A Free Left Blog

The way liberal-left opinion and much of the mainstream political class has turned its fire on the UK Independence Party ( UKIP ) over its latest poster campaign has been quite something to behold – and if I am not much mistaken it could play straight into UKIP’s hands. For me, this one above is rather good as a political poster, making a simple straightforward political point ('EU Policy at Work. British workers are hit hard by unlimited cheap labour') with a simple straightforward image. But it has been attacked with quite impressive outrage from all sides, bringing comparisons with Nazi propaganda and stimulating all from Tories to Greens to vituperation and anger. Tim Montgomerie, the creator of ConservativeHome website and now comment editor at the Times, even tweeted: 'Strong anti-immigrant poster campaign from UKIP', appended to the above photograph. Another UKIP poster to have appeared overnight has the simple statement ’26 million people in Europe...

It is a question often asked in Labour circles: what does 'One Nation Labour' actually mean? If you thought it was an attempt to bring people together and re-establish forms of common life and citizenship, it may be time to think again, for Labour’s interest group politics has muscled in – right on cue. Over the last weekend, plans emerged for what is termed a ‘One Nation Civil Service’, to be outlined in the next Labour election manifesto. These plans will see quotas for the elite Fast Stream programme, of 18 per cent black and ethnic minority, and 24 per cent ‘working-class’, plus further positive action for women. Justifying these moves in a speech to the IPPR think tank (a speech that pulled back from the quota numbers mentioned in the Independent over the weekend), Ed Miliband’s right-hand man Michael Dugher outlined how ethnic minority numbers in the civil service have declined 10 per cent during the current government (though neglecting to mention that...

This morning has brought a couple of different pieces in the newspapers about immigration which are worth a short comment. Firstly, in the liberal-left’s house rag the Guardian , former New Statesman and Independent on Sunday editor Peter Wilby has written an interesting piece on how the Labour Party could somehow banish immigration concerns by seeking to restore the “historic bargain” with its traditional working class supporters on wages (which stagnated during the last great phase of immigration during the last Labour government). Then in The Daily Mail , the liberal-left’s bête-noire, comes a front page story that England has now overtaken the Netherlands as the most crowded country in Europe (excepting tiny Malta), with 411 people per square kilometre, compared to 374 in 1997, and with an estimate of an increase to 460 by 2030. The [Hate] Mail’s journalism is often dismissed on the left as shrill and heavily biased, but besides the typical tabloid hyperbole and ...