More and more, Nigel Farage sees himself as Britain’s mini-Trump. His new crackdown on migrant rights and benefits comes straight out of the president’s playbook – grounded in lies and hatred, complete with fantasy figures that will fuel the prejudices of his target audience.
Like Trump, Farage is now making up phrases that he hopes will stick with his followers. Trump coined “the weave” to describe his own style of oratory, because “vain, lie-filled rambling” doesn’t sound as good. Farage now has the wave – “the Boris wave”, in fact, by which he means the increase in non-EU immigration that followed Brexit.
Reform’s leader says that 800,000 of those immigrants are coming up for the right to claim indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in the UK in the coming years, and that this will cause untold misery if it is allowed to happen. His new pledge is that not a single one will get ILR if Reform gain power. Instead, they would have to apply for new, shorter visas with tougher rules.
Why does he say this? Because in his mind, immigrants are almost all work-shy benefits scroungers. Farage blames immigrants for just about everything that is wrong with this country – for low growth, for low productivity, for bust firms and higher taxes, for unemployment, for rising sickness benefit numbers, for housing shortages, and probably for why Coronation Street is no good these days.
There is usually zero proof for this and zero credible plan for how to deal with it. Which is why Farage says the other part of his plan – barring anyone other than British citizens from accessing welfare – would save £234 billion minimum. How?
That number was originally from the right wing Centre for Policy Studies think tank, which has since withdrawn its own figures, saying they “should no longer be used”. But that doesn’t matter to mini-Trump, who sees the president lie through his teeth and decides to follow suit.
Hence, Farage just doubles down and declares the amount he will save is even higher. Never mind that £234billion is more than we spend on the NHS per year and five times what we spend on defence. Never mind that Reform admits the changes will not apply to EU nationals whose settled status is protected under the European Union withdrawal agreement, who are the vast majority of ILR benefit claimants.
It is a figure so huge and impossible that Farage says under his breath that it would only be recouped over decades – “the lifetime of the average migrant”. He knows he needs a big number to help his modus operandi of whipping up hatred against the immigrants who help run this country, contributing to it through taxation and through vital work in public services.
So we get the endless repeating of set phrases such as “Far too many who come here don’t work, have never worked and never will work” or “most are very lowed skilled and on low wages”, “half who come here never work” or that “young and low skilled [immigrants]….will be huge burden on the state”, or that “it is the only way we can prevent the UK going bankrupt many times over”, and “benefits for immigrants will send us under”.
None of this is true – in fact it is the exact opposite of the truth. Immigrants contribute more than they cost and we do know how much is spent on benefits for immigrants. We know that only 15% of all welfare claimants are immigrants (as Nigel let slip in his press conference) and that many of whom have been living here for decades and paying their taxes.
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The truth is that these policies will kill growth stone dead on day one. Making it harder, if not impossible, to get permission to remain or citizenship means immigrants will be little more than guest workers, hunted down if they overstay their visa.
The skill shortages alone will shackle the British economy, but of course Nigel has an answer to that too. He said, “We will create ASSVs, an acute skills shortage visa”, so that companies that show they do have a desperate skills shortage will be able to employ an immigrant, but “employers will have to pay a levy to train a British worker for that role.”
So, you can bring in a skilled immigrant, but you will have to pay a small fortune trying to train someone British to do the job too, as well as paying them. This half-baked idea would bankrupt numerous firms.
Farage’s plans, once again, add up to little more than dog-whistle politics designed to encourage the mistaken belief that some people can’t get a job or a council house because these are being stolen from them by an immigrant.
And once again, Nigel is proposing to damage the economy because of ideology, handicapping firms and reducing the workforce. The legislation would be retrospective; just because you have ILR now doesn’t mean you are safe – Reform will send you home even if you have already earned permission to remain.
It will be fine if you work for Goldman Sachs, Nigel told the press. Brain surgeons can bring all their children with them. But those pesky benefit claiming, lazy, low-skilled leeches will have to go.
This is Trumpian politics to its core – whipping up hate, based on lies, ugly stereotypes, misinformation, all deliberately in order to inflame your base and blame foreigners for their troubles.
And it is working.
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