Labour’s incoherent line on immigration

MP Chris Bryant's speech on Monday was supposed to be Labour's "major intervention" in the immigration row sparked by the provocative Tory van campaign telling illegal immigrants to go home, says Patrick Hennessy in The Sunday Telegraph. Instead, it was dismissed as a "car crash" before it was even made, says Jack Doyle in the Daily Mail.

Having released extracts of the speech in advance to The Sunday Telegraph, criticising Tesco and Next for using foreign workers and referring, inaccurately, to a Tesco distribution centre in Kent, Bryant then cut key passages from the speech after a "furious response" from both firms. In the speech, Bryant also admitted that it was wrong to ditch controls on Polish and other workers in 2004, and accused British workers of being "physically less mobile" than other EU nations in their search for jobs.

The "best outcome" for Labour would be that the speech is written off as the "shambolic upshot" of having a shadow minister who is not up to the job, but the truth is that it reflects the "absence of a coherent Labour line on immigration", not to mention other major policy areas, says The Times.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up

This speech is a "reminder that Labour does not simply have an immigration problem; it has a capitalism problem", agrees John McDermott in the FT. Ed Miliband has a "genuine desire to change the rules of the economic game" remember his 2012 essay on "responsible capitalism" and that means tackling the "unholy trinity of British public policy: welfare, migration and the lower end of the labour market".

However, he has to translate his analysis into policies that are clear, credible, and clearly different from the coalition's. The problem is that while he is working out how to do this, the "irresponsible version" of capitalism is picking up.

It certainly is, says Peter Wilby in The Guardian. Under this government and New Labour did its bit to encourage the trend Britain is becoming a "low-wage economy with a casualised, compliant workforce". Bryant is right to say that employers want to hire as cheaply as possible. That doesn't mean they are unscrupulous, simply that they are behaving in what is now a normal commercial fashion. "Competitive avarice rules. That is what Labour should address, because it is a problem to which other parties have no answer."