IMMIGRATION LIES + WHY BRITAIN REALLY NEEDS YOU
AN INCESSANT BUT STATISTICALLY JUSTIFIED RANT ABOUT THE STATE OF THE UK’S APPROACH TO IMMIGRATION (AND NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH HOSPITALITY OR BRANDING)
If it wasn’t obvious already, as the disgraceful immigration debate rolls on, it’s official that the UK government has lost the fucking plot. More than ever, the country is fiscally and culturally poorer and dangerously divided.
Our collective, diminishing appetite for truth and nuance is unsurprising when you stop to think about the steady flow of inexplicable bullshit that we’ve been fed, regurgitated by an irresponsible and complicit media, for at least the last thirteen years.
Immigration, in the absence of detail, has become a dirty word. Politicians are giving the British public more of what they think will win votes in a post-truth, populist hell-hole where Labour and the Conservatives have become the cosiest of bed fellows.
And it’s all complete nonsense.
Last week, I received an email requesting that I renew my Labour membership. Because of their stance on Gaza I will not. Because of their failure to be truthful about immigration, I will not.
Politically homeless, abandoned by a party of wimps standing beside an enormous open goal, and feeling more European than ever, I reflect (read vent) on the truth behind immigration, in a departure from my usual form of remaining doggedly focused on the topics of hospitality and building brands.
Because sometimes, things just have to be said.
MOST IMMIGRATION IS A GOOD THING
Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall delivered a spectacular takedown of the immigration narrative on a recent Newsagents podcast. And whilst I’m sure readers of my sporadic musings are an informed lot, I’ll summarise the reality anyway.
That is, we need immigration.
We need international students to sustain a world class higher education system, and they need to be able to bring their families along in order for the country to remain competitive internationally.
We need healthcare workers. Lots of them. After all, there are still 200,000 vacancies in social care alone.
We need lots of other workers too. There are 988,000 open job vacancies according to the ONS, with 121,000 of those in hospitality (there you go, a topical reference).
Then we get to the (relative) small stuff where need turns to compassion and humanity - 25,000 asylum seekers arriving by small boats.
RWANDA FOR THE WIN
Cruella’s grand plan to ship them to Rwanda would be a joke if it wasn’t so dangerous. Even the country’s ambassador to the UK admitted - via a Led By Donkey’s sting - that the absolute best case scenario would be for 5,000 asylum seekers to be sent to the country, at an estimated cost of £169,000 a pop.
Bargain!
We’ve bundled together asylum seekers, illegal immigration and the positives and negatives of legal immigration and been repeatedly told by Government how bad this conflation of interlopers is for Britain, and why everything is their fault.
“All these people arriving by boat will be shipped to Rwanda and our nation’s immigration problems will be over” goes the false narrative around the solution.
But what’s the truth?
I was so incensed that I did what any self-respecting strategist would do - conducted some research, got some data. Mona Chalabi, put this graphic in your statistical pipe and smoke it.
THE COUNTRY IS THE PROBLEM
So then we get to the completely theoretical topic of where we reduce immigration. Labour want it down to ‘a couple of hundred thousand’. The Tories to the tens of thousands.
But the truth is that this is impossible. At least in the short term.
We need folks to come here to fill vacancies, to grow our economy and improve public services. Brits don’t want to do many of these jobs. Even if they did, we can’t afford to train them and we don’t have time to do it.
We have to get past the demonisation of foreigners. The reality is it’s nothing more than a convenient smokescreen for the politically- and self-inflicted reality that we have, in no particular order…
…no capacity in the legal system, no homes for people to live in, no doctors and dentists to care for them, no beds in hospitals to help them get better, no ambulances to get them there, no police to respond to their calls for help, no school places or safe classrooms in which to educate anyone’s kids, and childcare is financially crippling.
And who’s fault is all that?
Because the country’s services are in dire straits, high immigration levels put more pressure on the very systems that rely on - and would be improved by - immigrants. It’s quite the paradox we’ve gotten ourselves into.
A plan to bring the numbers down is of course a necessity. But if Government had maintained a house building plan and the nation’s public services, one might conclude that actually - with a population of 67 million - accommodating a short term annual population increase of almost bob on 1% (672,000 in the year to September 2023) isn’t the end of the world, particularly when we can put people to good use.
Notwithstanding the obvious failings to ‘level up’ and distribute opportunity, if we could move on from the ‘that’s like adding a city the size of Leeds to the UK every year’ narrative, we could focus on a more nuanced context.
That is, that for a town with a population of 10,000, one hundred people joined their community this year - driving growth, staffing public services in light of an ageing population, negating recruitment woes in many sectors, and improving the nations’ cultural fabric.
This can’t go on forever of course, and is wishful thinking considering the state of things. But I’ll say it nevertheless as an alternate way of framing immigration. A kinder way, a more progressive way, even.
But the sad truth is that Britain can’t accommodate anyone. Hurtling down shit creek, out of control and facing an untimely demise, the country is using it’s collective paddle to beat away the drowning foreigners who are desperate to be bought aboard and who can help navigate us to safety.
Looking at the country from the outside in, the UK is now perceived to be a racist, small-minded island. We rarely talk about anything else in the local bar.
Honestly, we’re lucky anyone comes at all.
HOW CAN I HELP?
Whether you’re new to hospitality, an independent operator, a global brand or a developer, I collaborate with people just like you to create brands and concepts that move our industry forward.
Working with a network of talented collaborators, we specialise in projects that seek to achieve a meaningful impact in destination locations.
If you’d like to discuss how we can bring your bold vision to life, or give your existing business a completely new point of view, please book a call with me here.
Ed
