Dear Rob



Stephen Bush Photograph: Sam Frost

It’s helpful to start with a number: how many major economies are there in which trade policy is decided by immigration policy? The answer is zero. In fact, there is no country in the developed world where immigration sets trade policy.

When we talk about “abandoning free movement”, we need to be clear about what that means: it means leaving the single market, because the free movement of peoples is an essential prerequisite to remaining inside it. It means accepting a worse standard of trade with our nearest neighbour and biggest export market; a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic; forgoing the passporting rights of British banks; losing out on the status of British-made products in the rest of Europe.

It’s not just letting immigration decide trade policy, but letting it dictate financial policy, industrial policy, even security policy. It means supporting a government that is pursuing a course that will lead to a major recession. It’s true that Labour has an immigration problem, and has had for a long time. Not just among voters who were Labour in 2005, but voted Conservative in 2010 and 2015, the voters it must win back if it is to get into government any time soon. Even those who stuck with the party through successive defeats have doubts about immigration and would ideally like to see less of it. It’s true, too, that discontent about immigration was a large reason why people voted to leave the EU, and yes, even among those who voted to remain, the free movement of people is deeply unpopular. Any party which only gets the backing of those who are relaxed about immigration will win, at best, 22% of the vote and would end up confined to England’s great cities – London, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol and Newcastle.

So you can see why the party’s strategists are tempted to abandon the commitment to freedom of movement, and go into the next election on a platform of tough border control – but that would be a mistake.

Why? Precisely because opposition to immigration cuts across party lines and even across the referendum divide. Although the majority of that pro-migration 22% did vote to stay in the European Union, the big question that divided Remainers from Leavers was not “would you like immigration to be reduced?” but “can immigration be reduced without it costing anything?” On the whole, people who voted Leave thought they could get immigration down without becoming poorer.

The problem is, you can’t. Making British people poorer to get immigration down will not only lose the votes of the 16 million people who voted against doing that, but the 17 million who thought, wrongly, that they could get migration down without being hit in the wallets.

When it becomes apparent that you can’t have your cake and eat it, people will be furious with the government and the Brexiters. The job of an astute opposition will be to be in the right place at the right time – and that means supporting an exit deal that is as close to the status quo as possible.

That means holding the line on free movement.

Dear Stephen



Rob Ford Photograph: Graeme Cooper/PR

If there is one lesson that I have learned from the past 18 months, it is the perils of overestimating the likelihood of things I would prefer to happen, and underestimating the likelihood of things I really want to avoid. I fear your argument risks falling into this trap.

The expectation behind what you are saying is that, at some point, either the public or the government (preferably both) are going to realise that the economic costs of a “hard Brexit” are more than they are willing to bear and that, given the priorities of our EU negotiating partners, they will have to swallow free movement.

This argument – “you’ll have to accept this unlovely thing because the alternative is a disaster” – seems awfully familiar. It was the argument for Remain. It didn’t work then, and I don’t see why it is going to work now. It relies on the assumption that, at the end of the day, a broad sense of national economic self-interest is the decisive political force. That seems a pretty strong assumption in a world where Trump is president-elect, Syriza governs Greece and Marine Le Pen is poised to make the run-off in the French presidential elections.

There are other plausible scenarios. The government, pressured by backbenchers and Ukip and irritated by EU intransigence, could decide it is willing to pay the economic costs of “hard Brexit”. Or the EU could give way and enable a hybrid position, featuring some limits on free movement. Either would leave a Labour committed absolutely to free movement high and dry: committed to bringing back something deeply unpopular that was already gone (in whole or in part).

Even if events pan out as you expect, it is not clear that voters will swing behind free movement when the costs bite. Opinion could swing the opposite way – even more firmly in favour of immigration control and opposed to an EU seen as inflexible and punitive. Which would once again leave a Labour party committed to retaining free movement high and dry.

An astute leftwing opposition should not base its policy on the idea that voters will come round to its point of view. That idea has produced repeated disappointment of late. Far more prudent to hope for the best, but prepare for the alternatives.

I think Labour should debate the idea that the free movement principle is a serious barrier to a sustainable liberal immigration policy framework. There is a good case to argue it is. Raw numbers are not the only thing that matters in the immigration debate – both the symbols and substance of control are important.

Liberal pro-Europeans are powerfully attached to the right of free movement across Europe as a symbol of their values. The rights of people matter as much to liberals as their economic contributions. Yet such arguments also cut the other way. Many migration sceptics believe the right to choose who comes and goes should lie with a national government, and do not believe that a small addition to GDP, or a reduction in the budget deficit, is sufficient to legitimate taking such rights away from government.

Framing migration in terms of unlimited rights extended to a very large group has not been very successful to date – and could well inflict further electoral harm in future. But I believe a different framing could produce a different result. My years of work on public opinion about immigration has left me cautiously optimistic: voters are both pragmatic and flexible once you work to meet them half way. Migration of professionals, students and workers to staff high-demand sectors, like social care or the NHS, wins solid support.

Large majorities are happy to extend full social rights to migrants after a period of a few years – but equally large majorities reject granting those social rights from day one. Once voters are reassured on the principle of control at the national level, it is possible to build liberal, high-migration systems. Australia and Canada have done just that.

So I think you are being both too optimistic and too pessimistic. Too optimistic that the tide of debate will turn in favour of a free movement-based Brexit deal, yet too pessimistic about the alternatives available if such a deal proves out of reach.

Dear Rob



I suppose my biggest objection is the idea that my reading of the next four years is optimistic. I would love to believe that, come the crunch, voters will decide to buy a vision of a better society over having to pay for it, but that’s pretty hard to reconcile with the passage of politics in the 20th century, or, indeed, much of the 21st.

Having gone into so many elections believing that the punters would pay more for better public services, it would be a mistake to go into the next believing that free movement is any different.

You cite Syriza, Trump and Le Pen as examples of people voting against their economic self-interest; I’m afraid I simply don’t recognise that version of events. Trump channelled white America’s deep-rooted belief that it is in its economic interest to trample on black America. Le Pen, likewise, appeals to the sense that France’s problems – and the cost of fixing them – can be pinned upon the Muslim other.

In the case of Syriza, what Greek voters bought there was the argument that a more intransigent approach to their partners in the EU would allow them to have their cake and eat it too – in their case, that they would be able to continue their membership of the Eurozone and be freed from the demands of their creditors.

To channel Theresa May: sound familiar? And of course, what the Syriza government has shown is that you can win power on that prospectus, but you can’t govern from it. It now trails in all the polls, while the right is once again re-ascendant.

Glibly, I don’t understand why you want Labour to play the role of Syriza when it could play the role of New Democracy? But, more importantly, I think you’re approaching the free movement question from the wrong direction. Yes, there is heavy opposition to immigration. There’s also support for rent controls, which would make the housing crisis worse.

There is opposition to free trade deals which, for all their flaws, are better than trade wars and protectionism.

But with all of these, we take the wider imperative of running the economy. Immigration policy shouldn’t set macroeconomic policy. The best interest of Britain’s economy is to stay in the single market, and that should be Labour’s position.

Dear Stephen



I don’t want to get sidetracked with debates on elections elsewhere – suffice to say, I don’t think any of the examples we have discussed are straightforwardly about economics, and none provide a pro-immigration centre-left with much cause for comfort.

Marine Le Pen ‘appeals to the sense that France’s problems can be pinned upon the Muslim other’. Photograph: MESSYASZ/SIP/Rex/Shutterstock

Let’s return to Brexit, which is why we are having this discussion at all. There are three broad paths the Brexit process could follow from here, and on none of them does it seem to me that a reflexive commitment to free movement is the best option for Labour.

The first path is a hard Brexit, with single market access and free movement both gone. In this event, even if Labour is committed to returning Britain to both, it will need an immigration policy for the intervening period.

The second is fudged Brexit, with some forms of single market access retained, and some reforms on free movement introduced. Labour will need to decide what it thinks of such reforms: which would it retain? Which would it change? Which would it abandon?

The third path is soft Brexit, where the core elements of both the single market and free movement are retained. This would leave Labour once again needing to defend the free movement principle on similar terms to before the referendum, except now from voters who will feel their referendum vote to end it has been ignored.

Glibly, in none of these situations does it seem to me that putting “free movement is in our best economic interests” on a Post-it note is the optimal opposition approach. Labour should, at the very least, have a clear sense of the kind of immigration policy it would want if free movement were abandoned.

Even if this policy never gets adopted, debating the alternatives will provide Labour with a clearer set of positive arguments for the principle itself. At present, many on the left just defend it as an unlovely side-effect of a necessary trade policy – as, indeed, you have done here. “We don’t like it but we are going to have to go along with it” is not a great offer to voters, nor is it one recent evidence suggests they are minded to accept.

You also make another important pair of errors that are common on the left: equating free movement with immigration and characterising opposition to immigration as both monolithic and ill-informed. Free movement is unpopular. Some immigration is, too, but an awful lot is not. And voters are more pragmatic and flexible than you give them credit for. A more popular and sustainable left approach to immigration is possible. But only if Labour is willing to consider the options.

Dear Rob



I don’t think it particularly matters if immigration in general is more popular than the free movement of labour. Only one is the price we pay to keep Britain in its biggest market, to maintain the primacy of the City of London as a financial centre, the success of our universities as both as contributors to research and as a great British export, and to maintain an open and untroubled border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

There is far more at stake in leaving the single market than the mere question of whether or not Labour wins the next election. I agree that there are “three Brexits” and that each makes freedom of movement a tricky cross for Labour to bear. I agree, too that it’s difficult for the centre-left to win power in Britain supporting free movement. What you seem unwilling to accept are the severe limitations on the centre-left to wield that power in a failing economy.

You can’t have a fairer society if you don’t have a strong economy. If Labour sacrifices the pursuit of the latter to get the former, it will secure neither.

I also think you’re trying to have your cake and eat it, too, by saying that voters “are more pragmatic and flexible” than I give them credit for, while at the same time rejecting the idea that they can be won over to an argument based around giving up something you want in order to get something you need. That is the everyday calculation of most people’s lives; it’s not a difficult concept. Ultimately, the political success of austerity shows there is a majority to be found for the idea of shared sacrifice for the common good. The left needs to focus on building that case, not sacrifice its future to make a short-term problem go away.

Dear Stephen



Like you, I would much rather we were not having the discussion at all. Like you, I would much prefer to live in the world where my fellow citizens had voted to remain in the EU. But they didn’t, so I don’t. I fear you are also trying to have your cake and eat it, too – while acknowledging the reality of the Brexit vote, the only world you are willing to contemplate or discuss is the one where no meaningful Brexit occurs.

You are right that Brexit may well leave us economically worse off. I agree that this puts the centre-left in a worse position as and when it takes power. Yet the terms on which the left takes power are out of its hands for now. It looks pretty likely that the process of Brexit, on whatever terms, will be well advanced by the time any government takes over.

I agree that voters may well be won round by arguments about the economic costs of Brexit. Labour can, and should, make that case as strongly as possible. But it seems, at present, unlikely that such a turnaround in public opinion will be swift and sharp enough to halt the process of Brexit entirely. What you seem to reject is any preparation for a world where Labour needs an immigration policy for a Britain entirely outside the EU, or hovering on Europe’s fringes. Yet that is the likeliest world the next Labour government will inhabit, even if it eventually succeeds in reversing this position.

Labour needs to think hard about what a progressive immigration policy in that world should look like. I am optimistic that such a vision could win over a broader electoral coalition, and could help to end (or at least ease) Labour’s long-running neurosis on this issue. If Labour does nothing, the field will be left to Theresa May and Paul Nuttall to define the terms of post-Brexit immigration policy. Britain’s voters deserve better than that.

Rob Ford is professor of political science at the University of Manchester and the author of Revolt on the Right (Routledge). Stephen Bush is special correspondent at the New Statesman