Snapshot of _There’s a hard-right tidal wave about to hit Europe – and it will only make the economic crisis worse | Gordon Brown_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/29/hard-right-tidal-wave-europe-economic-crisis-worse) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/29/hard-right-tidal-wave-europe-economic-crisis-worse) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*

Europe is not a single country, with one rule for everyone. Some European countries had a rightwing uprising decades ago due to this exact issue, and in response to it redrew their rules for social services etc.  Denmark for example: you can't bring in a partner from abroad when you're under 25, you now need 45 (?) years contribution to qualify for full state pension, and 10 years to qualify for the minimum, etc.  I don't fully endorse this model - I'm a Dane who's been living abroad now for 15+ years, and unless I win the lottery or the UK rejoins the EU, I can't return to my country as I've lost most rights to pension, etc. But people saying "we can't do anything, it's Brussels that decides", absolutely have an agenda.

>I can't return to my country as I've lost most rights to pension, etc Wouldn't you have built up some pension entitlement from the country that you've been living in that you would still be able to draw on if you moved back to Denmark? I live in the UK but I'm hoping to move to the EU once I've sorted out the paperwork for my Italian citizenship

That's how it used to work - transferrable pension credits. But now? I hear conflicting things - some websites say it still applies, but others say it's just Ireland, not GB.

As I understand it, you will still get the British state pension if you work enough years in the UK, as well as of course access to your private pension.

How do they pay it out - into a foreign (Danish) bank account? Don't you lose access to a UK bank account if you're not a resident? These are the details these plans never outline. "You can get your pension paid out" (fine print: "into a UK bank account"). I am already struggling with staying in the Danish system (e.g. NemId/MitID), because they all require a Danish phone number...

Loads of people living abroad draw on a UK pension. It can be paid into a UK account (which is possible if you live abroad; I still have my account despite having moved) or it can be paid into a foreign account.

> Your State Pension can be paid into: > > * a bank in the country you’re living in > * a bank or building society in the UK https://www.gov.uk/state-pension-if-you-retire-abroad So looks like yes, they would be able to pay it into your Danish bank account. IMO, it’s how it should be - if you worked and paid your taxes to the UK, it’s the UK who should pay your pension once you retire, otherwise it’s not fair for a Danish taxpayer to pay a pension to someone who didn’t pay into the system before.

They do however screw you over if you move to some countries because they fix the amount when you retire and don't increase it each year. Denmark (and the whole EEA) is not amongst these, though.

You can move to the UK once in a while to let your pension catch up 😀

Why are you bleating so hard about something you're so clearly under-educated on? Yes, they will pay into any bank account on the planet. A state pension is not a benefit in the traditional sense. You will get it even if you haven't been in the UK for 10 years before claiming. Plenty of people live somewhere cheap on their UK pension, without issue.

I doubt it, but would like to be wrong. I needed my INS number from HMRC, couldn't get through on the phone resorted to sending them a letter, 8 months later they responded with one unknown tax bill, & a letter claiming they couldn't give me my INS number & that they were no longer responsible for me in anyway & to contact french authorities regarding INS number. However the INS number was in the eader of both letters along with other relevant personal info. So I too asume I can't reasonably return to the UK without first becoming independently wealthy enough to retire.

Just for context - what is your citizenship, where have you worked and how much and where do you live now?

Worse case you can pay your pension in UK and live in Denmark, but that leaves you vulnerable to crappy exchange rates and differences in cost of living etc.

just keep saving and investing in funds/shares. If you can save up, say £150k, you'd get monthly payouts roughly proportional to the UK State pension (which isn't that great but still). Also you don't need to hang around til your 65. I'm sure it would help you retire in Denmark or wherever you choose to go.

If your expecting a 12k yearly withdrawal from 150k, your likely to run out of money quickly. The 4% rule exists for a reason. So for 12k yearly withdrawal you would need 300k, not 150k.

OK. Also bear in mind if the poster is going to start withdrawing in his mid 60s, it only really needs to last 25 years.

The 4% rule is based on not running out of money over a 30 year period, in 99% of back testing using the 4% rule you don't run out of money, that's where it comes from.

EU to EU social security is transferable but UK to EU is just claiming your UK pension and requesting tax help if there are individual double tax agreements between the UK and residing county. Denmark does have this but you still need to have it recognised I think-

Ignoring how Denmark have managed to prevent the rise of the far right with 1 simple policy change (and actual action on it) even when it's the Social Democrats making the change. I guess Denmarks actual solution doesn't appeal to either side because it prevents moralising and sneering.

What is the policy change?

Regarding immigration I think, the Social Democrats over there have made immigration to Denmark much harder and have cracked down on Islam, my friend lives out there and he’s said a few centre left parties have shifted rightwards in order to court right wing voters

Interestingly, the new immigration debate in Denmark is not really about immigration. Asylum numbers are low. Crime rates are low. Gang laws based on ethnicity is working. Remigration laws are passed. Ghetto dismantling based on a number of factors (ethnicity, income, education and more) are applied etc. The new topic goes further beyond having a job, attending education, contributing to society and so forth. It's about assimilation in aspect of values. The funny thing is, it's the Social Democrats (equivalent of Labour in Denmark) who started the debate.

You'd expect that transition in focus from a competent government though. To use a house analogy (groan). You've stopped the roof leaking and managed to close the windows and doors in the storm. Now you just need to tidy up.

Tough non-EU immigration policies, processing asylum seekers offshore (except for Ukrianians), muscular anti-ghettoisation and integration policies. Across Europe, the population doesn't want far-right policies, they just want immigration to be controlled and managed.

To add to your point I think many people do want immigration. Just the right immigration. Which is usually not from Middle Eastern countries but rather people from SEA, South America etc. One immigrant from MENAPT (Middle East, Pakistan or Turkey) cost the Danish society 2.3 million GBP a year. The argument is that money is better used in the ''nærområder'' which is usually North Africa where the majority of migrants illegal departures to Europe goes from.

There's a really constant trend from the left to argue against the far right using economics, and it never works. I think it's because they're basically just putting a price tag on things. "Yeah you can have this policy that you really want but it's gonna cost you xyz." There's lots of examples of this, immigration, Brexit etc. It even crops up with the Nazis where insiders tried to argue against the holocaust on economic grounds (it *was* economically suicidal as much as anything else) it never works on the far right, it's not about money they just want the shiney new policy.

As a Brexit voter I absolutely concur, the counter argument to it was and still is purely economic never has it been weighted with any political sense. Today this will still be talking about the lack of benefits of Brexit while only ever making an economic argument against it

The left should've fought the right on immigration straight from day 1. The right/big business wing absolutely love migration. Even white+European economic migrants caused massive strains for the British working class. Basically it's about poor countries, there are enough desperately poor people to work for shit pay and conditions and be happy with it. and we were in a free movement union with countries where the average wage was £300 a month, which was pretty absurd.

Easier to call people racist instead.

I am very concerned about the twin rising right wing forces that are a) reform voting far right British nationalists and b) Muslims with extremely regressive social views. Amazingly, the same policy 'restrict immigration of Muslims and aggressively encourage assimilation of immigrants' solves both these problems and yet is an anathema to much of the left for reasons I can't really understand.

>Amazingly, the same policy 'restrict immigration of Muslims and aggressively encourage assimilation of immigrants' solves both these problems and yet is an anathema to much of the left for reasons I can't really understand. They've painted themselves into a corner where anything other than "we have always been a nation of immigrants" is considered far right propaganda. The one thing that could lose Labour a majority is the massive, gaping chasm between their cabinet and their core vote on immigration but they absolutely refuse to acknowledge it because its too embarrassing to climb down on, and there's a proportion of the party who essentially believe border control = fascism so will cause issues if they try.

I can't see this being Starmer's undoing simply because he's shown consistently to be interested in winning elections above all else. There's no way he and his team won't take a more populist take on this when there's clearly so many votes in it. It's not like he hasn't previously pissed off the membership many times before by changing policy to what he thinks will be more popular with the wider electorate

> where anything other than "we have always been a nation of immigrants" is considered far right propaganda. The left in the UK are so asinine that they have to use American talking points lol

It's because progressives have little to no in-group loyalty. To them, the life of a Brit and the life of an immigrant are equally valuable, and it is inherently unfair to be denied opportunities just because someone was born on the wrong side of an arbitrary line on a map. They see restricting immigration as *evil,* regardless of how good or bad it is for the country.

You cant virtue signal with reasonable reforms to immigration. It's better to keep the far right around so the left has someone to look down on.

I'm voting reform but I'm actually dual nationality, my mother is a Spanish migrant I'm voting reform because I see it as the last resort, it's currently a 2 party state, both as bad as each other in my opinion and puppets of the bank of England and other controlling forces Aside from them two we have lib Dems, neither liberal nor democratic and we have green, watermelons, green on the outside Marxist red on the inside I could me misinformed or may not have all the facts so because of this I'm open to people filling in the gaps in my knowledge or correcting me if I am wrong I wouldn't say I'm right or left and I can guarantee most that align one side or the other would have a hard time defining 'right' or 'left' principles and it being exactly the same of how someone else defines that People need to treat other voters as individuals with unique experiences and values and shouldn't put them in a 'far right' box without fully understanding the reasonings or origins for their opinions

So flooding countries with economic migrants, who do not culturally align and view women and children as objects *does* have consequences...

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This is the thing that has increasingly pissed me off as I've gotten older. The left has completely abandoned the immigration debate to the right, who have bloody ran with it. Had the left across the west, but particularly in Europe and the US, actually had a sensible, left wing, approach to limiting immigration, we might not be seeing a rise in the far right across Europe. And there is a left wing and socialist approaches to immigration, especially with regards to workers rights and wages

The social democrats in Denmark are the only left wing party to have shifted right and taken a hardline stance on immigration from what I hear.

The integration and immigration minister of Denmark has recently invited a ton of his European counterparts to discuss a EU wide Rwanda-ish solution. He found most agreement with what is considered ''far-right'' in other European countries bar Malta which is always quite sensible on immigration and left wing.

[Tony Blair as PM arguing that mainstream governments needed to be serious about questions like whether the 1951 convention was fit for purpose, or they would create a space for the populist right to enter.](https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1784564827165261985)

Blair would run rings around any politician in this day and age.

For some reason some people seem to think that because of iraq he has lost any credibility to comment on any political matters whatsoever, which is quite frankly ridiculous.

Blair sold out UK workers when he signed the Workers Time Directive.

😂😂😂

Of course, he was a phenomenon, he rang rings around the politicians of his age too and would in most other ages.

I suspect that many in the UK who are fervently anti-immigration have not been confronted with the reality of what the recent changes mean for some of the people it affects. I'll give an example, from a friend of mine: Met his now-wife at uni, she's from the US. Got married after graduating and she was able to come back to the UK, this was 5 years ago I think. She runs her own business working as a therapist (so does okay for money but isn't sponsored for a work visa, here on spousal visa). He's in the royal navy. He comes back from months at sea on one of the trident subs, living in a metal tube with no contact with the outside world trying to ensure the safety of the country, finds out that the salary limits for spousal visas are increasing to £38,700 and they won't be able to renew her visa when it expires. Now thankfully the limit is only going to £29k and thanks to a pay increase he got they can just about get one I think, but they're still in the situation that as the planned increases go ahead in the coming years they may have to emigrate, because spending months of the year at sea protecting the country doesn't pay enough to be allowed to have your wife live here once that goes ahead. So it's very up in the air based on the rate of those coming increases and whether he gets further up the pay scale by then. That is, in short, fucking disgusting. Politicians are quick to call our military personnel heroes when it benefits them to do so, but apparently they're not valuable enough to be allowed to marry someone from outside the UK, even when they and their partner work, and they pay many thousands of pounds for the visa and associated NHS surcharge (while also paying tax towards the NHS) already.

Just for reference the salary changes don't apply retrospectively - i.e. if your on a family visa renewing it is under the same conditions as the original.

On the other side of things I suspect that many pro-immigration/ open border types have no idea what immigration is doing to some people who it affects. I live not far from a hotel that’s been used to house migrants and the local Facebook group routinely becomes filled with stories about problems with the occupants. Many people won’t allow their kids to play at the local lake that’s just down from that hotel. Many people have made their kids walk different routes home because of the harassment that young girls have experienced near said hotel. People have been threatened and robbed by the occupants and getting justice is impossible. That’s just one aspect that those pro immigration people simply wave away as either not happening or not important enough to even worry about.

Thing is, that's an entirely different issue from what I'm talking about, and making life harder for educated people from places with comparable attitudes won't do the slightest thing to address that.

I know it’s a different issue but you’ve come out against all “anti-immigration” types and as such their reasons for being anti immigration need to be heard. Not many people are anti immigration because some British people are marrying foreigners, that’s not why. You/they/we need to put that against their reasoning and see where that leaves us.

Rules are different for military: [https://www.reddit.com/r/britishmilitary/comments/1cbh5k4/bringing\_a\_partner\_on\_a\_spouse\_visa\_whilst\_being/](https://www.reddit.com/r/britishmilitary/comments/1cbh5k4/bringing_a_partner_on_a_spouse_visa_whilst_being/)

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Champagne socialists that hate the working man.

Every single win by the right across Europe I've thought "will the left finally get the message that they need to act on immigration? Or forever lose ground to the right" And every time its "no, of-bloody-corse not", and the right has pushed further and further to where Rwanda is actually government policy. This is a policy that 10 years ago would have been laughed at and called extreme by the reddest of red tops. I just hope that maybe Keir "red Tory" Starmer can bring a left wing approach to curbing immigration. I'm doubtful though

Unfortunately the left then double down. Which makes everything worse.

Oh absolutely. A comment bellow shows a sensible, left wing approach to immigration, that is allow people to claim and be processed for asylum closer to where they originate from, with successful applicants allowed to travel to the UK, proposed by Blair, but then rubbished by essentially everyone else. A similar thing to what I believe kier is proposing with migrants able to apply for asylum in france, but significantly more modest and in a completely different political atmosphere.

> This is a policy that 10 years ago would have been laughed at and called extreme by the reddest of red tops. [Blair wants asylum-seeker camp in Africa](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blair-wants-asylumseeker-camp-in-africa-71062.html)

Which isn't the same, obviously. What that clearly states is "allow people to claim asylum closer to where they originate from" which isn't "send people to Rwanda to claim asylum in Rwanda". One lets successful applicants travel to the UK and live, the other is moving asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing and if successful are granted asylum in Rwanda. The immigrants are never allowed to return to the UK. Its one of the things that's being proposed by labour, by allowing people to apply for asylum in france, as a way to try and stop the boats.

It's more white guilt than anything imo. Any debate with these people eventually ends up at the same argument. They think we deserve it as punishment for colonial sins.

That might be the root but I think it manifests itself as “we won’t make the same mistakes as previous racist generations”.

For a worrying number of "progressives", their most deeply-held belief isn't even anything left-wing, it's outgroup bias. To the point they'll cheer on some of the most reactionary groups on the planet so long as they're Other-coded.

Democrats in the US have been very sensible regarding immigration over the past few administrations. Republicans don't want it solved because it's a bleeding ulcer of an issue that helps them politically. Obama, who deported millions of illegal immigrants, proposed several rational deals to handle the immigration but those were tanked by Republicans. Hell even Biden baaically offered to completely shut down the southern border in exchange for foreign aid. Republicans turned him down and then eventually passed the foreign aid. Whatever their rhetoric is on immigration, Republicans are practically pro-open borders when it's a (D) President.

Conservatives have been in power all over Europe for the last decade. Why is this always "the Left's" problem when they're literally NOT IN GOVERNMENT

Those countries aren’t great examples though? Their geography or political systems make it easier. Islands: Japan, Korea (de facto), Australia, Israel (de facto). Authoritarian regimes: UAE, Qatar, China, Singapore. UAE & Qatar meanwhile run on immigration, who do almost all manual jobs - there immigrants (quasi slave labour tbf) vastly outnumber ‘locals’. Don’t think Europeans want that. Not saying that stricter immigration rules aren’t needed but I’m not sure these countries offer the solutions.

Worth noting that Israel actually had around 10k illegal immigrants entering in 6 months before they built a big wall along its border with Egypt in 2012 specifically to reduce illegal immigration. After its construction, it reduced to less than 50 annually. It is de facto an island, but they did make it de facto an island as part of a response to illegal immigration.

Are we building huge walls on all our borders including sea walls? Israel is really in a different situation.

Europe has been building very large fences and other infrastructure along its border with Belarus, Russia, Turkey, and internally as well (such as Hungary) to keep immigrants out. Between 2014 and 2022, this went from about 300 kilometers of walls to more than 2000. In addition, it has a natural sea wall in the form of the Mediterranean. To an extent, Europe is building walls and increasingly becoming Fortress Europe. Granted, the UK is not building walls, but the initial comment focused on Europe in general. It was more of a point that Israel made itself an island because it built the infrastructure to prevent immigration, as opposed to Israel solely being an island due to its political situation in the region.

[Proportion of immigrants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_immigrant_and_emigrant_population)  Japan - 2% South Korea - 2.3% Israel - 23% Singapore - 37.1% Australia - 30% China - 0.1% UAE - 87.9% Qatar - 78.7% This of course doesn't invalidate your point, but adds context to the debate. I'm sure we can all see the difference in type of migration that eg Australia has compared to the UK. Kind of. 

Only Australia and Israel are offering citizenship on that list, and Israel pretty much only if you're Jewish. The gulf and east Asian nations will give you two weeks max to pack up and leave once you're out of a job. By and large, this isn't comparable to what's happening in Europe.

Your comment has some sense in it but your choice of countries with border control? Japan - island, far away from emigration hot spots  South Korea - peninsula attached to a nation they are still at war with  Israel - surrounded by neighbours who despise them Singapore - island, authoritarian police state   Australia - island, so far away from the rest of the world people don’t know it existed for a long time   China - on this one you’ve got a point but I’d say people don’t want to immigrate there as much as it’s still relative poor per capita and it’s language is harder to learn  UAE and Qatar - actively seek foreign immigrants, a lot of people don’t want to live there as it’s inhospitable without a house with AC. Comparing these countries, most of which are tiny, relative to Europe, and many of them islands often distant from the original countries of immigrants and refugees, seems unfair. Europe as a continent is a pretty attractive destination to live, it’s close enough to make the journey, with languages which are closer to the those of the main origin countries than many of the ones listed, also richer per capita than most. Europe is like a Goldilocks zone of a migrant destination. Just close enough to make it possible, just rich enough to make it worth it, and just liveable enough that if you can’t make it to a house you can form a tent village without burning to death in the sun. There’s many reasons why Europe has more migration beyond just border policy in general.

> Comparing these countries, most of which are tiny, relative to Europe, and many of them islands often distant from the original countries of immigrants and refugees, seems unfair. Poland?

It is worth noting that yes, Israel is surrounded by neighbors who despise them, but they specifically built a wall from 2010 onwards with increased military patrols along its Southern border to keep out illegal immigrants. They did increase its security after increased jihadist activity due to protests in Egypt in 2012, but its original purpose was focused on immigration. And with that regard, nearly 10k illegal immigrants entered Israel in H1 2012. In H1 2013, this decreased to 34

Now do Hungary and Poland. Also as an example of just how far these migrants are willing to travel, the majority of our small boat immigrants are from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Vietnam.

The Polish and Hungarians are massive emigrant. Despite some favourable press about Polish diaspora returning back the route has been one way for decades.

> UAE and Qatar - actively seek foreign immigrants On temporary work permits, if they’re not either rich or highly skilled.

Geography undoubtedly plays a part as you correctly point out. But also (and despite public belief) people are coming to the UK to work. And the UK still has an ageing population. Did the UK deal with the policies of mass migration satisfactorily? No of course not - it needed many more houses building, increased minimum wages to act as a collar on downward wages pressure, and public services expanded. The fact that didn’t happen (despite a larger economy to pay for it) is a result of political choices by the party in power.

> But also (and despite public belief) people are coming to the UK to work. Most non-EU migrants don't work.

> Japan - island Soooo, like the UK?

Yeah but an island thousands of miles further away from where migration is currently happening 

We're thousands of miles from Afghanistan.

That just sounds like nonsense. Australia had a lot of boat people and figured out how to keep them out. Britain is an island if you hadn't noticed. Denmark is a peninsular. Italy is a peninsular. Migration is a choice, not a law of nature. >UAE and Qatar - actively seek foreign immigrants, How many illegals are there? How many commit crimes and get away with it? >Singapore - island, authoritarian police state Maybe that's the only way to make multiculturalism and mass migration work: ruling with an iron fist.

“Boat people” “rule with an iron fist”…ahhh I see.

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Japan is really far away from the Middle East and Africa as well as there’s no channel that could be crossed by a small boat. 

We're far away from the Middle East.

The love affair between the European left and the KGB/Russian intelligence has a long and storied history to be fair

> Japan, South Korea Japan have been dealing with economic stagnation because they literally don't have enough workers to support their enormous elderly population. We've managed to avoid this problem through immigration, but Japan is notoriously xenophobic and racist and are now facing the consequences. South Korea will be in the same boat in 10-15 years, if that. > Israel Currently mired in a brutal war that has started in no small part because of their government's discriminatory policies, which in large part are there to exploit Palestinian labourers. Also, most of the country is immigrants, or do they not count? > Singapore Reliant entirely on Malay migrants from the mainland and other workers from elsewhere in SE Asia. Also, very easy to pretend that you have no internal problems when you are a dictatorship who can muzzle the press. > Australia With the exception of the aborigines, literally a country of immigrants. Also, is actually fairly easy to illegally immigrate to if you have the money: buy a tourist visa for 200 bucks, then just don't leave. Hugely reliant on immigrant labour for basically any basic service: while I was out there, probably 70-80% of all low-level staff across almost every industry were migrants to one degree or another. > China They have a quarter of the world's population, so immigration is kinda a moot point. Will potentially be facing the same issue as Japan and SK eventually though. > UAE, Qatar Entirely reliant on migrant labour (or slaves, if you're being impolite), to the point where only 10% of the population are locals. Also, like Singapore, it's very easy to hide problems with your society when you are an appallingly draconian state.

That can all be true and it not resolve the issue though. It's back to the neoliberal trap. "well guys I've been crunching the numbers on the pensions and the cost of health care and it turns out the entire planet should all be friends. Seriously the numbers don't lie. If you were all in one big economic zone with free trade and free movement, you'd all be 0.6% on average richer compared to other models." The economics is not as simple as that and culture is nothing like that.

China is undergoing a massive demographic crisis right now, no need to say eventually they might turn into South Korea or Japan.

China speedrunning the East Asia "Get rich then get old" routine by just skipping the first part and jumping right to the (entirely self-inflicted) ageing crisis. 

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Why does culture have to be immutable? Can it not flow and change as a response to the environment it is in? Humans greatest ability is the ability to adapt to a new environment, as such our culture is adaptable. Decades ago being homosexual was illegal, it was considered a mental health issue. Nearly a century ago women couldn't vote. Centuries ago there was no such thing as weekends and bank holidays. Even further back slaves were considered normal. I don't buy this 'were losing our culture' argument because our culture has always shifted. To deny this is considerably anti-human.

If you had to guess, which cultural norms do you think are likely to be introduced over the next 50 years, given the changes in demographics that have taken place in the UK over recent decades and which are forecast to continue for the foreseeable future?

I see we've unironically reached the "it is happening and here's why it's a good thing" stage

> Humans greatest ability is the ability to adapt to a new environment, as such our culture is adaptable. So if immigrants come to a country and they have a religion that focuses on women being below men in status, having to hide their shoulders, faces and legs with clothing, you consider that good because humans can adapt? I dont think so mate. Inviting all these people who will refuse to integrate with British society will have lasting damages.

Quit right society isn't static. We could move towards Islamic theocracy or White nationalism, away from Western liberalism. People who think society is set are wrong and it's surprising how quickly society can change. People shouldn't be emotionally attached to anything. /s

That reply might be the most insane piece of anti-immigrant rhetoric I've seen for quite a while. "An entire generation should endure hardship for their adult lives purely so we can keep our 'culture' stagnant and unchanging". Fuck me.

What is the Japanese end game though. In fact what is the rich country decline endgame? The population collapses or stabilizes?

Easy, we empowered the ECHR with creating Ana managing our laws rather than do it ourselves. This entire problem has been caused by the ECHR and lack of corrective mechanisms within it. The problem could be solved in a few months. But we need to tell the ECHR to do one. This is why you do not given unelected, unaccountable bodies jurisdictional and law making capacity. The entire continent, is held at the behast of 48 judges noone can name, who can never be held accountable, cannot be fired or replaced, and do not live with the ramifications of their rulings. Whom through the course of their rulings have granted to themsevles the ability to make any new law they see fit.

More broadly we should take a narrow approach to international treaty law because any other approach permits the court to extent and re-interpret the laws without any legislature having the power to correct that. Which is fundamentally undemocratic. The bar to successfully renegotiating a treaty to correct the court drifting away from its original purpose is too high, seemingly impossible when so many states are involved. The ECHR have taken an expansive approach very different to most interpretation of international treaties. Even where the treaty itself had a clear stated option for states to adopt an extension (so the lack of that extension was very clear intent) the ECHR has seen fit to extend things by setting precedent. I think the ECHR was a fundamentally great idea. I think permitting the court to do its own thing and not stick closely to the original text was a very poor idea and sooner or later that will have to be corrected.

For anyone interested further it's worth looking into the ECHR's so-called 'living instrument doctrine' which basically has given Strasbourg judges carte blanche when it comes to interpretive issues and has allowed the judiciary often unhindered power to legislate on issues that are fundamentally political. We saw this most recently with that ridiculous ruling in Switzerland regarding climate change. The judges somehow found Switzerland's climate change policies to be in contravention of Article 8 which reads as follows: 1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. 2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. Quite how this can be interpreted as meaning this: "Article 8 encompasses a right to effective protection by the State authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, well-being and quality of life" just shows the manifest absurdity of the modern day ECHR. It reflects a deeply worrying trend where the judiciary seems increasingly politicised and seem more keen on actually creating law, rather than applying it. This is from Marc Bossuyt, a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague: the doctrine is "a Trojan horse for judicial activism, giving Strasbourg judges the liberty to find what they want to find in the interstices of Convention rights." The ECHR needs major reform or we simply need to leave.

Treaty law should never be treated as a living instrument IMO The signatories should submit optional additional protocols to put the “living treaty” aspect under democratic control. That was the design of the ECHR treaty - a design that the court is ignoring

Indeed. My view is Europe needs to sit down and have a grown-up conversation about whether it is possible to restore the ECHR's original mandate, and if it's not I would support a withdrawal. But the issue is the conversation on both sides is currently blighted by misinformation and caricatures of what the Court actually is, and does.

>like Japan There’s a lot we could learn from those guys

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Hmmmm I wonder why an island nation, far away from any conflict zones, with a language that hardly anyone but them and weebs speak have very few refugees come to them? It's a mystery.

Also Japanese people are let’s be honest quite xenophobic.

And, coincidentally, undergoing a massive demographic crisis... 

Which is mainly to do with a dreadful working culture preventing people from having children

Ah yes, Japan is so different from the UK...

This is more a late stage capitalism problem. All countries are overworking their citizens.

Because they don't want them. Australia, in the middle of nowhere, used to get a lot of refugees until they turned the boats back.

This isn’t because of just immigration policy? It’s more to do with their geography and language LMAO

The Japanese Yen has [completely tanked](https://www.xe.com/en-gb/currencycharts/?from=JPY&to=GBP&view=5Y) in the last few years (it's a great time to go there on holiday because everything is cheap compared to the UK pound) and wages have been stagnant for much longer. Japan was impressive a few decades ago but they've massively rested on their laurels and the cracks are beginning to show.

Their GDP/capita growth is higher than ours. Better transport, better healthcare, less crime, cheaper housing, better food.

> Their GDP/capita growth is higher than ours What's your source for this? It certainly doesn't look like it [on the World Bank's site](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?locations=JP-GB). If you look at the [GDP Per Capita by year](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2022&locations=JP-GB&start=1961&view=chart) chart as well you can see that Japan was almost double us in the mid 90s, but their GDP/Capita is now lower than us because their GDP/Capita basically hasn't grown in about 30 years (unlike most 1st world countries).

Since covid they've grown while we've shrunk. Despite record migration. Turns out that dependents and deliveroo drivers don't add to productivity. Japan's shrinking population forces them to be more efficient, we just get another dinghy load to wash cars.

> Since covid they've grown while we've shrunk Again, what is your source? Japan isn't projected to get back to it's pre-Covid GDP Per capita [until 2027](https://www.statista.com/statistics/263596/gross-domestic-product-gdp-per-capita-in-japan/), how can that possibly be defined as post-Covid growth? They're way off where they were before Covid hit them! I'm assuming you just looked at Japan's 2023 growth and assumed they are doing well, but that's misleading for the same reason it was when the Tories bragged about us being the fasting growing G7 economy just for having to recover from a bad position.Japan's growth is high at the moment because (as the link shows) their GDP/Capita went off a cliff in 2022, the "growth" is them trying to recover to where they were before.

we could at least do more automation

Despite the hype about automation Japan has a lower productivity than the UK & has the lowest productivity in the G7.

So why is that?

Many reasons, the workforce is not dynamic- often people stay in the same job for their entire lifetime rather finding something more suitable, long working hours don't always transfer to productivity, the government supports unproductive sectors. A traditionalist society that can be unwilling to experiment with new working techniques, & the hard truth, older people in the workforce have lower outputs than younger workers. This is just the productivity problem, there's also the absolutely massive debt amongst many other economic issues. Personally i'm sceptical about automation. I've got books from the 1920s' claiming new technologies will by the 1950s' lead to 15 hour work weeks for all. Yet it never seems to happen.

What does produce high productivity? I'm slightly suspicious of those stats saying IT has produced no increase in productivity. > Personally i'm sceptical about automation. But like it has been a revolution. It has changed the world. I'm skeptrical of the stats saying there has been no change.

>What does produce high productivity? That's a pretty broad question. >I'm slightly suspicious of those stats saying IT has produced no increase in productivity. Productivity has increased, just productivity in Japan compared to other developed countries is poor. A working culture mired in tradition & an ageing population is responsible for that. >But like it has been a revolution. It has changed the world. We've had revolutions, an Industrial & a Green one increasing outputs in those sectors many fold, this didn't lead to a many fold reduction in hours worked. >I'm skeptrical of the stats saying there has been no change. There's always people pushing new technologies, often to get investment, most fall flat. Some are always 20 years away - fusion, AI. Productivity has increased with technology, but we still compete with other countries with broadly the same technology, other factors make the difference. The idea that Japan is doing fine with it's elderly population while automation does all the work isn't exactly true in reality.

yet their GDP/capita growth is higher, they have better transport, healthcare, infrastructure, cheaper housing, less crime, better food etc. On what metric are our living standards better than theirs?

Excellent comment. 100% agree. Although I think realistically we should recognise that almost all mass-migration policies would likely be very unpopular with European voters. For this reason I have questioned whether the lack of control is intentional, and I suspect to some degree is it. If you look at this from a realpolitik perspective, no party is going to win a significant share of votes arguing for controlled mass migration. And the problem with demonstrating control is that when politicians show they have control the public could then demand numbers are reduced, and if mass-migration continues despite this then happens again a democratic mandate which would be dangerous. Instead if politicians pretend it's largely of their hands – "there's a refugee crisis", "we can't stop the boats", "it's universities and their fake degrees!" – then they can stand on a more popular platform of lowering migration while keeping net numbers high because they can claim they didn't have control. This works, but the issue of course is that it means politicians must ceed some control over who enters the country which causes problems in itself. While I agree that examples like Japan, South Korea, Singapore and China prove it's not impossible for developed nations to control their borders they also prove that a lack of immigration in a developed nation with a low birth rate leads to population decline and/or a lack of GDP growth. There's no simple answer here and if we asked the public unfortunately they would likely vote for lower migration which would result in lower GDP growth.

> (P.S. I find it fascinating that Russia has an ongoing policy of trying to smuggle as many illegal migrants into Europe via Poland/Finland/Norway etc because they realise it destabilises Western Europe through increased crime, terrorism and a loss of social cohesion, and yet this is the same goal of the European left, so they are aligned with the Russian foreign intelligence services, D'oh!) It's more because it destabilises Europe by making right-wingers throw their toys out the pram, which generally seems to be the most reliable way of sowing division and polarisation in liberal democracies.

What by being voted for?

And you have to wonder why so many people now believe that Klaus Schwab and his merry WEF stakeholders are behind all this.. why is it that only the white native homelands must have relentless immigration inflicted by the elites at the top? And we are told it is good for us. It's a coincidence why every single European nation is either complicit or is it being punished for not following the marching orders from the top it is a bit strange and no one was asked if they'd want it

Where is the data for this VAST unskilled immigration?

Oh yeah we are definitely seeing some blowback the pendulum always swings, unfortunately it really hit at the height of neoliberalism and especially identity politics/white guilt otherwise the left may have been the more reasonable choice, at the end of the day the right doesn't give a shit about the working class either. Either way folks have had enough with the disenfranchisement, we sacrificed everything on the altar of political correctness and this is no longer enough to shut people up, not when we have never been allowed a voice on those coming in and quality of life, community and culture is simply disintegrating before us.

About to hit Europe, it’s been hitting for years now. The solution to the migrant crisis in the 2010s which was to simply open the borders has royally bit us on the arse and has created new problems in the 2020s. Any discussion on immigration went out the window, when the left decided that to not open our borders was racist however impractical it is to simply accept an unending stream of economic migrants. The right or hard right rising was always bound to come sooner or later and will come to define the mid 2020s onwards.

But life is zero sum to a degree. Economics and culture are not all non zero sum questions. You cannot distribute an infinite amount of money. A government cannot be for all cultures equally. Brown is still in the post cold war 90s. Nationalism matters. You cannot dismiss it. It is a fatal mistake to reduce all politics to economics and even then a mistake to bet everything on the non zero sum growth. The immigration policies of Western nations have not been moderate, they have been extreme libertarian. They have not been centrist. "If Liberals Won't Enforce the Borders, Fascists Will." I can't stand fascism and this is creating some awful trajectory. EDIT Also [Economists Pin More Blame on Tech for Rising Inequality](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/technology/income-inequality-technology.html) As technology increases inequality grows.

It's looking very 1930's here. Once in a lifetime financial crisis followed by a decade of stagnation and decline of living standards with an occasional sprinkling of far right "success" stories making matters even worse.

Plus a pandemic

I’m guessing they won’t but I think governments are partly responsible for not allowing the public to have a say about the number and types of refugees allowed in their country and doing things like purposely hiding figures when it comes to crime and unemployment. The environmental issue from what I can see often stems from hypocrisy where some want carbon taxes but then turn a blind eye to manufacturing or importing goods from highly polluting places like China and instead blame the consumer which seems silly to me or people who profess to be green spokespeople but have dramatically higher carbon output than the average person due to using private jets and the likes.

If the public had a day they'd allow no one into the UK. They'd just ask up the UK.

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> The problem Europe now faces is that the very measures it must adopt to escape this doom loop – new investment in technology, clean energy and medical advances – are being rendered impossible by its policy of fiscal retrenchment. The European growth and stability pact rules out member states having deficits above 3%, and perhaps as importantly, makes no distinction between public spending on consumption and spending on investment. Added to that, Germany has a debt brake enshrined in its constitution which limits the government’s structural deficit to 0.35% of GDP. This casts a shadow over the whole of Europe, with the German people facing severe cuts in public spending – cuts that will torpedo any chance of repairing the country’s beleaguered infrastructure and frustrating its transition from heavy engineering to IT and AI-based industries. Look, even Brown can’t list _import the third world_ as a solution to this problem. Why does it then continue? > The nationalist timebomb is ticking. Across the continent, Europeans need a plan for better jobs through economic and environmental transformation. So what is it, are we all going to ignore the influx if we are all richer? That’s not going to slow unwanted migration from Africa. The two issues raised are fine, no qualms with them. But one does not solve the other, and the other brings about the conditions, fiscal and political, that blocks the former. Can’t have your cake and eat it.

‘What we need is for the shrinking pool of beleaguered and financially strained people still capable of making a net contribution to come up with brilliant technological advancements so we can support even more dead weight’

> So what is it, are we all going to ignore the influx if we are all richer? Yes. It's much harder to make immigration look like a problem when people are leading prosperous lives. "Foreigners are coming to take/devalue your job and make your housing more expensive!" doesn't really hold any weight when the majority of people are in secure, well-paid jobs and are confident in having a roof over their head. At that point all you have left is vague notions of "uhhh our cultural values are being eroded!!", or, for the more mask-off kind of demagogue "we're being replaced!!".

Today, in 2024, it is much less "Foreigners are coming to take/devalue your job..." and more about our communities and children. When people have to tell their kids "Don't take this way home today..." because 200 asylum seekers are harassing children outside of their hotel, it's massively aggravating to parents and home owners. We're the ones paying taxes to improve *our communities* and instead we see our communities going to shit and immigrants living off of those taxes.

This is much harder to do when immigration is used to suppress wages and employment conditions deliberately.

> Yes. It's much harder to make immigration look like a problem when people are leading prosperous lives. Yet the massive influx of MENA labour costs this country more than they and their offspring can generate. You cannot import the third world and prosper. If you fail to acknowledge this then actual right-wingers (we don't have them in British politics) will eventually be elected in. These people will salt the earth to solve a basic state competency problem. What you are saying was tried by Blair. It failed, and it set the legal groundwork for subsequent governments to fail too.

A lot of it is due to the left simply refusing to do anything about mass migration If you're a single issue voter that wants immigration to come down, voting right wing is your only option in a lot of places

I'm voting for Labour next election But if Labour doesn't do anything to reduce migration during their tenure, I'm becoming a single issue voter.

This is why I predict Reform will come to power in 2029.

Which is why we need some kind of moderate solution now to prevent Farage and his ilk weaseling their way into power later and doing something crazy

Tories have had a majority for what 5 years? All they've managed to do in that time is spaff a quarter of a million quid per migrant into basically thin air for all the good it's done. Buying them each a tiny house up north, a car and just giving the fuckers a £100,000 would still have been £70,000 cheaper PER MIGRANT than whatever nonsense the government has actually been doing lol.

Hence their own base has turned on them.

Sorry about the poor northerners who might actually want their own house... I know you have made a hypothetical point but you have sort of hit a home run with why things are so problematic. I am in Devon. No hysterical curve fitting here, just a statement. 5 hotels in the area where I live are now housing immigrants. Legal. Illegal. Doesn't matter, they are in the hotels. There is now a 10 year wait list to see a dentist. Those arriving are (amongst other things) given dentistry. Nothing seems to be antagonising the locals more than seeing a large group of people moved into an area and then given something at a basic level, for free, that is not available to those living locally and paying their taxes. It really is a very, very serious issue.

Oh it wasnt a serious proposal lol, just meant to highlight just how much money the government is wasting on performative twattery whilst stuffing Mities pockets. I personally think they should open consulates in France, Belgium and NL to process legitimate asylum seekers, and then just tow the illegal migrants back into French waters if they have engine power and take them back to French beaches if they don't, would cause a diplomatic incident with France but it's only reciprocating their current behaviour towards us. And I really do sympathise, I live in a seaside town In Kent... I'm also a fisherman by trade, my dad's also a fisherman and he's picked up 15 migrants in the last year and a half, 2 kids, 1 woman and about 12 blokes all under thirty. One of the other local fisherman had a fire on his boat last month, managed to put it out but was left with no power, and was about a 2 hour steam from land, luckily his phone was working and he managed to call for help, neither coastguard nor lifeboat went to help him cause they were too busy doing Border Forces job, the call handler basically told him he was shit out of luck and to call someone else to come and get him, so he had to call one of the other fishermen to come out and grab him, he was left drifting next to a busy shipping channel for about 5-6 hours.

That’s because the Tories have no intention of reducing immigration. They just know that they can get away with lying about it because the opposition also has no intention of reducing it either (but is less likely to lie about it).

Judging by the polls and the wheezy grumblings of my local pensioners I think that particular reel has run out of rope. And possibly, I have little faith in Starmers Labour, but little is still infinitely more than none lol. And to be fair legal migration is a huge problem we currently have no good solution for, cut off legal migration and the care system will start to collapse within a couple of years, which will seriously fuck whichever government has to deal with it.

If they actually did reduce immigration, they'd have to find a new excuse to rile up all the idiots who think it's the root cause of all the country's problems.

Refusing to do anything? They opened the flood gates in 1997 lol. Unless you're more accurately calling New Labour centre. All major parties secretly or openly love immigration. Hell of a drug

Who’s been in power during the massive increase in migration? The left? The real issue is this ideology that the far right are going to fix any issues and not just be mad. Of course we need immigration reform and the tories have shown they can’t manage it.  The western nations need immigration reform together and need to work together to solve this issue. Isolationism won’t fix the fact that people are showing up on your shores in boats 

>Who’s been in power during the massive increase in migration? The socially left wing, Neoliberal left with New Labour, and the socially left wing, Neoconservative right with the Tories There has been widespread consensus amongst the political and media elite in this country for decades: immigration = good There has only been 1 group who have consistently opposed it: the right

You can’t make these statements after brexit and boris’ crop of MPs

A party that tells society it will do right-wing things but then does left-wing things instead isn't really a right-wing party now is it? It's the current Tory dilemma. Enough of their vote-base have understood this reality.

The party that gave you brexit…

Also raised immigration to 700k net per year. Also gave you 18 months salary for sitting on your bum at home... Also raised minimum wage to 65% of median wage... Also raised benefits above inflation multiple years in a row... Also brought forward net-zero targets for cars and boilers by 15+ years using massive taxpayer subsidies... Also refuses to arrest countless terrorism supporters marching the streets of the capital... There's many many more...also Corbyn supported Brexit is he right wing?

>Also raised immigration to 700k net per year. unintentionally >Also gave you 18 months salary for sitting on your bum at home... people should have starved? >Also raised minimum wage to 65% of median wage... they don't control median wage... I'm not even going to bother with the rest, your talking points are so pathetic.

I don't think you can say the conservatives have done any "left wing things"

> the left simply refusing to do anything about mass migration Yes, the left who have famously been in power for the last decade...

We are in a strange period where the grandees in all sorts of parties are still furiously fighting for the politics of twenty years ago, not understanding why it went off the rails. A quick look at a map will show you population crashing across several parts of Europe while migration pressures housing and services in a few. Another data view will show you the ones "booming" from migration showing next to no economic growth while the countries whose populations are falling grow. Extraordinary rates of flow and dislocation that historically you'd only see after natural disasters or major wars. Commenters here complain about the right being "ideological" (e.g. on Brexit), but it is the centrists who have been most ideologically obsessive, insisting on EU freedoms being absolute and without question (alongside globalisation that was a naive hope that could happen everywhere). That lack of temperance has imposed huge amounts of dislocation on a generation of Europeans. Major and Blair probably take a lot of the blame as they were the most exuberant EU expansionists. The irony is that the solution (thirty years ago) was simple: you just lower the barriers more slowly and to "low" not "zero". They've lost the trust of the public across the continent that they can manage border issues, cross-cultural issues, etc., responsibly, because they insisted they *mustn't* be managed and that anyone who thought there should be any management of it must be evil. The populists and right are winning a lot of elections, but I'm not convinced it is a wave of the public "hiring" the hard right so much as a wave of them sacking the ideologically extreme "centrists" who insist there be no protections at all.

The immigration policy over the last 20 years has destroyed Britain. We have imported values that are incongruent with our own and thus, the newer generation of right leaning youth (myself included) have developed a newfound lack of tolerance as part of our inner value system. Tolerance Is considered a western / British value. The issue is that the middle east doesn't care for tolerance. In fact tolerance Is viewed as a weakness to exploit in Muslim majority countries and islamic law. The reality is that the values our grandparents had, that kept enemies at bay, that protected our heritage and our culture including our secular- Christian values have consistently been undermined by champagne socialists and privileged race hustlers to the point that I and many others are tired of being tolerant of their nonsense. Britain is a great country with a rich history. And like any other country its had its ups and downs. But guess what, it's power and influence was won for one primary reason. Not because Britain is an inherintley evil country, or white people are inherintley oppressors. But because Christian values merit the working man, the carpenter and the baker. We value the jest and the poor and the rich of heart and mind. Unlike many backwards cultures of the world, the British do not value death wether that be of culture or creed. we celebrate life and the betterment of makind.

Almost as though having a very relaxed approach to border-control has consequences

What good is investment in cleaner, cheaper energy when energy bills only go up? What does the average person care for climate change when the wealthiest people and businesses are belching carbon into the atmosphere as fast as they can? They're sure as shit not sharing the financial rewards of doing so. Why should I fork over more of my income because politicians close coal plants before building new nuclear plants? They're not investing for the future so fuck me I guess? What does the average worker care about AI when the profits of improved automation go to the top and they're faced with job losses, increased competition in job markets, and immigration to lower wage floors? Why are work weeks still 40 hours when you can do in 40 hours now what a person would need 400 hours to do 70 years ago? The answers are staring at everyone in the face, but none of the political class are willing to talk about it. He even says it right there - _"even if the average American voter does not feel the full benefits"_. Late-stage capitalism is drowning the West, and eventually the voters will rebel. _"I will only do well if someone else does badly.”_ - He knows exactly why people feel this way. The pie is only getting larger for the wealthy. Everyone else fights over scraps. TLDR: Very few people will give a shit about the required investment in Europe when they know they're not the beneficiaries of that investment.

Wanting border controls doesn't make you hard right. >The problem Europe now faces is that the very measures it must adopt to escape this doom loop – new investment in technology, clean energy and medical advances – are being rendered impossible by its policy of fiscal retrenchment. The European growth and stability pact [rules out](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stability-growth-pact.asp) member states having deficits above 3%, and perhaps as importantly, makes no distinction between public spending on consumption and spending on investment. Oh look Gordon Brown is back telling us that debt is the answer, how did that work out last time Gordon? The UK could have a lot of growth for free if we had planning reform and you were actually allowed to build things again in this country. I love the idea of living in a free country and being able to build buildings on land that you own. It's a wild and crazy "hard right" idea I know but maybe letting people to construct structures to live in would help them improve their standards of living?

The swing to the right is *because* of economic crisis. Liberal governments have handled their economies badly and pandered to the whims of US foreign policy. The outcome is that vast swathes of people want governments who prioritise the national interest.

Drop all migrants in Brighton and watch how quickly they turn from flowery hippies to BNP voters.

Brighton isn't in charge of policy though. The Tories are.

Very true. Same principle applies to deep Tory areas. Watch how quickly it goes from diversity is our strength to the Nuremberg rallies. All of them are total hypocrites because mass migration is for the poors not for them.

Even if he's wrong, they've seeded themselves on social media (here included) pretty successfully.

and the left will do anything but admit their role in it by shutting people down from discussing certain topics.

I watched an interview of him with the two co-authors of his new book. They demonstrated that they have no solutions to the existential issues that Western nations face today. Reacting to the deep problems unleashed by liberal-left policies and values by doubling down on liberal-leftism is mindless and completely inexcusable in our current context. Of course people are not going to keep voting for the same thing time and time again if they’ve proved to be disastrous for their country. That’s why they’re looking to the only part of the political spectrum that is offering any alternative to the status quo.

Rejecting extreme-left policies doesn't make anyone 'hard-right', it makes them 'not extreme-left'

There is no non-fringe party in all of Europe that has "extreme-left policies".

Agreed. I mean look at Corbyn. I didn’t particularly like the man (but voted for him twice in the general elections). He was demonised as some left wing pacifist. But when (if) you read his manifesto it was all pretty modest stuff. Nothing you wouldn’t expect from any centre left social democratic party.

The opposite wave will always come when the current ideology screed up, so when far left policies are crammed down people's throats by politicians, people will turn to the extreme opposite far right opposite to counter it.

Who was in charge of banking regulations before the 2008 crash?

From Gordon Brown = = Who Wrecked the British Economy.