‘The Liberal Centre Must Find a Different, More Honest and Realistic Way to Talk About Immigration’

Instead of pandering to the hard-right’s framing of the issue – as the Labour Government seems to be doing – progressives need to find another narrative, writes Chris Grey

For as long as I can remember, a perennial complaint from the political right has been that ‘we are not allowed to talk about immigration’. It is nonsense – for the very obvious reason that there has scarcely been a time during all those decades when immigration has not been discussed.

But the complaint isn’t simply disingenuous in itself, it has disingenuous purposes.

On the one hand, those on the political right making this claim seek to insinuate that immigration has occurred under cover of silence; a sinister plot by the liberal elite. On the other, the intention isn’t simply to ‘talk about’ immigration but to close down ways of talking about it in ways other than their own.