Race, immigration and the British election

Alice Miles on the immigration problem facing Tony Blair:

Race is the great, silent issue in this election. It is driving everything. Out there in the real world, away from Westminster, Notting Hill and the broadcasting studios, the electorate in the marginal seats over which the parties are now fighting is obsessed with immigration. These voters seethe over confused groups of immigrants, asylum-seekers and gypsy travellers who appear to them to get away with breaking all the rules and living off everybody else. They don’t pay taxes, they claim benefits, they use the NHS and they get “our” houses. And they seem to be beyond the law.

This concern crosses over into anger about low-level crime and antisocial behaviour. It poisons perceptions of the public services, seen to be wasting money on undeserving recipients. And, however well people do, they feel personally hard done by because look at all these other people getting everything for nothing.

I don’t know why this is. But I know that it is happening. MPs are tearing their hair out about it. Focus groups are blinded by it. Michael Howard plays on it. Ministers criticise the Government for having failed to tackle it. Yet Mr Blair seems unable or unwilling to address it. He has neither met the concerns of voters, nor explained to them strongly enough why he thinks them wrong.

And until he does, the voters will continue not to hear what he is saying. The next few weeks will see the Prime Minister traipse around marginal seats trying to persuade people that Labour is listening to them. And he won’t hear them and they won’t hear him because they are speaking different languages. He can take all his clothes off and scream naked about his record and all these voters will notice is the East European in the crowd. Immigration and asylum is the only issue among the dozen or so most important in determining how people vote in which the Tories have a lead over Labour. Read that again. The only issue. In every single other area, from the economy to health, education, pensions, taxes, and even Europe and Iraq, Labour is in the lead. Yet the parties are within a couple of points of one another in the polls.

Like it or not, this is the issue quietly dominating this election. Labour has failed to confront it in two terms in office, and an election campaign is no time to start. All Mr Blair can do is try to neutralise it by accusing Mr Howard or the Tories of opportunism or even racism. Sometimes you have to get negative, and issues do not come much more negative than the desire, reasonable or otherwise, to strip benefits and the very homes from others. If he can protect his nether regions until then, this will be Mr Blair’s big challenge in his third term.

Cutting down on the number of people who are allowed to emigrate to Britain and reducing their taxpayer-funded benefits would probably help Blair a lot with the British voters. The question is does Blair have the backbone to do so in spite of the inevitable attacks from the politically-correct media?