Glasman, Immigration and the BNP

Maurice Glasman, key expounder of "Blue Labour" and general ideologue for Ed Miliband, on immigration:

In an interview with this newspaper, he said: “We've got to reinterrogate our relationship with the EU on the movement of labour.

“The EU has gone from being a sort of pig farm subsidised bloc to the free movement of labour and capital.”

He added: “Britain is not an outpost of the UN. We have to put the people in this country first."

Asked if that meant stopping immigration virtually completely for a period, he said: “Yes. I would add that we should be more generous and friendly in receiving those [few] who are needed. To be more generous, we have to draw the line."

Oh, whoopie-fuck. Another poltical figure jumping on the anti-immigration bandwagon. And another figure with genuine political influence only seeing a problem with the monolithic, bureaucratic, profligate and largely unaccountable EU on account of its impact on immigration. Surely it isn't too much to hope that political thinkers in this country could have slightly more meaningful inspirations that a compendium of anti-immigration headlines from The Daily fucking Mail.

Of course, Ed Miliband has distanced himself from these largely toxic propositions. But this is the same Ed Miliband who has been waffling on about the "mistakes" that the Labour government (of which he was a part, natch) made in regard to immigration when in power at the same time as being the Ed Miliband who slavishly followed Gordon "British Jobs for British Workers" Brown. Difficult to imagine where Glasman might have got the idea that his anti-immigration views might have gone down with Miliband Minor, eh?

There is so much talk about whether Social Democracy or neoliberalism has become the dominant ideology in this country, and therefore whether Thatcher or Blair actually won the battle to dominate the consensus politics in this country. When I see yet another political figure slating immigration, I can't help but wonder whether the BNP have actually succeeded in dominating political discourse in this country, at least when it comes to immigration.

Update: Obnoxio the Clown agrees with me. Using language (and imagery) that makes my own look quite restrained.