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Just because Abraham Lincoln is claimed to have judged that you cant fool all the people all the time doesnt mean modern politicians have been dissuaded from trying their best anyway.

Indeed, the art of modern politics is to arm your activists with enough selective quotes from your partys spokespeople that you can deploy them in an attempt to win over people who often have diametrically opposing views from one another. Yes, they may, a few months or years down the line, be disappointed and disillusioned that the party or policy they voted for didnt quite do what it said on the tin, but such disillusion will only set in after the ballot boxes have been emptied and the polling stations close, so no harm done.

As a fine example, I present the shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symmonds. At the weekend it will be entirely possible for Labour activists to head out for their campaigning activities (or they would if it werent for the pandemic) and to reassure voters who are angry about the arrival of illegal migrants on the Kent shore that the party specifically the Shadow Home Secretary shares their anger. To prove it, theres even a letter from him to the Home Secretary saying that its wrong that this is happening.

Next door, a colleague might be speaking to another voter who is disgusted by the Governments refusal to allow such migrants to settle permanently in Britain. Again, the words of Mr Thomas-Symmonds citing poverty wars and persecution can be deployed. Theres even a letter from him to the Home Secretary saying that To date your efforts have been devoid of compassion.

Someone of a more cynical bent than I might conclude that the Shadow Home Secretarys carefully-worded statements on the issue (not that there have been many of them recently) are aimed at resolving the potentially vote-losing contradiction between his own partys instinctive support for mass migration and the general publics more sceptical approach. But it can hardly be denied that Thomas-Symmonds intervention is thoughtful and considered.

Nuance is certainly in short supply when it comes to debate on immigration. But Labour will find that refusing to take a stand, one way or the other, on the issue of illegal immigration will prove a major weakness by the time the next election campaign kicks off. Thomas-Symmonds is right (as is Diane Abbott on LabourList) to place most of the blame at the feet of the people smugglers making a fortune by exploiting vulnerable (and gullible) people. That is a safe and uncontroversial opinion that carries no risk.

Many on the liberal Left are disparaging of public concerns about the numbers arriving on our southern shores, given the relatively low (though exponentially increasing) numbers involved. Those same commentators also blame the people smugglers. And yet every dinghy that completes the journey safely, every individual not immediately returned from whence they came (and by that I mean France) is the best possible advertisement for the dubious service they provide.

If you really want to stymie a market for any particular product, ensure that it is worthless, that it provides zero return on your money. How do you convince the smugglers potential customers that their life savings will be utterly wasted on a cross-Channel adventure as long as many of those who made it to the shore have yet to be returned?

Thomas-Symmonds reluctance to take a harder line, one way or the other, is understandable given the partys record on immigration. In the first term of Tony Blairs government, there was widespread unhappiness among activists at its robust efforts to clamp down on illegal arrivals, imposing eye-watering fines on lorry drivers who had, in most cases, accepted eye-watering bribes to allow their unofficial passengers to hop aboard before travelling to Blighty.

And who can forget the controversy which, for reasons unknown, was caused by the mug featuring the meaningless slogan Controls on immigration, as if a Miliband Labour government would have been the first government ever to impose controls on who gets to arrive and live in this country.

Unlike coronavirus, illegal immigration is a subject about which the public is more likely to judge political parties. It is hardly extreme to believe that deliberately breaking UK law by arriving on our shores, having paid some of the vilest people on the planet thousands of pounds to evade the British authorities, is an unacceptable way to behave. Similarly, there is a rational, progressiveview that borders belong to a previous era and that no one should be forced to take their lives into their own hands if they want to live here.

Those views, however, are entirely contradictory and no politician seeking one of the highest offices in the land can get away for long with riding both horses. Sooner or later Labour will need to tell the British people where it stands. A deafening silence, or at best an equivocal attempt to please both sides, cannot be sustained.

Originally posted here:
Labour's refusal to take a stance on illegal immigration will cost it dear - Telegraph.co.uk