A Free Left Blog

Dear potential UKIP voter, We wanted to let you know that we understand you and your concerns. We have been looking at the polling and it proves that you are all white, male, ageing, ignorant, hypocritical, working class racists and losers. This makes us feel very smug and superior, and we thought we would write you a letter to show how things really work around here so you might get with the programme. Firstly, it seems you have not read the memo which says no one is allowed to speak truth if it is the wrong truth. It has been decided that all immigration is beneficial both socially and economically, so any evidence that some immigrants or communities are causing social problems or abusing the welfare system must be suppressed immediately or detached from any association with immigration. We are also seeking to establish that it is people like you who are the real cause of social problems and who abuse welfare, so it has been necessary for us to make allusions and associa...

Our public debate on immigration in Britain almost always focuses entirely on money and thereby misses the main point, a point that our political-media class finds difficult to deal with and that many regard as almost illegitimate. This is how people feel . It is emblematic of the state of democracy in Britain that any sort of negative opinions about immigration routinely get shouted down and lambasted as ‘wrong’ by the siren voices of people and institutions, most of which are on the supposedly ‘liberal-left’ side of politics. It is particularly disturbing the way that anyone who talks about negative effects of immigration is routinely attacked (often by hordes of lefty people on Twitter) as ‘racist’. These voices have a huge and in my view poisonous impact on the debate, forcing anyone who wants to make some nuanced points about immigration and identity into defending themselves against charges of racism, which is well established as one of the the worst offences one...