Immigration may decide this election, so why are politicians still not really engaging with it?

My friend Emma had an argument with her girlfriend recently. Dzina grew up in Poland and came to the UK to study two years ago. Emma grew up in Bradford, so she’s familiar with the racial tension that the area is infamous for. She also spent a large portion of her working life doing the kind of manual work which is often taken by immigrants. Emma, like many people in this country, believes that it is unfair that foreign workers are widely employed in these jobs, pushing out English people. Her argument is that migrant workers, particularly those from EU member states such as Poland and Lithuania, enter the country for a few years, during which they work punishingly long hours for minimum wage (or less) before returning to their home nations with their savings. British people taking a similar job have no such escape plan. Emma wanted Dzina to admit that this was profoundly unfair.

I must confess that I always find these arguments uncomfortable. I’m very much in favour of the European Union and I have a familiar strain of middle class guilt from the fact that I’m English and relatively privileged. I’m far too much of a bleeding heart liberal to begrudge migrant workers from poorer countries for taking jobs I myself would never dream of doing. But this is clearly a hot-button issue. It’s a major reason why the BNP and UKIP are making electoral gains and racial tension continues to simmer across the nation. Writing people like Emma off as ignorant racists (she isn’t) is foolhardy, and the failure of left-wing, pro-European politicians to address the issue in plain-speaking terms has only served to fuel the resentment.

The infamous ‘Nick Griffin’ episode of Question Time was a prime example of this. Griffin has made capital out of exploiting the fears of English workers who perceive that their jobs and way of life are threatened by immigration. His party’s policies are simplistic easy-answers based on prejudice and misinformation. They bear no scrutiny whatsoever. Major party elites Jack Straw, Sayeeda Warsi and Chris Huhne were momentarily united in disparaging his dubious past-assertions and his racist beliefs. Quite right too, we may think. But I couldn’t help wondering if it wasn’t something of a missed opportunity. Everybody knows Nick Griffin is a nationalist and a racist. Due to the tabloid-fuelled controversy neither he nor the show would ever have such a significant public platform in the foreseeable future (ratings were almost triple what the show usually attracts). Here was an opportunity for the mainstream parties to engage in a really accessible discussion about immigration in front of a massive audience. Unfortunately Jack Straw’s waffle did little to illuminate the matter, giving a distinct impression of preaching to the converted.

The problem is that for many potential BNP voters, and perhaps even more so with the comparatively mild UKIP, outright racism isn’t the issue. Racist thinking is a symptom, not a disease. Encouraging people to feel guilty for having a problem with migrant workers without tackling the major problems in employment law (not a race issue in itself) or bringing proper attention to the many benefits immigrantion brings to our country does nothing but breed further resentment.

The fact is that many employers are more likely to employ immigrant workers than British, because they are generally more willing to work harder for longer hours and for less pay than their British counterparts. We saw evidence of this in the recent BBC documentary ‘The Day The Immigrants Went Home’, in which unemployed white Britons were given the jobs of Polish field and factory workers for three days, with predictably disappointing results.

Adult workers cannot be forced to work more than a 48-hour week on average, but there is an option to opt out of this limit. This is technically voluntary and you should never be discriminated against for refusing to waive your rights, but in reality employers abuse this on a regular basis, as Emma is all too aware. Apply for a factory job, refuse the opt out, don’t get the job. This is the primary reason for the dominance of migrant workers in these jobs. They’re not superhuman, they simply have fewer perceived options. Even the most unqualified British national can probably hope for something better than a 70+ hour working week of incredible tedium and often considerable manual labour. I have faith that for most people the dole really isn’t an aspiration, but if the choice came between jobseekers and that kind of working week, I know what I’d choose…

The minimum wage has done so much to improve the lot of all workers. But it doesn’t go far enough. It needs to be much more strictly monitored so that all employers are sticking to it. More importantly still, the opt-out clause needs to be given a serious and thorough review so that no worker, whatever their background, is expected to work extreme hours just to obtain a job at all. If companies need to be operational for longer days to keep production up then shift work needs to be allocated accordingly. This seems incredibly simple, yet I’ve never heard a politician discussing it. Perhaps if they did there would be more understanding of the job market, more equality of employment opportunity at every level and the racially motivated fear-mongering of the far right would fall on deaf ears.

David Cameron insists Gay voters can trust the Tories. So why don't I believe him?

The late, great comedienne Linda Smith once observed that William Hague’s efforts to deflect racist scandals from the Tory party was akin to Dr. Frankenstein desperately trying to keep the monster locked in the basement. The problem still very definitely exists; the issue is how effectively it can be hidden from public view and prevented from causing too much damage. I have a similar reaction to David Cameron’s recent attempts to endear himself to gay voters.

Cameron granted an interview to Attitude magazine last month, in which he admitted that the Tories had “got it wrong” with Section 28, and was at pains to stress that they were a changed party in 2010. This is undoubtedly a good thing. So why do I struggle to take his apparent change of heart seriously?

The short answer is because he is so patently insincere. Cameron voted against the repeal of Section 28 as recently as 2003, long after popular support for it died. In 2008 he voted for a motion that made it more difficult for lesbian couples to obtain IVF treatment by forcing them to name a man who could act as a father figure for the baby. When questioned on this issue by Attitude he defends this decision on the basis that a father figure is essential for the stability of a child growing up. Therefore lesbians (and presumably by extension single mothers) are apparently not valid as a parenting unit. As for his long support for Section 28, he can only assure us that he has “recognised the need for change”.

It gets worse when he is pressed on his party’s incredibly distasteful association with the Law and Justice party of Poland, one of the largest parties in the recently formed European Conservatives & Reformists Group. Presented with records of leading members of this party equating homosexuality with paedophilia and claiming that the “free promotion” of homosexuality would cause the human race to disappear, Cameron’s response is the political equivalent of “Yeah but no but yeah but no”. He repeatedly insists that he does not align himself with parties that have racist or homophobic views. When it is made patently clear that he in fact is aligned with such parties, he repeats this position in the manner of a malfunctioning robot. The best defence he can ultimately come up with is that he is not aligned with a bunch of powerful homophobes for their homophobic qualities. This does not exactly inspire me with confidence.

Tory frontbencher Nick Herbert claims that the existence of himself and numerous other openly gay Tory MPs marks a ‘self evident’ change in Conservative attitude to gay people. I don’t doubt their conviction, but I do doubt that Cameron, a man who consistently voted against gay equality legislation, had a sudden change of heart in his late thirties, just in time for him to become the leader of a party which desperately needs to rebrand itself in order to drag itself back from the 00s doldrums.

The temptation may be to ask how much David Cameron’s sincerity really matters. The fact is that tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality is on the rise in the UK. Unlike the Britain of the 1980s (or modern-day America), there is little political capital to be made from exploiting fears about homosexuality being ‘promoted’ in schools by villainous paedophiles eager to groom and corrupt impressionable young minds. It is admittedly unlikely that the Tory party will rip off the mask once elected and drag us kicking and screaming back to that time.

However, the importance of having an actively liberal leader in charge as opposed to a begrudgingly tolerant one is hugely significant. Cameron’s voting record on issues like adoption speaks for itself. Would a Tory government have introduced Civil Partnerships? Will a Tory government take a hard line on international gay rights issues such as the recent Anti-Homosexuality bill in Uganda? We may be in a better place now than we were during the Thatcher years but we haven’t yet arrived at a position of total equality, and any government that drags its feet on these issues is not a government that I want to represent me.