A Free Left Blog

‘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...

At first sight, Labour’s proposed National Infrastructure Commission seems like another example of politicians lacking in confidence, giving away their democratic powers to unelected ‘experts’ in unaccountable quangoes; taking the democracy out of politics; depoliticisation as authoritarianism . There is perhaps a little bit of truth in that, at least in presentational terms– through the cult of the ‘independent’, ‘impartial’, ‘expert’, taking an apparently neutral approach to political decision-making. But the handover of power proposed by Sir John Armitt in his Draft Infrastructure Bill for Labour – backed by Ed Miliband – isn’t so much out of the Whitehall jungle as straight into the arms of its big beast: the Treasury. The Commission would be answerable to the Treasury, appointed (mostly) by the Treasury, told what to focus on by the Treasury, and its plans presented by the Treasury in a form decided by the Treasury. Its headline role would be to carry out a big ...

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett’s appearance on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 this morning told us all we need to know about why the Greens will never break through as a major force in British politics. Taking that valued seat on the Marr show sofa after a torrid few months of weather that have brought climate change to the centre of the political agenda, what did she choose to talk about? Presented with the morning’s papers, with its acres of weather- and climate-related coverage, the first story she chose to focus on was about...Congolese migrants getting tortured on return to their country and the implications for British immigration policy. A decent issue in and of itself – but, with apologies to the migrants themselves, not Issue Number One, Two or Three for the Great British Public. So, second opportunity... What was issue number two that was exercising her this morning? Answer: the ‘Bedroom Tax’, in which council tenants are being charged for any spare bedrooms in the...

We don’t talk about land much. We don’t talk about it enough. For the whole of human history and indeed the history of the natural world, land has been fought over, often to the death. But now, in our world, land is treated as a commodity to be bought and sold. For the most part its principal value is monetary value. Any meaning attached to land, place and property is subject to market values. This way of treating the land is probably unique to our ‘Western’ civilisation that has now gone global and is impinging upon all aspects of life on our planet. It is often assumed to be a neutral way, but this is not the case. Every way has values, and our way’s principle value is money. This value elbows out other values which attach different meanings to the land, for example those of ‘native’ tribes in the Americas who venerate the earth, in Britain with common land which became subject to ‘ Enclosures ’, and nowadays with the socialised provision of housing under relentl...