Don’t be fooled by naysayers: They are trying to confuse you on Corbyn and EU immigration
Mr Corbyn explained his policy position on Good Morning Britain – when he could get a word past Piers Morgan who, according to Mrs Mike, wouldn’t shut up [Image: ITV].
Jeremy Corbyn is due to say that the Labour Party is “not wedded” to the principle of free movement of people between the European Union and the UK after Brexit in a speech today (January 10).
He will explain that the UK’s membership of the Single Market is vital to our future as a trading nation. At the moment, the EU is demanding that the UK retain the ‘free movement’ rule if we want to stay in the Single Market and that is why Labour supports it. Critics are (deliberately) failing to mention this.
So – as Mr Corbyn says – changes to migration rules are part of the negotiations. And, just because the EU insists on ‘free movement’, that doesn’t mean there is nothing Labour could do to stop multitudes of EU migrants flooding through our ‘Arrivals’ gates.
Mr Corbyn’s speech states: “Labour supports fair rules and reasonably managed migration as part of the post- Brexit relationship with the EU.”
The Labour leader has been telling us for many months that “managed migration” is possible – within the EU’s ‘free movement’ rules. He believes that strengthening rules on pay and conditions, so migrant workers are prevented from undercutting UK workers on wages and working conditions, will bring immigrant numbers down naturally.
So there is no need to be restricted by a commitment to ‘free movement’ if the UK won’t gain anything in return, because we can use other measures to get what we want. See?
Mr Corbyn is, effectively, ensuring that the UK has an extra – and major – bargaining point when Brexit negotiations start. Why would anybody want to criticise that?
It’s no different from the Tory refusal to assure the status of foreign citizens who already work here. Has anybody kicked up a fuss about that?
In fact, Mr Corbyn’s comments on pay and conditions apply to everybody working in the UK.
He will say: “A Labour Brexit would take back control over our jobs market, which has been seriously damaged by years of reckless deregulation” (by the Conservatives and New Labour).
“Labour will ensure all workers have equal rights at work from day one – and require collective bargaining agreements in key sectors, so that workers cannot be undercut.
“That will bring an end to the unscrupulous use of agency labour and bogus self-employment to stop undercutting and to ensure every worker has a secure job with secure pay.”
All in all, the outcry over Mr Corbyn’s speech is a fake. There is no new position; it is a re-statement of the current policy.
But the right-wing hysterics are trying to whip you into a frenzy over it.
You’re not stupid enough to let that happen. Are you?
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I feel that, if Labour had been in power, none of this would have arisen as Jeremy Corbyn would have been the best person (and still is) to renegotiate the terms slightly so that we retained the mutual benefits of trading with our EU partners whilst agreeing to sensibly controlled freedom of movement.
Want proof it’s not new thinking?
I wrote this piece weeks ago and have been debating it for months.
Even wrote a poem about it.
http://politicdom.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/how-uk-can-immigration-whilst-remaining.html?m=1
“The Labour leader has been telling us for many months that “managed migration” is possible – within the EU’s ‘free movement’ rules. He believes that strengthening rules on pay and conditions, so migrant workers are prevented from undercutting UK workers on wages and working conditions, will bring immigrant numbers down naturally.”
Thank you for that concise explanation, that is more fundamental to the core issue between the parties, the Tories want low wages and want free movement of labour to achieve it, i.e. the pressure from migration to drive down wages, the last thing employers want is legislation to stop their clever little games setting worker against worker, fighting over jobs.
In addition to this it needs to be emphasised that Tory light touch regulation has a hands off approach to the economy and doesn’t believe in intervention by the state. So whilst the only way to earn a living is through the private sector which tells us they can’t afford to pay real wages, when they are sitting on mountains of money from profits and tax reductions, and the economy stagnates.
Since the 1980s companies have migrated to the far east which is the real cause of our economic downfall, and even the so called sunrise companies such as telephone services have gone the same way, India being a destination of choice.
If people are going to sit back and watch capitalists move jobs and money around the world without a government dedicated to replacing those lost jobs, it doesn’t matter what, there will never be enough jobs for people which was what happened before the first and second world wars.
Keynes proved that orthodox economists (Neo-Liberal) (Neo-Classical) were wrong and that brought about two world wars, only after government intervention did we ever create full employment between the last war and 1970, since then Neo-Liberal politicians have taken us back to the 1920s and 30s.
People are the real economy, when people spend the economy works, when people save the economy dries up.
People need to understand that government must work for them or the economy dies, corporations are not the wealth creators, people are.
I’m with Mrs. Mike on this one. I’m sure I’d tell Morgan to “shut up and let me get a word in edgeways”.
The reports, both written and spoken were so annoying; it was one of the first things to which I was exposed upon my return the the U.K. today. The problem is with our culture, as it has becomes. We have become a nation of peoples who merely respond and react, without having first considered, analysed, absorbed, digested, understood etc. This suits the naysayers and those who wish to whip up frenzies and anti-Corbyn rhetoric. People don’t give themselves time to see the poo coming, before they smell it and consequently blame the wrong person. What Mr. Corbyn said made complete sense; there was no confusion, or contradiction in what he said, however, if you say it, often enough, listeners and readers will become, mysteriously, unable to understand what it perfectly clear.
Personally, I would like all immigrants to have an equal footing, rather than preferential treatment given to people, simply because they come from a particular geopolitical area but I see nothing wrong with what Mr. Corbyn said and those who do do so, because they wish to.