I wouldn't argue that economics has no relationship to nationalism or any other sense of group belonging, but it seems an unnecessary contortion to emphasise it here. Most groups throughout history have a preference for their in-group, and most Brits have wanted migration to go down throughout the period where we've seen hundreds of thousands of migrants arrive each year. Government also appears to have been moving migrants to places previously less impacted by migration, which has contributed to the recent crisis around hotels.
I'm sure all this would be less fraught if people's personal finances were in better nick, but the problem isn't capitalism: it's migration policy.
The problem to me seems to be more about _regional_ inequality than _class_ inequality, in that it is poor _places_ rather than poor _people_ who vote for far-right populists (likely because it is easy to sell racist "Great Replacement" type propaganda in dying villages and towns).
Thatcherism is likely a big part of the problem in that it trapped people in economically non-functional places: it allowed northern industries to die, but refused to change planning laws that created a housing shortage in the south and thus prevented northerners from moving south.
The answer to the decline of a sense of community (whether it’s because of the decline if the Church, TUs, the traditional factory system, loss of community facilities etc) is to help construct new communities. However so much of current policy doesn’t seem interested: see the reform of local government structures rather than addressing local government powers and financing, the debate on housing which is generally about numbers. There were some positive noises in the Devolution bill. Can’t help feeling that the loss of Rayner and the sacking of MacMahon show that the faction driving the government aren’t much interested is such things because they can’t control them.
It’s a lot more simple actually: they are protesting outside migrant hotels because the individuals inside (note: not the system) is sexually harassing people in the community. If the people were wealthier, they would move away from the affected areas, instead of having to make a stand. The root cause is therefore still migration, not economics.
I suspect that the fact that almost all the asylum seekers are young men (because the Tories deliberately shut off legal asylum routes, and young men are more willing to risk their lives crossing the Channel in unseaworthy inflatables) may be a factor in why they are disproportionately prone to commit both crimes in general and sexual harassment in particular.
The Tories did not shut off legal asylum routes. Legal immigration exploded during the last couple years of Tory government and was never particularly low to begin with.
And yes, the majority of illegal migrants are men, many of whom are criminal and/or rapey. What is your point here?
The legal immigration that "exploded during the last couple years of Tory government" were people arriving on work or student visas, not asylum seekers.
Yes, and when the visas expired many would then claim asylum. It’s a de facto ‘legal route’ because the duties that the British state has imposed on itself mean there is very little that can be done once someone is here and requests asylum. It also means that many people who might have otherwise considered the small boats route instead come by aeroplane. It’s a trick to try and reduce the illegal arrivals number, whilst keeping the steady flow going.
But this is all beside the point anyway. The fact is that ‘asylum seekers’ commit sexual offences at a rate far above the British average no matter how they entered. This would not be any different if there were legal routes and a couple of women entered along with the men.
The Tories obviously wanted to deport (or dump in Rwanda) _genuine_ asylum seekers, which is why they slowed asylum processing to a crawl, allowing asylum seekers to languish for years in taxpayer-funded hotels where they could be weaponised for propaganda purposes (although obvious Reform rather than Tories were the beneficiary there).
If they just wanted to deport bogus asylum seekers (and your asylum-applying graduates probably _are_ mostly bogus, as their main countries of origin are Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria: not the hellholes that most of the small-boat migrants come from) then they could easily do that by speeding up the processing.
And if you're going to refuse genuine asylum seekers based on a belief that they're disproportionately likely to be sexual predators (and for an inherent reason, not that they're lots of young men separated from their families) then where would it stop, given that you've already violated international treaties by doing so?
Grooming gangs were after all mostly not made up of immigrants, but of the British-born descendants of Pakistani immigrants from the '50s and '60s, so I could easily see how we could go from deporting seekers to ethnically cleansing Britain of Muslims.
Anyone who has studied international economics knows about the Impossible Trinity.
("Fixed exchange rates, free movement of capital, national monetary sovereignty, pick two!")
But aren't a lot of the problems our societies are now facing (such as paying higher taxes for poorer public services, and high immigration with the resulting anti-immigrant backlash) down to a similar Impossible Trinity in the field of demographics?
Stable or falling populations, long life expectancy, high workers-to-retirees ratio, pick two!
I wouldn't argue that economics has no relationship to nationalism or any other sense of group belonging, but it seems an unnecessary contortion to emphasise it here. Most groups throughout history have a preference for their in-group, and most Brits have wanted migration to go down throughout the period where we've seen hundreds of thousands of migrants arrive each year. Government also appears to have been moving migrants to places previously less impacted by migration, which has contributed to the recent crisis around hotels.
I'm sure all this would be less fraught if people's personal finances were in better nick, but the problem isn't capitalism: it's migration policy.
The problem to me seems to be more about _regional_ inequality than _class_ inequality, in that it is poor _places_ rather than poor _people_ who vote for far-right populists (likely because it is easy to sell racist "Great Replacement" type propaganda in dying villages and towns).
Thatcherism is likely a big part of the problem in that it trapped people in economically non-functional places: it allowed northern industries to die, but refused to change planning laws that created a housing shortage in the south and thus prevented northerners from moving south.
The answer to the decline of a sense of community (whether it’s because of the decline if the Church, TUs, the traditional factory system, loss of community facilities etc) is to help construct new communities. However so much of current policy doesn’t seem interested: see the reform of local government structures rather than addressing local government powers and financing, the debate on housing which is generally about numbers. There were some positive noises in the Devolution bill. Can’t help feeling that the loss of Rayner and the sacking of MacMahon show that the faction driving the government aren’t much interested is such things because they can’t control them.
It’s a lot more simple actually: they are protesting outside migrant hotels because the individuals inside (note: not the system) is sexually harassing people in the community. If the people were wealthier, they would move away from the affected areas, instead of having to make a stand. The root cause is therefore still migration, not economics.
I suspect that the fact that almost all the asylum seekers are young men (because the Tories deliberately shut off legal asylum routes, and young men are more willing to risk their lives crossing the Channel in unseaworthy inflatables) may be a factor in why they are disproportionately prone to commit both crimes in general and sexual harassment in particular.
The Tories did not shut off legal asylum routes. Legal immigration exploded during the last couple years of Tory government and was never particularly low to begin with.
And yes, the majority of illegal migrants are men, many of whom are criminal and/or rapey. What is your point here?
The legal immigration that "exploded during the last couple years of Tory government" were people arriving on work or student visas, not asylum seekers.
Yes, and when the visas expired many would then claim asylum. It’s a de facto ‘legal route’ because the duties that the British state has imposed on itself mean there is very little that can be done once someone is here and requests asylum. It also means that many people who might have otherwise considered the small boats route instead come by aeroplane. It’s a trick to try and reduce the illegal arrivals number, whilst keeping the steady flow going.
But this is all beside the point anyway. The fact is that ‘asylum seekers’ commit sexual offences at a rate far above the British average no matter how they entered. This would not be any different if there were legal routes and a couple of women entered along with the men.
The Tories obviously wanted to deport (or dump in Rwanda) _genuine_ asylum seekers, which is why they slowed asylum processing to a crawl, allowing asylum seekers to languish for years in taxpayer-funded hotels where they could be weaponised for propaganda purposes (although obvious Reform rather than Tories were the beneficiary there).
If they just wanted to deport bogus asylum seekers (and your asylum-applying graduates probably _are_ mostly bogus, as their main countries of origin are Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria: not the hellholes that most of the small-boat migrants come from) then they could easily do that by speeding up the processing.
And if you're going to refuse genuine asylum seekers based on a belief that they're disproportionately likely to be sexual predators (and for an inherent reason, not that they're lots of young men separated from their families) then where would it stop, given that you've already violated international treaties by doing so?
Grooming gangs were after all mostly not made up of immigrants, but of the British-born descendants of Pakistani immigrants from the '50s and '60s, so I could easily see how we could go from deporting seekers to ethnically cleansing Britain of Muslims.
Anyone who has studied international economics knows about the Impossible Trinity.
("Fixed exchange rates, free movement of capital, national monetary sovereignty, pick two!")
But aren't a lot of the problems our societies are now facing (such as paying higher taxes for poorer public services, and high immigration with the resulting anti-immigrant backlash) down to a similar Impossible Trinity in the field of demographics?
Stable or falling populations, long life expectancy, high workers-to-retirees ratio, pick two!