A Free Left Blog

On one level Virgin Trains’ decision to stop selling the Daily Mail is quite a trivial matter. The company is a private business and can decide not to sell whatever it likes. But there is also a serious aspect to this, for it shows how some of our major public-facing organisations (including businesses like Virgin and the retailer Paperchase ) are explicitly taking the ‘progressive’, liberal-left side in our Culture Wars, and using what control they have over public space to stop the views of opponents from appearing. According to the story in PR Week , Virgin Trains announced its decision in a memo to staff last year, saying, “There’s been considerable concern raised by colleagues about the Mail’s editorial position on issues such as immigration, LGBT rights, and unemployment. We’ve decided that this paper is not compatible with the VT brand and our beliefs. We won’t be stocking the Daily Mail for sale or as a giveaway.” As we can see, the statement is explicitly poli...

‘Immigrationism’ is a bit of a clunky, unwieldy word, but it accurately describes an ideology that manages to bring together our big business elite and free market fundamentalists with the far left and the Blairite centre-left: an unusual and powerful political alliance. Even though around 80 per cent of the population stands against it, this motley crew of political factions has enough serious clout to win most political battles in Britain, and indeed it has been conclusively won the political battle over immigration up until now. Sheer weight of public opinion seems to be shifting that situation, though as yet our main political parties seem powerless or resistant when it comes to doing anything to seriously reduce immigration. Currently net migration (immigrants minus emigrants) is adding around 200,000 more people to Britain’s population every year – quite a lot for a crowded island with already stretched infrastructure (transport, housing, schools and hospitals for exam...

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 ...