborted coup. Jeremy Corbyn himself seems not to either. But, we find ourselves at one of the most monumental points in national history looking inwards at what sort of party we want to be. It seems to be what we do. Apart from a few years from 1994 onwards when the party was gripped tightly and controlled centrally. But even that left a lot of people unhappy. 

Of course, after the abortive attempt by Angela Eagle to take power from Jeremy Corbyn we are now left with a straight two way fight. Clearly, this shows that the PLP have learned from last year when 3 candidates occupied the right of the party leaving just one left winger. So we all have a couple of decisions to make: what sort of party do we want, and what sort of government do we want to offer the electorate when the next General Election is called. But both of those are tied up into – who do we want to lead the party. (Before I write this, I would like to silently thank a new friend of mine who has helped me work through my own thoughts on this point. I would probably give him joint credit for the piece – but given that anyone who puts the head above the parapet in the Labour Party at the moment is liable to have it hacked off. So I will claim all of these views as my own.)

For me, what sort of party do we want is the first question we should ask. I only recently joined the Labour Party. Not because of some late awakening. But because I didn’t feel either the need to join until we lost the last general election AND because I never felt until then that the Labour party really addressed my left of centre views for most of my adult life. Certainly, during 1997 and 2010 the Labour government did a lot of good things. We shouldn’t deny that – Sure Start centres, increased funding of the NHS, a buoyant economy.

But equally, they committed some really grievous sins during that time. Public sector reform in NHS and education through marketization, burdening the country with huge PFI debts, overseas wars, failing to really understand and control what was driving the buoyancy in the economy. They become too close to big businesses who told them “Don’t worry, we know what’s right for the country, we’ll help you free of charge with policy decisions”. For this reason they didn’t see the global economic collapse of 2008 coming towards them. Mind you, very few did. What is genuinely sad is that many of them still don’t accept the things they got wrong.

Part of the reason that the party went in this direction was the absolute belief amongst many in the government that we had to go this was to stay in power. That the only way to win votes was to buy in to this. I wonder how true that is. How many voters really sat at home thinking “well, I’d vote for them, but only if they introduce an element of competition into our school system”? Sadly, the party was so well controlled that a lot of dissent from members and a minority of MPs was drowned out – not allowed to be heard. We were sold Blairism as a way of stopping the Tories being in power. And found ourselves wearing their clothes.

I don’t want to be that sort of party. I don’t want to be with a party that will sell its founding and basic principles for a taste of power. I want to be in a party that holds its socialist principles dearly. But we must be willing to make some sacrifices to the gods of necessity. And we must have being able to implement our policies as a fundamental goal. This means a party that wants to be in power. It must be a party that never forgets what we are here to achieve for those who most need us in society.

But to do that we need to live by the old Socrates quote “The only way to live with honour in this world is to be in all things that which you appear to be”. So if we want to be a party that can push policies that stand up for fairness, for social justice, for democracy and for equality of all people we have to be all of those things internally. That means that we can’t be seen as a PLP that will ignore the choice of their members. One where there is no whiff of racism or sexism or any other discrimination. And one where we can have open, honest and passionate discourse without trying to silence those with whom we disagree. My worry is that over the current debate we have lost many of those things.

This is a charge that can be levelled at both wings of the party and a number of various groups. But for me the behaviour of many in the PLP has been simply unconscionable.

I am not in the parliamentary Labour party. I am not an insider who sees how things are working in Westminster. I can only pick up what we see and hear from the reports and media. That puts me in the same boat as the overwhelming majority of Labour members. We can not know what happens on a daily basis there. I watch Jeremy Corbyn sit on interview shows and say that he is willing to speak to MPs. Then MPs – including many who seemed initially supportive – tell tales of not being able to reach him. Meanwhile MPs talk of policy hold ups, press gaffes and dithering over decisions. But some of those MPs have had a goal of removing Jeremy Corbyn since it became obvious he would win the leadership election. But we can’t point that accusation at everybody. I do not believe it is possible that 150 Labour MPs have been secretly conspiring for the last year for this to happen. It simply doesn’t pass the bullshit test.

So we are left with a seemingly unsquare-able circle. Either Jeremy Corbyn is a habitual and well practiced liar who can make whole swathes of the party believe what is patently untrue. Or the Labour Party is full of two faced backstabbers who are lying to our faces. Or maybe a third option – which is that the problems are not with Jeremy Corbyn himself, but rather with the team around him. But ultimately, the man who picks the team must bear that responsibility. Therefore, I would suggest that if Jeremy Corbyn does win this election, he needs to consider a real rapprochement with the Party. Not just inviting them back in, but making some of the changes being asked for, including reviewing his personal team. That also means he must reach out further than his core supporters. Whilst rallies are amazing spectacles, he is only reaching those people who would follow him anyway.

So if that is the sort of party I want (and I believe for the most part we are that party, even if we forget it sometimes), what sort of government should we offer the electorate? I think quite clearly the history of the last election is that we need to offer an alternative to the tories. Wearing their policies but trying to look as if we are slightly nicer clearly doesn’t work. So, we do need to offer social democratic policies – ones that we believe in. There is clear support already for many of the things that Corbyn has said. But there has been too little meat on the bones. We need clear, well argued policies that relate to the problems people in the country have. Whilst issues such as Trident, Palestine, Globalisation are important, they are not the issues which people feel in their every day lives. This is not the time to fight the fights that we lost within the party a generation ago.

Our focus should be on poverty, living standards, injustice, social inequality and aspirations. Our leader should not be so naïve as to repeatedly work on to the end of “rope a dope” tactics in TV interviews on topics and arguments well versed for 40 years. The agenda must be set by the Labour Party – this is what we are offering the electorate. It is different and better than the opposition. We also need to re-frame the conversation away from talking about the tories as our enemy. We have lost votes to UKIP and the SNP. We should be talking much more, at all levels in the party about our real enemies – inequality, poor corporate  behaviour, injustice, lack of opportunity. They should ALWAYS be the enemies we call out. Not a feud with a particular party. A large number of those people who voted to leave Europe did so out of a sense of anger that whilst we are constantly told how much better off we are, large swathes of the country don’t feel that way. Imagine what we could achieve if we tapped into that anger and said to those people “let us be your voice”. Or we can go back to being angry with media bias and focussing our energy on that.

Well, almost 1600 words and no mention of who I will be voting for. So I want a party that holds its socialist principles dear, but one that wants to be in power to deliver policies based on them. A party that is open, democratic and welcoming to all. We should offer a government to people that doesn’t just look like another load of middle aged men in nice suits offering platitudes whilst helping the rich stay rich. Fairness, social justice, democracy and reducing inequality – with a chance of implementing those.

It is for those reasons that I will not be voting for Owen Smith. Two big things stand out for me.

Firstly, if we want to let people know that we are serious about listening to them, and addressing what they need instead of simply being part of a machine they are angry with, we have to stick with something different. If we want to show that we believe in democracy and the votes and views of individuals we can’t allow career politicians in London to decide who is the leader of a party which is meant to stand up for those without power. Those eligible to vote in the election have chosen once Jeremy Corbyn. They need to know that the choice rests with the membership, not the elite.

Secondly, I am not convinced that he is truly for the policies he is currently espousing – or that he can differentiate the party sufficiently from the tories. My worry is truly that come the next election he would have moved away from the “left” and back to the new centre – which is further right-wing than it has ever been in history. Could he deliver a government? Potentially. Could Owen Smith deliver the sort of policies that the Labour party wants to see? I don’t believe he has that in him.

So I will be supporting Jeremy Corbyn this leadership election. Not because I necessarily believe that he is the best possible leader for the Labour Party. More that he is a better choice than Owen Smith. But also, to send a message to the PLP – this is the party of the members, fighting all the ills that people in society face. Not a plaything that is there to keep you employed.

          

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled

               I am of a certain age where there are some films that absolutely define me. Most people could guess my age pretty accurately, given that my favourite films include Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Jerry Maguire, Top Gun, Die Hard and The Usual Suspects. In the last of those there is a brilliant line delivered by Kevin Spacey as Verbal Kint – “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist” (If you are a young person, I would suggest watching that movie straight away, along with Fight Club).

                As a member of the Labour Party, at the moment I feel a great deal of sadness and anger in terms of where my party is. I am at heart an unreconstructed socialist, who has wound his way back here via a variety of other views being tried on for size. The ongoing / stalling / necessary / evil / failed / righteous* (delete as appropriate) coup has really shown the worst of our politics on all sides. What is equally saddening has been that within the Labour Party and the wider bit of society that sees itself as left-leaning we have seen the worst of absolutist thinking and “othering” behaviour. You are either a Corbynista or a Blairite. You are Progress or Momentum. It is black and white, chalk and cheese. For god’s sake whatever you do, pick a side. Certainly you must not see anything in between (don’t worry, I am not going to use the phrase “a third way”). You are either for or against – and that view will completely and entirely colour whether something is acceptable or not – not the act itself.

                It is because of this thinking that I have separately heard a wide variety of possibilities in terms of the underlying cause of the coup in the Labour Party. It is either a right wing coup orchestrated by Portland (http://www.prweek.com/article/1401004/portland-forced-deny-involvement-plot-oust-jeremy-corbyn) on behalf of the permanent political class who rely on voter apathy (http://www.thecanary.co/2016/07/02/the-real-reason-the-permanent-political-class-is-trying-to-topple-jeremy-corbyn/ ). Or alternatively, it is evidence of the party fighting back against an existential threat of Momentum Entryists trying to steal the party (http://uk.businessinsider.com/corbyn-could-split-labour-and-create-a-new-socialist-party-2016-6?r=US&IR=T). When you look at either of these theories they BOTH have an awful lot of “if and then” logic in them.

                The quote from The Usual Suspects comes from an original from Charles Baudelaire. But given the above theories, if either of them prove true, it will certainly need to be changed. So, depending on where you are on that perfect duality where any behaviour is allowed as long as it justifies the ends, you can either have: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was after failing to convince 3 MPs involved in the plot to stand aside so there was one candidate standing against Corbyn to not fully engage in the EU referendum; stop the newspapers reporting what Jeremy Corbyn was doing during the referendum campaign; stoke hatred of Jeremy Corbyn by people he works with in the House of Commons; convince almost all of his shadow cabinet to resign in a timed way one after the other (and the press to report it in that order); convince other MPs in the party that it was all his fault; pass a vote of no confidence; but be so incompetent as to botch a leadership challenge by being unclear on what the rules are; to avoid Tony Blair being impeached for war crimes”.

                I am going to go out on a limb here – if you could manage to make 90% of that happen without problem then you would have been able to control the Blairite candidates, and you would have known that you could push through the coup by way of Leadership challenge. Was there anything as disappointing as seeing Neil Kinnock brandishing a print out of the Labour Party rules on the Andrew Marr show saying that Jeremy Corbyn definitely wouldn’t be on the ballot for leader because the rules could stop it? A couple of things show how silly that is – if you know you can get rid of someone through a leadership challenge you go down that route rather than publicly humiliating someone on front of their colleagues. Secondly, sane people do not walk around with a certificate to show they are sane. If you are going on air with a copy of the rules in your pocket, you are not sure the rules really support you. You are using them the same way a drunk uses a lamp post – more for your own support than illumination.

                Oh yes, two possible changes to the quotation. For those of you who are Blairites (and remember – you must be one or the other) “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing MPs who didn’t support his views to nominate him to get on to the paper; then to have hundreds of thousands of entryists prepared to spring into action and join the Labour Party (myself included); then get them all to vote for him; convince the other contenders to not drop out so their vote was split; hang on to power through both local elections and an EU referendum whilst seizing control of the Labour Party machinery; manufacture outrage within the party to create a split in the party (by way of smearing a PR company with links to Tony Blair) ; in order to get all of those people you have convinced to join the party 12 months earlier to now leave the party and join a newly set up Momentum party; convince the Union Leaders to come with you and bring their members; and on the way get an establishment judge to find that Tony Blair does have a case to answer over the Iraq War; call for and get an impeachment against him; thus destroying the Blairite Labour Party and start afresh with a clean left wing Momentum party”.

                Again, stretching this a bit but maybe there are easier ways to do that. Quite frankly, the thought that a government inquiry into a decision to go to war would ever (or would ever be allowed, take your pick) to find that a Prime Minister of this country had performed in a way that could lead to criminal charges against that PM seems a long way from the truth. If it was going to do that it wouldn’t have been delayed so much. There are not enough people in Politics, irrespective of parties who want to see that happen. I realise that I am making myself a hostage to fortune by calling that before Wednesday. The whole project would be based on the outcome of other things – not a successful strategy usually.

                There is a well-worn approach when considering different theories called Ockham’s razor (or maybe Occam’s Razor depending on your spelling) which isn’t proof of logic of an argument, but is a good starting point – the theory is “Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected”. In other words – the idea with the fewest parts should be your starting point. Looking at those competing viewpoints above anybody outside of the debate would be forgiven for saying they both smell a bit fishy.

What is interesting is that both sides of the argument are giving the appearance that any means is justified because their ends are just. So Jeremy Corbyn allegedly refusing to take Tom Watson’s calls (although clearly these calls must have come after the Glastonbury weekend), the public defrocking of Jeremy Corbyn in parliament which was only second to Cersei’s walk of shame in its gratuitousness, threats for mandatory reselection and taking legal advice on whether MPs can keep the Labour party name whilst splitting from the leadership are all acceptable weapons. As well as that we have entered a lockdown phase where everything Corbyn has done is right OR everything Corbyn has done is wrong. Whether this is what you think or not, it is how it is playing out in the media. And both sides are looking at their own constituencies as an example of them being right, as if this is a binary decision “we have the members on our side so we must be right – is democracy” versus “we have the voters as well as the party members to think about so we must be right – is democracy”. Yeah, because voting on things democratically has been working out so well for us in the last few weeks.

                What is needed now is calm heads and moving away from that sort of thinking – and pretty quickly. We need to save the Labour party and the ideals it stands for. Unfortunately, that would mean both sides would have to learn and grow up a bit. Let’s get rid of the conspiracy theories, and stick to things that we do know or at least can agree on. There must be some of those mustn’t there? Or are we so far down the rabbit hole we can’t find any common ground.  I have tried to list these in order of increasing contentiousness.

1.       Leaving the EU referendum provides immediate short term risks that the Labour Party needs to be ready for

2.       As a party we are better off together, looking outward rather than fighting ourselves

3.       Our enemies are those who oppose social justice, fairness, workers rights, an end to poverty (look, I am trying to be cool but quite obviously that is code for the Tories and UKIP)

4.       The PLP never wanted Jeremy Corbyn as their leader, and some have openly attacked him, some have been half-hearted and some have supported him

5.       The membership did want him – even without us nasty Entryists, the full members of Labour voted overwhelmingly for Jeremy Corbyn

6.       Having a vote of no confidence in him which carries no constitutional weight whatsoever is a clear indication that you are too nervous to run the gauntlet of a leadership election when that would have been quicker and easier. Stop pretending we are dicks who don’t get that

7.       Jeremy has achieved some things – particularly government u-turns around education cuts; benefit cuts; police funding etc.

8.       Jeremy Corbyn (or possibly the team around him) has made mistakes and what is clear is that something does need to change. Anyone willing to cling to their rationality could see that mentioning ISIS and the state of Israel in the same sentence was going to be a bloody stupid idea

  What isn’t clear is whether the aim of the PLP is to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn (the person / the team) or whether it is to get rid a left wing agenda of policies. This is going to be really crucial in winning many of the party over to looking at a way ahead, potentially without Jeremy Cobryn as leader if that is what it takes. For many people (ie me, and trying to claim the moral high ground) we joined because we were attracted to the agenda rather than necessarily for the person. For those on the Corbyn side it may be time to accept that a new leader is needed – but one who can carry on his views and direction of travel for the party (although let’s be honest, no-one thinks that is Angela Eagle). How we handle this WILL define how we handle the upcoming months and years of turmoil in the country and the next general election. This will therefore help to decide how successful we can be in standing up for the values of the Labour Party. Perhaps, in that we can take something positive from this. It reminds me of my most favourite film quote from Fight Club, delivered by Brad Pitt “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight”.

If Immigration is your answer, someone has given you the wrong question

                Well, there are only 3 weeks left (ish) until probably the biggest vote any of us able to vote will take for the next 50 years. The EU referendum. As a topic, for a lot of people the single biggest turn off since the first time they realised that their parents had sex. The reason for that disengagement is varied, and consists of several strands according to various insights and polls produced for our delectation. For some people it is a lack of hard facts, for others it is the language and behaviour of both sides of the argument – spurious figures, absolute certainties shared, fears mongered. There is also some concern over the topics that the debate seems to now centre on – immigration, the economy and control / democracy.

                Now this is only a little blog, so I am going to focus in on just one of these areas – and the one that still a lot of people feel uncomfortable talking about – immigration. It is probably the most pertinent and divisive of the areas. After all, where were all these democracy warriors when the referendum on proportional representation was happening? Probably best to set a few ground rules for myself though. Firstly, talking about immigration, and the volumes of immigration, and the process for managing immigration is NOT racist. Some views might be, but the subject itself isn’t. It worries a lot of people, and so is well worthy of consideration. Secondly, in any discussion about remain or leave there are a limited number of hard facts. There is only evidence and expectation, assessment and opinion. But where possible I will try to bring in what facts there are.

                A lot of the arguments about immigration really focus on one thing – the sheer VOLUME of inwards migration of people from Europe and our ability to control it to suit our needs. Indeed the UKIP Leader Nigel Farage has gone so far as to claim that Britain “is in the grip of an immigration crisis” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-34348834 ) and that we can’t do anything about it until we leave Europe – as they set our immigration policy. But we need to pick this apart in to chunks that we can consider, and see what stacks up.

                So, we should really look at whether immigration has increased to the UK firstly, and whether Britain is particularly special in this. Next we need to define what a crisis would be and whether what we are experiencing is one, and if we are, is it being caused by immigration. Finally, we should look at specifically the impact of Europe on that migration level, and whether leaving the EU would help.

                So, is immigration higher now than historically? Well, almost certainly. Various studies have been done on long term trends on migration. Just between 1960 and 2000 the growth in the number of people living outside of their birth country is 100 million. That is 100 million more migrants in just 40 years (http://www.jstor.org/stable/27645348?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents ). Clearly, that is a huge amount. But is this particularly surprising? Simply factoring in advances in travel, our economies (and how we work) and the increase in the middle class, you would expect more people to be living, working and settling overseas. So it is not unfair to say that we are seeing more immigration now than before. But this is part of a global trend. The problem with trying to put barriers in place for inwards migration is that those same barriers then go up for outward migration too.

                Are we taking the brunt of this immigration (from a European perspective) in the UK? Certainly there has been an ongoing attempt by the media to create a “moral panic” about Eastern European flooding to the UK to either steal our low paid jobs or live off our benefits system (or from some people, confusingly, live off our benefits AND steal our jobs). Actually, when we look across Europe we are pretty much middle of the pack in how many immigrants we have living in our country. This graph is from 2009, but is a good indication:

( http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/sep/07/immigration-europe-foreign-citizens ). So whilst the overall average level for the EU is 6.4%, for us it is 6.6%. Hardly evidence that we are an outlier in this case.

                Still, size isn’t everything. It is still possible this is a crisis. What should really decide that is the impact it has on the receiving country. So even though we are not receiving lots more immigrants than other countries it is how they are affecting the indigenous populations that can really have costs (and in some cases benefits). In fact the official Vote Leave campaign points out two areas in particular – the  NHS and schools ( http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/our_case ). But also in other areas people genuinely have concerns – availability of housing, access to jobs and the impact on our culture. All of these have been raised as problems of uncontrolled immigration.

                It is a quite simple supply / demand question. You have to do one of two things - either increase supply or reduce demand. "Get control of our borders" rhetoric is about a belief that you can reduce demand (but there are strong arguments it wouldn't have any impact). The alternative is to increase supply of all of these things.

1) The majority view of experts is that just in order to stand still in terms of housing we need to build 250,000 new homes each year. No government has achieved that since 1980. In fact, since the economic crisis in 2008 housebuilding has tanked (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-house-building table 211). And I am not suggesting we concrete over the green belt – there are £12 BILLION of empty homes in the North West alone (http://www.mancunianmatters.co.uk/content/070811937-housing-crisis-%C2%A312billion-worth-homes-lie-empty-across-north-west-according-report )

2) When the last coalition government had an opportunity to secure the NHS and pump extra money in, they instead pushed ahead with a costly top-down re-organisation. One which makes the NHS much more privatisation-ready. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31145600 )

3) LAs are no longer allowed to open new schools where they are needed - these can only be opened at the mercy of the open access academy system. This is purely to break the link between those dangerous left wing county councils and school leadership.

4) LA funding and social services funding has been strangled on the back of an austerity drive which has ADDED to the national debt, not taken away from it.

5) We are currently told by the government that we have the lowest unemployment figures in a long time at 5.1% and holding (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36320028 ).

So really, this crisis is not one made from too much demand, but one created by too little supply. Quite simply, our governments have created this issue. And migrants are a handy scapegoat for us to blame. Of course, all of these things have to be paid for, and have a cost to the economy too. How can we do that?

Well, migrants are actually net CONTRIBUTORS to our economy (http://www.cityam.com/213058/eu-immigrants-contribute-463-second-uk-economy ) – in other words having migrants actually means we have more money to pay for services even after taking account of the cost of providing services and benefits to them. Where has this extra money gone? Over the period of tory-imposed austerity that has led to many of these cuts the government have managed to find the space to cut corporation tax to 18% - even though there is zero evidence base this brings more companies and employment. The real pressure on services has been created by the recent governments this country has had – none more so than the coalition and current governments. I don’t deny that there are crises in all of these areas – but the cause is much closer to home.

So, a fairly fact informed consideration of immigration (I hope) and we haven’t yet mentioned EU Brexit OR been racist (I REALLY hope). We should probably turn to one of those two topics now – Brexit. How much of our immigration comes from within the EU as part of freedom of movement rules? Again, trying to arm ourselves with the best facts available, the ONS reckons that EU migration makes up less than half of our inwards migration (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/migrationstatisticsquarterlyreport/may2016 ). Not only that but MORE of the EU citizens coming here have definite jobs to go to than ever before (about 60%). So most of our migration comes from outside the EU, and those from within the EU come here with definite jobs. So if we could stop EU immigration we would only be stopping half of the inflow – and a half with a good track record of helping our economy.

Maybe that would be enough? Perhaps cutting immigration in half would allow our underfunded services to get back to an even keel over time, house building could pick up etc. Well, there are still a couple of major challenges with that suggestion.

The first is that a lot of those services (particularly the NHS) rely on European immigrants to fulfil their staffing requirements (http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/26/nhs-foreign-nationals-immigration-health-service ). A lot of other areas do too – construction being another. Not a great idea when you are trying to increase housebuilding.

The second problem is that leaving the EU does not guarantee that we would be able to refuse rules on freedom of movement if we wanted to trade with Europe. All of their other local trading partners who are NOT members of the EU have had this stipulation placed on them. It is almost certainly one that the EU would place on us too. So Brexit would not in any way guarantee us the ability to stop EU migrants, whilst at the same time carrying lots of other risks. Quite simply, Brexit do not know what would happen with free movement of Labour.

So, there you have it then. It is not racist to be worried about the crises in public services, in housing and in jobs. The problem is that you have been given the wrong cause of the problem by political parties and media alike. It is much easier for you to be told the problem is economic migrants (and by extension the EU). Actually, the problem has been our own leaders. So if you are still not sure which way to vote (and that will be many people given the way the campaigns have run) do think carefully. But do one thing right – don’t make your decision based on immigration. It is the wrong argument to be focussed on.