“Labour Were Thinking What The Tories Were Thinking”

[webofevil]

Unpleasant though it is to find myself quoting Guido Fawkes—life’s too short to be swamped by that much bile—the fact remains that here he’s absolutely right:

Immigration minister Liam Byrne told BBC News this morning that the Australian immigration control model had been closely examined by the British government: “I think that people want to know that only those who we need to come to Britain should be allowed to come and I think a points system has worked extremely well in Australia so we have studied that hard, we think it would work well in this country.”


The 2005 Conservative Party Manifesto promised: “We will introduce a points-based system for work permits similar to the one used in Australia. This will give priority to people with the skills Britain needs.”

Remember how the Labour Party made a huge issue of the policy and campaign posters ... condemning the commitment as a racist dog-whistle policy? Less than three years later Labour is implementing the same policy. [article]

Comments

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

I have put an ellipsis in there. The original reads: “outrageously condemning the commitment as a racist dog-whistle policy”. For Guido and his Have Your Say ilk, there’s nothing at all wrong with controlled immigration, and he’s simply miffed about the hypocrisy of a government who will squeal about a policy being racist one minute and adopt it the next.

I do not agree with the immigration system being proposed, nor, therefore, with the word “outrageously”. What’s more, I think Guido and his hangers-on are a pretty poisonous bunch (although he himself provides a useful service in the sense of being a political Popbitch). Nonetheless, I can’t help but find myself on the same side of the fence as him when it comes to the hypocrisy of a government who (see above).