Immigration and the problem with ‘progressive patriotism’

0:00How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow. Coming up on The Daily with me, Neil Patterson. As the Prime Minister wraps himself in the Union flag and pledges patriotic renewal, Sky News heads to the asylum capital of the UK, Glasgow.

0:42How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway and in each episode of my new podcast Stuff Matters I take an object, crack it open and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.

1:16Hi everyone, welcome back to The Daily where the Labour Party conference continues in Liverpool. And one of the themes this week has been patriotic national renewal. Now, I'm still a bit fuzzy as to exactly what that means, but the union flags hanging everywhere at conference give you a hint that it might just be a response to Reform UK. Certainly, it's been a big focus for the Prime Minister himself. I'm not just proud of the Union Jack and the cross of St George. I'm also proud of the Saltire, of the Red Dragon. Proud of our union. The astonishing relationship between our four great nations.

1:52Four different nations, yes. But four nations that time and again have been through fire together, built so much together, a country forged by the solidarity of working people. So let's fly all our flags conference because there are flags. They belong to all of us and we will never surrender them. And we will be returning to Liverpool, but clearly a lot of what the Prime Minister was talking about has been, how shall I put it, inspired by Nigel Farage and reform. Also, the ever-growing dissatisfaction with our system of asylum and immigration. There is significant support for a harder line on both, and it's emerging in places you might not have expected, places where Mr Farage has traditionally not been popular, including Scotland.

2:37It looks like they're going to overspill that wise. We'll be the underdogs. Who's they? All them ones that's coming in, especially Muslims. There's too many immigrants in this area. I've got an older son who lives with me. Can't get a house, but yet you come into this country and you get a house and you bother. And I know people say they don't, but they do. I'm proud to be Scottish. Is there a kind of anti-immigration part of it? Aye, I don't want them here. Do you think that some people will think what you're saying is racist? Probably, aye. Do you care? No. Glasgow is now the unlikely front line of the UK's immigration system with more arrivals than anywhere else and the city is beginning to show the strain, so much so that it's become a live political issue in a way that it never has before.

3:32Well, let's head to Glasgow where we'll find our Scotland correspondent, Conor Gillis. Scotland has traditionally been seen as quite a left-leaning nation, more left-leaning than other parts of the UK. We've had the SNP in power now for almost two decades. They are pro-immigration. Even the Conservatives, who are at the moment the second largest party in the Holyrood Chamber in Edinburgh, they haven't been as vocal as their UK counterparts elsewhere in terms of the anti-immigration stance. However, things have shifted in the past six months, I would say, and it's trying to understand why that is.

4:12Clearly, at the same time, we've got the rise in popularity of reform and Nigel Farage. That's a big shock for the political establishment here in Scotland. But is it now just people are feeling more confident to talk about their anti-immigration views? They've always existed in Scotland, or have they? And now people are feeling more emboldened to talk about them and clearly vote for them as well. I'm wondering what has changed there, or what is specific to Scotland about this situation. Why Glasgow? When we see the headline, the asylum capital of Britain, what does that actually mean? Well, dating back to 1999, the UK government established what was known as a dispersal policy, which essentially meant that people arriving into the UK who were seeking asylum, instead of staying in London in the southeast of England, would be scattered all across the UK.

4:59Glasgow was the only Scottish city who put their hand up and said, yeah, we will accept asylum seekers to come here and in exchange, the local authority, where I'm standing just now in Glasgow, received UK government funding. And for very many years, the narrative here, the discussion has been that there has not really been an issue. There's not really been a problem. Cast your mind back 20 years, there were loads of high rise flats across the city. housing was not really a particular issue but as regeneration has happened over the years those high-rise flats have gone and housing has become more of an acute problem.

5:35The local authority here in Glasgow is saying actually we need to pause this because we simply don't have the capacity to keep up with the demand at the same time as the number of asylum seekers and people coming into this country rises as well. Now the difference here in Scotland is that the more liberal homelessness laws in Scotland mean that councils must house someone without a home. So clearly, obviously, the politicians are hands outstretched asking for more money. I'm just wondering what Glaswegians are thinking about this. We went to an area just north of where I'm standing just now, an area called Maryhill.

6:11And I have to say, you know, if this had been six months or a year ago, stopping someone in the street and asking them about their views on immigration, people would have run a mile. However, this was one of, I would say, the easiest tasks that we have had in terms of stopping and engaging with the public on the street in a long time. And what does that say? What does it say about the shifting dynamic? What does it say about attitudes here in the city and people just feeling a bit more emboldened to say and speak publicly on camera their views that they may have held in private for a long time?

6:44people are feeling more that they're able to talk about that. And it was an eye-opening experience, just getting the sense of things from people on the street. One guy you spoke to has a saltire hanging from his house in the way that we've seen down here in England, you know, the flag of St George, cropping up absolutely everywhere. I'm not sure I've seen that in Scotland before. No, and neither have I, actually. The streets are awash with saltire flags draping from the lampposts here. The council are not removing them. If we try and understand why they are there, well, you've got some people in the community who are saying we are proud to be Scottish.

7:22And what we mean by Scottish is, you know, people who are from here are born and bred in Scotland and not people coming into this country as they would see it. Others would say that's out and out racism and that that needs to be confronted head on and essentially that the saltire that is seen by many as a welcoming symbol, a symbol that Scotland is open to everyone, is essentially being hijacked by some. I think though that is a pretty dangerous argument to go down given there are clearly legitimate concerns about immigration in this country that are being heard potentially for the first time in a long time here.

8:04The words racist and racism are being bandied around an awful lot these days, Connor. I mean the people who are opposed to foreigners coming here that you spoke to, would you put them in that category? Would you describe them as racists? No, I think the vast majority of people there are there because they want to legitimately broadcast their views, make their voices known. There were, though, a couple of examples of some really outright racist incidents. There was a man doing a Nazi salute. There was another man holding up a banner that said, kill them all. So clearly, you know, that is not acceptable.

8:44But on the whole, I think to deride an entire group of people as racist for having what they see as legitimate concerns is a dangerous proposition. proposition. And part of the reason that we thought it was important to talk about this issue today on Sky News was because for very many years, the people that we've been speaking to here in Glasgow have said they've not had a voice in the media. They've not been able to broadcast and say exactly how they're thinking. So is that part of the reason why there's shock in some quarters, some liberal quarters, particularly here in Scotland, among the SNP of this rise in support for reform for Nigel Farage because does he speak to that particular part of the community who do have legitimate concerns as they would see it around the increasing numbers of people arriving in their communities?

9:38I mean you know Scotland it hasn't had an open door policy but it certainly had an open arm policy. Did you see this coming because I'm not sure I did. No and you know if we think back to a Scotland being governed by the SNP for close to 20 years now very liberal, very pro-immigration, even the council here in Glasgow is run by the SNP, even they are the ones that are saying actually I think we need to pause the amount of asylum seekers coming into Glasgow because I'm not sure that we can afford it. So things are changing, the mood is changing. Is it as much of a shift as is the case in England?

10:17We're not quite at that level but I go back to that poll, that stark poll from just a couple of weeks ago that said you know okay the cost of living and healthcare are the two biggest priorities for Scots but third is immigration. That I think would have been unthinkable a year ago but is it now because people are now feeling that they have a cause to attach themselves to in the guise of reform? Thanks, Conor. Well, Labour do need Scotland. Well, they certainly need it if they want to have any chance of remaining in government at the time of the next election. So what are they doing about this?

10:53Let's head back to Liverpool, where we'll find our political correspondent, Rob Powell. The Prime Minister, of course, has just given his speech. Did we see much flag waving during it, Rob? We did, yeah. It was quite striking for a Labour conference hall to be filled full of St George's flags, but also Sultires and the Welsh Red Dragon as well. they were being handed out to members and MPs on the way in because the whole point, I think, of this speech was almost about reclaiming patriotism away from Nigel Farage and forces of the right. And I guess sort of factored into that was reclaiming the flag, especially against the backdrop of the flags going up around the country.

11:30And I think this was an attempt by Labour to try and reclaim that very visually, but the sort of policy content and the rhetoric of the speech was all around that as well. The question is whether waving a flag is enough to style yourself as a defender of it. You know, what people in government are saying after that speech is no one can be critical and say they don't know what the government stands for, what story they're trying to tell now. And I think it's been pretty clear right from the beginning of the conference, maybe even from before conference, since Keir Starmer did that speech, I think last Friday in central London, that essentially he is defining the point of his government, the practical point of it, to set himself up against reform and stop reform getting into government at the next election.

12:12Practically how they do that, I think, is two different ways. One old, one new. The old one is about policy that can tangibly change people's lives. and there was a lot in the speech today trying to, I think, trumpet the achievements that they have seen over the last 14 months or that they believe they have already achieved. I think the second part of it, which you saw a lot of in this speech, is more political than policy. It is setting up this clear battle, as they see it, with Nigel Farage, termed in that speech as a battle for the soul of the nation. and he is essentially sort of setting up almost a kind of good patriotism and bad patriotism.

12:53It almost sounded at times like something from Star Wars, talking about don't turn towards the dark side. I'd noted down a quote from Star Wars that said something like, that way leads to the dark side, fear and hatred will take you to the dark side. That was sort of the pitch, I think, to the country a little bit. Don't get suckered in by Nigel Farage, essentially. I believe you were actually misquoting Yoda there, but we'll gloss over that, Because you are at the Labour Party conference where I have heard a number of senior Labour figures describing this phenomenon that he was talking about from the stages as progressive patriotism.

13:27But if it is all just a knee-jerk response to what reform are doing and their place in the polls, I'm afraid to me it looks rather more like performative patriotism. Well, this is the sort of bind that Labour get themselves into, right? So at the beginning of this conference, you had news lines around Sir Keir Starmer accusing one of reform's policies around indefinite leave to remain and deporting people that didn't meet new visa requirements as being racist. The following day, we had Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, announcing their own changes to indefinite leave to remain and literally telling the conference, I may have to do things that you won't like.

14:02So I think the tangle that they are in is that electorally, yes, they are losing voters to reform, or the evidence suggests that there are some voters going to reform, but some of the evidence suggests there are even more going to other left-wing parties. So the danger, I think, is that by sort of nodding in one direction towards almost reformy type policies and hardening their language around migration, they risk alienating the people that are going to other left wing parties. But then by coming out hard against Farage and risking sort of casting anyone that agrees with Nigel Farage as a racist, although they would say that's not what they're doing.

14:37They're talking about the policies. But if that's the sort of message that gets through, they risk alienating the people that are going to reform as well. But they do have to follow through on it, don't they, Rob? I mean, here's another quote from Yoda. Do or do not, there is no try. And if they come at this half-heartedly, I mean, people will sniff it out, and they'll sniff it out straight away. They're trying to make a distinction, I guess, between what Nigel Farage is saying, and they're saying because of the desperate state of certain parts of the country, it's understandable why people will feel gravitated towards that, that they'll feel pulled towards that.

15:12But they are saying, no, that's the easy answer. Don't go down that route. You have to go down the other route. Look, it's a nuanced argument, though. And we have seen that after he did that interview and he talked about that policy being racist, you had front pages saying, if you're concerned about migration, then you're racist. Now, there was a really interesting story that he told in the speech today where he said he went to Oldham and he went to talk to a voter there who had been told by his advisers had big concerns about migration. He came in and he said that she spent 20 minutes showing him pictures of some of her friends, some of her neighbours, people from sort of Asian backgrounds, mixed backgrounds.

15:49And he was wondering, scratching his head, thinking what on earth is going on? And then she started to talk about how a group of Polish family had moved in and she was unhappy with sort of how they were behaving and treating the local area. And then he said, I then clicked, he said, that she felt that because I was a Labour politician, she had to sort of prove that she wasn't racist before she was able to make concerns or flag concerns about migration. And he made a point of saying, look, never again must Labour patronise working people in that way. So I think it's a nuanced argument and the danger is that when you've got an opponent like Nigel Farage who is painting his politics and his policy in big broad brushstrokes, that nuance potentially gets lost.

16:33Rob, can he do it? Can he do it if, you know, in Scotland, long thought of as perhaps the most left-leaning part of the United Kingdom, we've got people putting up flags and protesting outside hotels about the state of asylum and immigration. Can he do this? Look, I think when you're talking to people in government and you ask, look, is he done? Is it over now? They make the point that there is still three and a half plus years until the next election. I think sometimes it kind of gets lost in the debate, especially when you have factors like Andy Burnham creeping in and leadership challenges being mooted and things like that.

17:07But actually, they do have some time to play with. I think, though, especially speaking to the point around Scotland, it could get very, very difficult after May if what looks like could happen both in Scotland and in Wales does materialise because people will start to think, especially in the case of Scotland, that that majority, that landslide was built off a Labour revival in Scotland. And if they don't get the results that they need in the Holyrood elections in May, I think that may lead some to conclude that this is only going one way. On the delivery thing, two or three things have to happen.

17:43I think there does need to be visible, tangible change when it comes to the migration question. I think the second is that there needs to be tangible change in public services, probably most obviously the NHS. And then I guess in the background, people need to feel like they have more money in their pocket. And that's the difficulty, right? For as much as they can point towards economic growth and GDP growth, that doesn't necessarily translate into people feeling better off. And I don't think people will ever feel better off than they were before the cost of living crisis hit. I think now we have at least a clearer idea of how they plan to do it and what's motivating Keir Starmer and the government.

18:21I think this conference has gone pretty well for Keir Starmer. There hasn't been any massive cock-ups. There hasn't been any disasters. The Burnham factor has sort of evaporated. He apparently left the conference centre before Keir Starmer even started speaking. I think he's sort of blown himself up on the launch pad a little bit. So that has gone away a bit. But I don't think it's gone forever. and I think the next big inflection point and point of danger is obviously the budget. That is when people like Sharon Graham of Unite say they'll be looking for evidence and then it's those elections in May.

18:52So look, the danger has receded a bit but I don't think it's ever far from coming back. Thanks to Rob, Connor and of course to you for listening. You can see Connor's full report on the website. Do check us a follow if you like what you've heard. The Daily's back tomorrow.

19:09How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.