'A U.K. Dialogue on Migration' (Parody, 2025)
A fictionalised exchange on television between a Labour candidate for MP and an audience member prior to the next general election ...
Labour Candidate for Parliament:We hear your pain.
Audience Member: My neighbourhood is being transformed by mass migration. I do not like many of these changes.
Labour Candidate: I understand. New immigrants—frequently coming without skills that fit the modern U.K. economy—cause wage compression at the low end of the wage scale. We will make sure employers pay the minimum wage; we will ensure that your economic interests are protected.
Audience Member: No, that’s not my point (at least, that’s not my only point). I do not like how our society is being changed by mass migration. I do not like polygamy. It is illegal, but no one gets prosecuted for it. I do not like FGM. It too is illegal, but it is not actively prosecuted. I do not like it when the immigrants’ customs are accommodated in these ways—I do not want our criminal laws ignored by the immigrants or by our police and prosecutors. It makes me feel unsafe—it makes me think the immigrants are the object of my government’s care and concern in a way that we are not—it makes my family feel “unwanted” [1] in our own country—although we have lived here for generations, and we have obeyed the laws, and we have paid our taxes. What I see, what we see, is that the immigrants’ way of life is preferred over our way of life and our Parliament’s laws. It is the immigrants who should be integrated into our communities and our culture, not the other way around.
Labour Candidate: I understand. We will work to ensure that your wages are not compressed.
Audience Member: You are not listening. That’s not what I said: I do not like the direction your party’s immigration policies under Blair and Brown took our country. And, today’s immigration policies under Starmer, and his Labour government, are no different. I do not like where we are now as a result—not that Cameron (and the other Tories who came after him) have done anything different.
Labour Candidate: No, that’s not right. My job is not to ensure your personal vision of the good society. I live in the real world, under the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, not in your antiquated vision of Little England and William Blake’s Jerusalem. My job is to act prudently in that context in order to protect your objectively rooted economic interests. I will do that by monitoring and controlling the behaviour of employers via minimum wage laws, unions, and government-mandated collective bargaining. But once that is done, then we must take in newcomers on an equal basis, particularly those claiming to be fleeing a warzone or those seeking asylum.
We should not pick and choose immigrants based on their likelihood to integrate into the extant political community and culture. Picking and choosing immigrants based on their values (or culture, language, or willingness to learn our language) is unfair to immigrants. Of course, as a result, our society may evolve in a direction you do not like. That could happen. But we are morally obliged (as we are also obliged under the European Convention on Human Rights and other international law) to take that risk. Your trying to block such a demographic development and concomitant cultural shift in favour of your parochial Little-England values is morally objectionable. Your values are no better than my values and, certainly, no better than the immigrants’ values. Your language (English) should not be favoured over the immigrants’ languages. Our diversity must respect these differences. In fact, your trying to determine your society’s demographic future—through immigration controls—is (white van man) racism.
Simply put, you do not have a right to decide what sort of society this will be: you do not have a right to hold such an opinion. Sorry—that was over broad. I suppose you may hold any opinion you want; you can even voice that opinion in private and public—at least for now. What I mean is that I—as your member of Parliament—will not and should not value your opinion. This country, i.e., this country’s future, is not yours. You and your family just happen to live here.
Audience Member:My grandparents voted for Bevan & Gaitskell, and my parents voted for Frank Field & Tony Benn. You have lost my support, and I guess I want my country back.
[1] Address to the Annual General Meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre (Birmingham: Midland Hotel, 20 April 1968). See generally Seth Barrett Tillman, ‘A Dialogue on Migration’ (Eriugena Review, 18 June 2023) < https://eriugenareview.com/home/f/a-dialogue-on-migration> accessed 3 July 2025.