Category: Home affairs

Political religion

The blurring of tolerance for personal belief and acceptance of political positions is not an accident

What equal marriage really boils down to for the people it affects.

Same-sex relationships only received legal recognition in the UK within my adult lifetime. Equal marriage in Great Britain had to wait until I reached my late 20s; Northern Ireland held on until my early 30s. By the time it was delivered, it felt long overdue. That it commands such support, and that Britain is now (in the main) so relaxed about people like me, is an extraordinary political and social shift.

Still, a minority of opponents remains. The fact that Scotland’s Finance Secretary is among them is no surprise. The real surprise is how many of her erstwhile backers seem surprised. In any event, we now know she would have voted against equal marriage had she been an MSP. We also know she would do the same again today — though we are assured she won’t actively seek the chance to do so.

Opposing her on this basis would, you might think, be as reasonable a ground as any. Some tell us equal marriage is a settled issue and so we shouldn’t worry. But a politician’s opinion on one issue often gives a clue to how they might act on something else. We know Kate Forbes would ideally restrict the right to marriage. What would Kate Forbes as First Minister say about LGBT inclusion in schools? How would she approach conversion therapy (on which she already sounds distinctly evasive)?

More generally, we don’t usually accept ‘it’s a settled issue, so you shouldn’t worry’ when it comes to equalities. You could also describe equal pay legislation as a settled issue. I doubt ‘I would vote against equal pay today, but it’s a legal right and so I would uphold it’ would wash with anyone at all, quite rightly. And yet, a striking number of people seem happy to argue that position here.

I suspect some treat this differently for two distinct but intertwined reasons. First, there is still more room for open dislike of homosexuality than many other protected characteristics. Second, Kate Forbes’ view on the legal right to marry — not just on religions’ freedom not to perform it — is determined by her theology. Because most religions traditionally regard same-sex relations as sinful, some see her view on gay and bi people’s marriage rights as a matter of private conscience.

Sir Tom Devine said, ‘If Kate Forbes is hounded out of the opportunity to obtain high office in our country because of her personal beliefs we can no longer be seen as a tolerant and progressive nation.’ One might note that being the Scottish Finance Secretary is hardly a junior role. Even setting that aside, this is absurd. First, declining to vote for or endorse a candidate you disagree with is the very stuff of politics. Second, Kate Forbes’ personal beliefs, properly understood, are not the real risk to her ambitions. The real risk is that, given the chance, she would vote to shape the law according to her beliefs on private morality, at least some of the time.

A vote in the Scottish (or any other) Parliament is not, by definition, a private matter. In voting on a Bill, MSPs legislate for the whole of Scotland. Even when passing motions, they send a message from the Parliament to and on behalf of voters. When Kate Forbes says she would vote against equal marriage today but uphold current legal rights, she is not making a personal statement. She is making a political calculation that this is a fight she cannot win. She has given gay and bi people good reason to doubt her support for their rights, now and in future. Anyone who cares about that has every right to say as much and vote accordingly.

Does there have to be some compromise from gay people in the name of religious freedom? Yes, of course. We accept religions’ right to discriminate in who they marry, and often in who they appoint. We accept safeguards in hate crime laws to protect their right to denounce our specific sins. Bluntly, in many contexts we afford a level of courtesy to beliefs we would otherwise label rank bigotry when affirmed in the name of God.

That is tolerance in action. Do I think the belief in a requirement to follow the Word is a defence against the charge of homophobia? Frankly, no. But I accept, in the name of rubbing along together and the rights of others to live freely, that it is often better not to spell that out. And if a politician is a religious conservative, but has no wish to give that legal force, we should accept that. Forbes’ views on sex outside of marriage are personal: she does not wish to force them on the rest of us. The same goes for Tim Farron, who should have been treated more kindly, and equal marriage.

Forbes’ defenders, however, ask more of me. They imply I should, in the name of tolerance, give a politician a pass on the civic rights of people like me — to treat opposition to those rights more gently than I otherwise would when affirmed in the name of God. But whether and how far religion should shape the law on private morality is political. The claim that opposing a candidate when they cite their faith to justify their policy is somehow ‘intolerant’ is also political. It demands some deference to politicians’ views if, and only if, they cite a religious basis for those views. It is not a call for tolerance: it is a call for religious privilege.

Neither religions nor their adherents can have it both ways — though plenty will try. Those Anglicans in England who express horror when MPs step into their Church’s rows over sexuality, but want to keep their bishops in Westminster and their special status in law, are playing a similar trick. Where politicians want to legislate in the name of God, they place His relevant dictates in the political realm. Yes, secular atheists should be more careful to respect the place of private conscience. But the religious have no right to turn that into political impunity in disguise.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 25 February 2023.

Brexit, borders, smoke and mirrors

It’s a truism, but very probably correct: if voters prioritise jobs, growth and the economy, Remain will win the EU referendum; if they put immigration and borders first, Leave will triumph.

Remain has by far the stronger economic case: the likely effects on economic growth, the public finances and trading relationships are very clear, and Leave hasn’t really even tried to explain them away. Inevitably, they’re starting to major on migration; and depressingly but unsurprisingly, many leading Leavers are doing so in a profoundly unpleasant fashion.

The evidence on migration’s impact is mixed. Economically, most agree it makes for more growth. Immigrants create demand and thus jobs as well as filling vacancies. Most people’s wages seem very marginally affected, if at all. That said, those at the bottom of the income distribution may lose slightly – although the impact is dwarfed by the economic self-harm Brexit represents, or for that matter the Conservatives’ cuts to welfare, any ‘marginal’ loss will undoubtedly affect them far more than their fellow citizens. Undoubtedly, public services have come under real pressure in areas where migration has been most rapid (though immigrants also play a large role in staffing many of those services).

So it’s completely fair to raise immigration as an issue for wages, public services and indeed a source of anxiety about the pace of change. But it’s not OK to peddle promises you can’t or won’t keep in order to score a point: and Leave has been doing exactly that.

Single market membership means free movement

There is one country in the European Economic Area which has membership of the single market without being required to accept free movement (at least for now): Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein has a population of around 37,000 and a very high proportion of people born abroad. Every other country with single market membership has to accept free movement as part of the deal.

The UK is a relatively large European country. Its net migration rate isn’t exceptionally high by the standards of western Europe. And immigrants contribute more to its public purse than they take out. There is no good reason for it to argue that it and Liechtenstein are the only two countries in the EEA who merit special exemption from free movement, and no reason to believe the rest of the EU will see fit to grant it one anyway.

Global free trade? Get in the queue

As a result, the Leave campaign has talked itself into an economic corner, tacitly arguing for leaving the single market outright. The vast majority of economists are clear this would be immensely damaging for the economy, and thus for British jobs and wages. It would hurt the real incomes of the poorest far more than immigration from EU member states ever could.

At the very least, you might expect Leavers to have some semblance of an economic alternative for the UK once it leaves the single market covering 44% of its trade and the trade deals covering more again. So far, the strategy seems to be ‘strike a free trade deal with the EU and a whole host of other countries and then be a hyper-liberal, hyper-open economy afterwards.’

This relies on other states, many either profoundly alienated or utterly bemused by Britain’s presumed decision to walk out on its neighbours, moving the UK to the front of the queue for special trade deals – a willingness which the US, WTO and others have made clear does not exist. Brexiteers often seem to think it also involves torching EU-protected workers’ rights: centre-left Leavers should think hard before lending their names to it.

Open economies have porous borders

How does all this relate to the immigration debate? Let’s look at the 2015 estimated net migration rates per 1,000 of population for the main developed economies (microstates aside) outside the EEA and Switzerland, by comparison with the UK.

UN Population Department CIA World Factbook
Singapore 14.90 14.05
Canada 6.71 5.66
Australia 8.87 5.65
Hong Kong 4.20 1.68
United States 3.17 3.86
United Kingdom 2.83 2.54
Israel 2.24 0.50
South Korea 1.27 0.00
Japan 0.55 0.00
New Zealand 0.33 2.21
Taiwan —– 0.89

Note that the free-market entrepôts (Singapore, Hong Kong) have pretty high migration levels. That’s unsurprising: they’re open to cash from abroad, trade with abroad, investment from abroad – and thus, generally, people from abroad. Multinational companies want to bring people in; relatively open labour markets attract people looking for work, and employers can find it hard to fill gaps; aggressively anti-immigration policy/rhetoric may deter investment. The US, Canada and Australia have notably higher immigration levels than ours (New Zealand’s rate has fluctuated over the years). The exceptions are the East Asian countries, and they all face severe demographic crunches. Japan, in particular, has had sluggish growth for decades and has been trying to tackle its labour market problems without more immigration – without much success.

So is Leave’s plan for Britain to assert itself as a detached, trading nation, dealing with the whole world as openly as possible and pursuing a free trade strategy with the wider world? If so, it’s singing siren songs of pulling the drawbridge up, while its economic ‘strategy’ implies throwing it down. The tenor of its campaign is ‘Stop the world, I want to get off’; the logic of its economics is ‘Ride the world at breakneck speed.’

Perhaps immigration levels would be a bit lower outside the single market; perhaps a somewhat lower share of immigrants would be unskilled workers. But Brexit wouldn’t change the fundamentals: we would still have substantial net immigration, and the ‘tens of thousands’ target would remain a chimera. (People who say Brexit would allow more liberal Commonwealth migration know this perfectly well: net migration from outside the EU is 188,000.) Being ejected from the single market we helped create, helping set off a race to the bottom on workers’ rights, losing security co-operation, undermining a leading actor on climate change and losing influence in the world is a very high price to pay for some tweaks at the margin.

#CharlieHebdo: why religion can’t be a sacred cow

I write this with trepidation and I worry about giving offence: but as a secularist and leftist, I wanted to give my own perspective on the atrocities committed against Charlie Hebdo.

Like almost everyone else, my starting point is horror that so many people have been killed either for their cartoons or for guarding the people who drew them. Nothing can justify that.

I am also very uneasy about the degree of focus on whether or not we approve of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons. I worry about blurring the lines between lampooning religions, belittling individual believers and attacking ethnic groups. And I worry that in the process, we give a set of ideas a free pass, many of which secular leftwingers would – and should – vehemently oppose.

Charlie and the Church: a very French dispute

I think a lot of anglophone commentators have taken Charlie Hebdo out of context. I’m not fluent in French – and I’m certainly not fluent in French satire – but I do know a bit about that context. Charlie Hebdo comes from the anticlerical radical left. We don’t really have an equivalent in the UK (disestablishmentarianism has, sad to say, not got much further since 1920), any more than we have France’s tradition of laïcité. Opposition to the influence of the Catholic clergy played a significant role in the French Revolution, and it was a leitmotif of the left in the Third Republic.

Charlie Hebdo is partly in that tradition. As a result, it’s fiercely anti-religion in all its forms. As you’ll see from a brief google, the magazine has been pretty ruthless to all the Abrahamic faiths: their front page with an angry bishop, imam and rabbi will give you some idea (‘Il faut voiler Charlie Hebdo’ means ‘We’ve got to veil Charlie Hebdo’). It is also, importantly, rooted in a) a specifically French set of stories and references and b) particular stories at any point in time. As a result of the murders, a small-circulation magazine of the French far left which operated within that context and for a French audience (who would get the context in a way that we wouldn’t) is now being scrutinised by people who don’t speak the language, don’t get the context and don’t remember the news stories.

Charlie Hebdo is deliberately outrageous: that’s half the point of the magazine. That means people will have been offended by some or many of their cartoons – often reasonably. I’m not saying that none of their cartoons crosses the line in the French context: I don’t know them well enough for that. (In fact, as with most satirical or outer-edge publications, I imagine they probably have.) But it’s interesting that SOS Racisme, France’s largest anti-racist organisation, refers to the paper as ‘our friends’. They also came out in support of Charlie Hebdo in 2012, when it published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Beliefs and believers: two different things

Really, I’m less concerned about the rights and wrongs of the magazine. What worries me is the way in which theologically-derived taboos, from all religions, can become accepted limits upon all of us. One very thoughtful piece gave me that impression: ‘This crime in Paris does not suspend my political or ethical judgment, or persuade me that scatologically smearing a marginal minority’s identity and beliefs is a reasonable thing to do.’

Identity: fine. I have no quarrel with that. Beliefs? Sorry, but beliefs are ultimately opinions. However deeply-held, however central to how you see yourself, however ingrained by family and culture and community, they’re still opinions. (My sense of Britishness is central to my sense of self. But my support for the Union of 1707 is still an opinion and you have the right to attack it with all the rhetorical force at your disposal. The same goes for my sexuality as opposed to my views on equal marriage.) And opinions are fair game.

Once we start accepting that we can cordon people’s beliefs off from discussion, we get into dangerous territory. We get the kind of soft censorship that Martin Rowson talked about. We get people calling for ‘safeguards against vilification of dearly cherished beliefs’ (though the proposals were amended that time). It’s not just members of one religious group, either: remember the riots over Behtzi? (The play was cancelled: police ‘couldn’t guarantee their safety’.) Or when Christian groups tried to get Jerry Springer: The Opera judged as blasphemous?

Religion is not powerless

Ultimately, a major reason Charlie Hebdo got into hot water on a regular basis was that it aimed at religion without demur or restraint. They would, I think, say that it is precisely because they distinguish between the belief and the believers that they pull no punches. It is also true that Muslims in France, Britain and all of western Europe are a disproportionately marginalised and discriminated-against group. Attacking them is kicking down: agreed.

Religions, however, are powerful things, with millions of adherents around the globe. Many would die for their faith – and yes, a smaller number would sometimes kill for it. Of course, the vast majority of religious people would never dream of committing such atrocities. But taking aim at Islam when it enters the political realm is not, any more than taking aim at the Catholic Church or evangelical churches when they do the same, kicking down: it’s kicking up.

Nearer the mainstream, and in a British context, religions often seek to influence the public realm and often succeed. They have profound influence when it comes to faith schools, assisted dying (while not always giving full disclosure of their reasons), university seating and more besides. They have power, and power should always be scrutinised.

Religions aren’t just important parts of the identity of ethnic minorities, who are often discriminated against and badly treated. They’re a political presence; they’re a powerful social force; many of their believers campaign for their values in the public realm. They cannot be beyond criticism. And they certainly can’t be beyond reach of a cartoon.

Immigration, political honesty and the limits of the possible

Despite being a leftist, I’m going to be fair-minded and make some kinder comments about David Cameron’s speech on immigration (initially). Firstly, he is of course entering into a legitimate debate about migration. While the question of asylum is separate, economic migration is a debatable good: it’s perfectly fair to ask how much migration is desirable and what the overall pros and cons are for Britain. Furthermore, Cameron was explicit that migrants can create jobs as well as filling them, taking on the idea that there’s some sort of lump sum of labour in an economy. And he did attempt to draw some key distinctions (e.g. about the speed of change, rather than necessarily the principle): this was not on a par with Michael Howard’s 2005 campaign.

The fact remains, though, that there are lots of straw men lurking in the speech. Anyone who’s listened to Jack Straw, David Blunkett or Phil Woolas will be a bit surprised to hear that the last Labour government gave the impression that it was racist to talk about immigration, for instance. Nor is it particularly helpful to claim that the government which brought in a points system promoted the view that any attempt to control immigration was madness. And was there really a ‘mass relativism’ about sham marriages? This isn’t on the scale of 2005, but there are still nasty undertones here – in the run-up to elections, at a time when the economy is in a grim state and voters are angry. Politicians who declaim loudly about how ‘we aren’t allowed to say anything about immigration’ are playing a dangerous game.

Cameron was also making dubious use of statistics at best. For a start, while looking at EU migration, he got his figures wrong. Long-term net EU immigration ran at 57,000 from June 2009 to June 2010, not 27,000. The choice of year was also misleading at best, at a time when there has been partial unwind of the post-2004 migration from eastern Europe. Note, I’m not complaining about that migration: but in this instance, Cameron is underplaying it in order to argue that his proposed cap will be effective when, in recent years, it would have usually had little effect. And by the way, if you’re worried about destabilisation and impacts on local services, net long-term migration is not the only possible concern: the ‘churn’ of migration, causing rapid fluctuations for councils, can also cause problems – not to mention internal migration within the UK.

The statistical details matter because the misuse of figures contributes to a wider argument: that we can meaningfully control immigration, in the sense of reliably determining a net total migration figure for the UK. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to sidestep my views on preferred migration levels (fluctuating depending on economic circumstances, but probably on the liberal end of the spectrum, if you’re interested). As a simple matter of fact, irrespective of what we’d like to do, it is not the case that we can control immigration. We can, perhaps, manage migration, in the sense of knowing (broadly) who’s coming in and making sure the system works better. But EU migration is a very large part of the whole, and we can’t restrict that (transitional controls on new members are just that – transitional). Free movement of labour is, rightly, central to the EU Single Market – and we can’t have one without the other. So economically, we haven’t got much alternative in terms of EU migration.

Furthermore, our borders are always going to be fairly porous: how could it be otherwise in a country with quite so many visa waiver agreements, for example? (And one of the biggest categories of overstayers is from those countries, by the way.) The fact that we have something like 400,000 illegal residents in the UK says something about the difficulty of enforcing border controls. I’m sure we can do a fair bit to make them more effective, but I also suspect that there is a direct relationship between how restrictive our overall policy is and how much illegal migration we end up with.

Ultimately, Britain is a small island near a bigger continent in a world of mass travel. We are lying to our voters if we pretend that immigration can be fundamentally controlled: or at least, controlled without unacceptable consequences in terms of civil liberties and day-to-day life. We can affect levels at the margins, we can monitor what’s happening, we can try and affect the drivers of demand for migration – beefing up HMRC’s minimum wage compliance would be a start. But if we’re being honest, that’s about it.

That is a very unpopular statement, but it’s also true – and an honest conversation about immigration will, at some point, have to include an admission of that basic fact. How do we go about admitting that migration is, in this sense, ‘out of control’ and unavoidably so?  And where should immigration policy go from that admission? I don’t have anything like a full answer. I suspect we probably have to talk about pull factors in the UK: has immigration been encouraged by low wages at the bottom of the labour market, making it more difficult for UK citizens to leave the benefit trap? Would a living wage mean more British citizens could fill jobs in Britain? Would greater regulation of the labour market – in at least some areas, some of the time – play a role? And should we be thinking about ways of harnessing some revenue from immigration (work permit fees, in particular) and investing it in training British citizens?  (The Liberal Democrats had a policy along these lines at one point.)

I’m sure there are other, better suggestions to be discussed: these are mainly starters for ten. But sometime, somehow, we need to have a more honest conversation about this – and stop pretending either that the establishment is conspiring to shut us all up or that we could buck the trend if we wanted to, if only we were a bit more competent. Because if we carry on arguing that migration levels can be reliably determined as a matter of political choice, and keep failing to deliver a given level of migration, more and more people will reasonably ask why we’re not delivering. And those answers could produce some ugly results.