…as an alternative to allowing employers to recruit from abroad. So where is the big strategy for adult education and lifelong learning that the Commons Education Select Committee recommended back in November 2020?
Or was today’s Immigration White Paper a Political response to both the Conservatives and TeamNigel? After all, the Tories got an even bigger kicking than Labour at the local elections and are thus on the back foot.
Either way, have a listen to the Home Secretary making the statement in the House of Commons (as she is constitutionally required to do when there is a major change of government policy – followed by the official opposition statement) and questions from backbench MPs here.
As others have said online, you cannot out-Nigel TeamNigel on their core issue
Furthermore, the rightwing press and TV-talking-heads will always want more, as leaving the EU demonstrated. Also, it leaves the wider Labour Party vulnerable to challenges from The Greens and Liberal Democrats. We saw this in Cambridge with Labour losing two county seats to the former and three to the latter in Cambridge (down from nine to four in the city, with only one gain outside – Cllr Dr Alex Bulat in St Ives).
“How big is Labour’s majority in the Commons again?”
With such a large majority in the House of Commons, Sir Keir Starmer could carry out a much more radical programme than he has put forward. Yet it seems his government is frightened of an opposition that does not face him and his ministers in the House of Commons. Which makes it all the more frustrating even for those willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, that his policies seem stuck in decades past.
No Prime Minister should be signing off a press release of the type Downing Street put out earlier
You can read it here. It is telling that the press release has in the headline the phrase ‘uncontrolled migration’ but the Home Secretary’s statement to the House of Commons does not.
“It is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister.”
Because unless there were no border officers and passport controls at international points of entry into the UK, the statement on ‘uncontrolled migration’ is clearly not accurate.
“Was this move a tactical one at squishing an already weak Conservative Party against a TeamNigel movement already tearing lumps out of it?”
After all, it was a convenient reminder to the right wing press that the Tories had been in power for the previous 14 years – at which immigration was seldom off of the front pages. (It has been a constant feature ever since William Hague tried to bring it back with his ‘Foreign Land’ speech in the run up to the 2001 general election, one that only benefited the more extremes of politics at the time).
‘What do illegal immigrants look like?’ One then serving Tory MP was asked this question on Channel 4 News back in 2013
You can watch the footage here. Just over a year later, said politician jumped ship and joined TeamNigel before losing his seat in the 2015 general election.
The chronic shortcomings of successive governments refusing to educate the public on both the complex factors influencing global migration patterns
This is reflected by the inherent contradictions in the policies of successive governments. And it’s inevitably caught up in the battle over Britain’s history and its colonial legacy – of which I am quite literally a product of. (My family history going back three-four generations was inherently influenced – directed even, by colonial policies set in Whitehall).
“What are the origins of the hostile environment against immigrants in the UK? Patel retells Britain’s recent history in an often shocking account of state racism that still resonates today.”
What we’ve not seen from successive governments are any serious attempts at working with other countries and international organisations in trying to resolve:
- The ongoing wars and conflicts in areas that people flee from – including those areas where the UK was once the colonial power
- Working with international institutions to regulate multinational corporations that have highly extractive business practices and do horrendous damage to the environments they operate in – thus destroying the places and environments people live in (Nigeria’s oil industry being one of the average UK geography student’s textbook study)
- Co-ordinating aid and development programmes to build the much-needed public service infrastructure that also reflects the huge wealth that has been extracted from those parts of the globe that suffered in the colonial era
“Why so little on adult education – mentioned only once in the White Paper?”
One for Jacqui Smith, the Minister for Education in the Lords to respond to. She spoke at a recent conference and the news wasn’t particularly inspiring.
“[The Minister] defended the recent cut to adult education funding as painful but necessary, and warned of difficult decisions ahead.”
Lifelong Education Institute conference reflections, 07 May 2025
Which is rubbish for a place like Cambridge because ministers refuse to give local tiers of government the powers to tax the employers to pay for that new generation of lifelong learning centres the Commons Education Select Committee called for. (Ministers are still clinging onto the legal powers John Major’s Government got Parliament to give them back in the early 1990s).
This is a big issue for me personally because in the grand scheme of things it’s one of the few routes back into ‘living’ in the face of longterm chronic illnesses that took me out of full-time work permanently back in 2012. Hence this blog being full of posts on adult education and lifelong learning – and the inability of institutions in Cambridge to come up with a meaningful offer for those of us in the majority who don’t have thousands spare to pay for our own retraining, and who also don’t fall into the category of needing basic skills training.
Despite the narrow focus of ministers on skills, a number of the issues ministers raise are ones that local government is best place to deal with.
Yet Treasury ministers and senior officials all too often see the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Furthermore, as this guide to Local Government Finance from 1993 shows, Margaret Thatcher’s Government brought in such huge centralising measures along with austerity to the local government sector that it no longer has the capacity to do what ministers today want it to do. Furthermore, ministers seem to be demonstrating the lack of imagination and flair in ministerial office to undo the structural changes that the Thatcher Government imposed on that sector.
If ministers were serious about migration policy, there are a host of other policies they could be bringing in in a much more co-ordinated, and dare I say, compassionate way. Throwing red political meat to the print press and the talking heads isn’t going to do it. Furthermore, the lack of imagination in BBC News and Current Affairs in their continual selection of GBeebies presenters for commentary slots rather than people who have either academic, or frontline working experience on whatever issues are being discussed, remains a huge problem in how politics is presented in the broadcast media.
The lack of diversity of experiences in Whitehall
Both in terms of life experiences, and in terms of who in senior Whitehall positions has experience of working in local government outside of London. A critical mass of senior civil servants in Treasury, Home Office, and Downing Street might have toned down some of the worst of the policy announcement.
Ironically, a system of interchanges between the UK and EU countries might do a world of good when it comes to comparative governance systems and structures – noting the Prime Minister talking about language requirements and the UK’s chronic inability to improve radically the provision of language teaching and the take up of it in schools and evening classes. Others have joked about how one or two politicians (and/or cohorts of voters) would fail the tougher language tests. Think of the pub quizzes based on the Home Office tests for people applying for UK Citizenship – and the number of drinkers who get less than the pass mark!
Anyway, must move onto the next thing – Peter Freeman’s talk on the future of Cambridge is this Thursday
You can book tickets here – they are free
The day before that, I will be running the last of my four workshops at The Cambridge Room in The Grafton Centre.
Wed 14 May, 1.00pm-2.30pm on the future of Cambridge – city, county, and region
That event is also free.
If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:
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The Cambridge Town Owl 