Re-Shoring - How China is Risking its Future

Alphen, Netherlands. 5 December.  British PR-Meister David Cameron was in Beijing this week selling Britain to the Chinese.  No, I mean literally selling Britain to the Chinese.  I think he got about twenty quid for Scotland, which to my mind is far too much especially as come next September they could well be offering themselves to anyone for next to nothing.  He also promised to raise the issue of human rights with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.  Given how desperate Dave is for money one can imagine the conversation.  Desperate for dodgy dosh Dave: “So, Li, how are human rights doing in China?” Li: “Fine”.  Dave: “Good.  How much will you give me for Manchester?  Thirty quid and I will throw in free delivery.” 

 

What was strange about Cameron’s trade visit was it seemed completely detached from the volcanic geopolitics in the East China Sea.  Having finally settled on something that to Cameron’s a-strategic mind looks like a strategy – mercantilism – nothing was going to get in the way of a deal.  Now, don’t get me wrong, with the EU a mutual impoverishment pact Dave is right to seek to open up the Chinese market to British business. 

However, the sudden vigour with which he has suddenly discovered China after over three years in office suggests that dear old Angela has told him that now she is in bed with the EU-hugging German Left there will be no EU reform.  Britain could soon be on a slow boat to China via an EU exit.

Dave is not great with timing.  As he was selling Britain China was unilaterally deepening its dangerous dispute with Japan (and by extension the US) by declaring air space sovereignty over the disputed Daioyu/Senkaku islands.  By adding Britain to its now extensive collection of Europeans desperate for Chinese money it would thus be easy to conclude Beijing has neatly split and neutered the old West.

So, has China pulled off a strategic masterstroke?  No.  In fact China’s creeping and burgeoning assertive nationalism is in danger of putting at risk the very thing that has made China rich – globalisation.  Yes, beneath the East China Sea there could well be huge reserves of oil and gas that the Chinese economy desperately needs.  However, the islands dispute is not really about energy, it is about power.

China has become rich precisely because of the relatively stable international order the West, mainly the Americans, created.  In spite of efforts to boost domestic demand the enormous developmental challenges China faces (town/country split, ageing population etc. etc. etc.) China is more developing power than superpower.  China will need to export for years to come.

Given that the last thing that the Chinese economy needs is strategic turbulence and yet that is precisely what China is creating.  The disputed islands are like small pebbles dropped into an enormous strategic pool causing ripples across the world. 

What could be that impact?  Re-shoring is the simple answer.  On November 25^th the Financial Times ran a piece in which it said, “One in six UK companies has brought production back over the past year or is in the process of doing so suggesting re-shoring is starting to gain traction.  The number of companies returning production from countries such as China is outstripping those moving output overseas according to a survey of more than 500 small and medium-sized companies”. 

Re-shoring is gathering momentum across the West with many companies now abandoning Asia to return production to their home markets.  The FT piece suggests that cost of production, lack of quality and long lead times are the primary factors.  Research at the University of Tilburg also cites problems of communication to which add concerns about the cost and reliability of regulatory regimes in Asia.

Now, imagine China really steps up the heat on Japan.  What is now still a trickle of re-shoring would very rapidly become a flood.  In effect, China would be killing the Chinese goose that laid several million golden eggs as the one thing business cannot stand is strategic turbulence.  If China pushes too far its many claims across what it has unilaterally termed its far-ranging Economic Exclusion Zone the ‘cost’ of doing business with or in China could become too great and China’s export-led boom would rapidly end.

Perhaps dear old Dave is not as strategically-challenged as his lightweight premiership might suggest.  It may well be that China needs influential friends in the West as much as Dave needs China.  Perhaps that was what Premier Li meant when he talked of an “indispensable partnership” and there really will be some Chinese give as well as the more normal take.  I wonder if Dave told Li that Britain might leave the EU?

As for Manchester.  Thirty quid?  You must be joking.  Five at best and you can collect it yourself.  Bring a bag.

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Realism: Burke, Payne and the EU's Twenty-Ninth State

Alphen, Netherlands. 2 December.  A senior European Council official last week described the European Commission to me as “Europe’s twenty-ninth state”.  This got me thinking about the instinctive unease millions of we ordinary Europeans feel about the concentration of unaccountable powers taking place in Brussels.  Edmund Burke and Thomas Payne would undoubtedly have seen a passing resemblance between Brussels today and Louis XVI’s corrupt ancien regime (read Tocqueville) and George III’s remote and incompetent colonial government of British North America prior to the American and French revolutions.  So, where does the EU’s twenty-ninth government sit between Tom Payne’s principle of rights or Burke’s ideas about representation and taxation? 

 

With growing public scepticism over ‘Project Europe’ and with paralysis hard-set between those that pay and those that receive the EU has become unreformable.  Instead, Europe’s unofficial leader Chancellor Merkel has retreated into a kind of muddling through.  Faced with Merkel’s caution and innate public scepticism hard-line federalists such as Guy Verhofstadt and his Commission friends have of late resorted to talking only about the Euro and how to save it through deeper integration.  They thus avoid the bigger constitutional implications that such integration through the back door implies.

Burke was no fan of democracy but he did believe in representation.  He believed government demanded a level of intelligence and knowledge that at the time was to his mind only to be found amongst the elite…recognise it?  Indeed, Burke thought democracy would lead to demagoguery because it would arouse dangerous passions amongst the Great Unwashed.  Burke also warned that democracy could lead to the persecution of minorities if the ‘protection’ they enjoyed from the upper classes was removed.  Today’s debates over intra-EU immigration and free movement captures just a smidgen of Burke’s concerns.

Payne’s thinking was genuinely revolutionary.  His Rights of Man provided the philosophical underpinnings for both the American and French Revolutions.  Indeed, by placing the rights of the individual front and centre Payne was consciously cutting Hobbes’ Leviathan down to size.  Leviathan trades absolute freedom of the individual for a form of security by imposing equality - all individuals transfer all rights to Leviathan in return for security.  Paine instead believed in a form of utopian egalitarianism based upon an optimistic view of human nature. 

What Payne failed to realise was that far from building communities his concept of universal rights could actually destroy them.  Indeed, the essential difference between Burke and Payne came down to a view of community which was expressed in their war of words over the role of religion.  As Alexis de Tocqueville also suggested universal rights could create dangerous competition between individuals.  

However, both Burke and Payne rejected unelected, arbitrary and remote government.  And it is at that philosophical juncture at which the European Commission now resides – part Leviathan, part Rights of Man and part guardian of elitist experiment.  As Leviathan it is meant to ensure ‘fairness’ by establishing a level playing field between EU member-states.  It uses the Rights of Man to justify its role as the initiator of European legislation under the Lisbon Treaty.  And, it sees itself as the true guardian of the elitist concept of political union.

In the absence of effective oversight the Commission has been encouraged to compete for power with the very states that created it.  What is dangerous is the yawning legitimacy and sovereignty gap between me the citizen, the discredited European Parliament and the EU’s twenty-ninth state. 

In that light the constant attempts of the Great Unelected to extend their powers look to many of we the citizenry (and would certainly have appeared to a latter day Payne) as an attempt to shift arguments over power and its acquisition to one of competence.  This was the essential argument of Thomas Hobbes back in the seventeenth century and in their respectively corrupt forms it is what the ancien regime and British North America became.  

The parallels are striking.  Commission no-president-of-mine Barroso even echoes Hobbes when he warns that without further integration Europe will return to a ‘state of nature’ and “warre of all against all”.  This is dangerous self-serving nonsense.

Both Louis’s ancien regime and British North America ultimately fell because the costs they imposed were balanced neither by effectiveness nor representation for those outside the ruling caste.  The danger for the Commission is that as it seeks to replace the nation-state as the government of Europe it will be seen more as Hobbes’s unforgiving Leviathan than either Payne’s Rights of Man or Burke’s representative government.  That is why the Commission is not nor must it ever be the first or the twenty-ninth EU state.

When a form of governance is believed neither to be just nor effective by the people in whose name it governs in time it will lead to rupture. Just look at history. 

Julian Lindley-French

Future Force 2013

Amsterdam, Netherlands. 28 November.  Future Force 2013 – Joint Operations in the Land Environment.  These past two days I have had the honour of chairing a superb conference here in Amsterdam on behalf of the Commander, Royal Netherlands Army, Lieutenant-General Mart de Kruijf.  Two key messages came out of this conference. First, if we Europeans want to keep Americans engaged in NATO and by extension engaged in Europe’s security European armed forces will need to achieve a much deeper degree of co-operation and even integration.  Second, in talking about the future force Europeans must stop talking so much about the past. 

One of the mantra-ed nonsenses that one so often hears bandied around European militaries these days is that the absence of threat means there is nothing to plan for and more importantly nothing to plan together for.  Rubbish!  It was sobering to hear a Japanese colleague provide an assessment of insecurity in Asia-Pacific.  Add that to the collapse of the Middle East state, energy insecurity and a whole host of other frictions the problems is not the lack of things to plan together for…but too many.

And therein rests the problem.  European militaries and their political masters spend too much time looking in and down rather than up and out.  Europe’s armed forces have become another political pawn in the interminable story of Europe’s flawed integration and thus Europe’s interminable and much of it self-inflicted strategic shrinkage.

That said, whether the European Union existed or not one would still need to see bigger European states co-operating more closely on matters defence and many smaller Europeans integrating their armed forces.  Indeed, that is the only way Europeans are going to generate the credible military mass and manoeuvre, capability and capacity to underpin all other forms of power and influence – political, diplomatic and economic.

What struck me at the conference is the extent to which there is no longer a transatlantic divide but rather a trans-Channel divide.  The Netherlands is clearly no longer part of the Anglo-American strategic community but rather part of the German-led ‘European’ community.  That is both a shame and a contradiction because the one big country that is not thinking defence-strategically is Germany…and for good reason.

The essential take-away from this conference was that European armed forces will need to do more as one, more together and more with others.  More as ‘one’ means real ‘jointness’, i.e. all a state’s military forces thinking, experimenting, and acting as a single military organic entity on land, at sea, in the air and within cyber and space.  More together means Europeans across the Channel divide generating and deploying force far beyond Europe’s borders.  And, as the Dutch contemplate sending a force to Mali at French request (and unacknowledged British support) it will mean acting more with others.  That also means acting with other non-traditional allies and partners and critically the civilian agencies vital to mission success.

If we Europeans can together retain focus on the strategic by looking at the world together and having the courage to face up to its many challenges and frictions honestly then there is a chance that the vision implicit in this conference will be realised.  If, on the other hand, strategy continues to be polluted by the politics of a Europe that not only sees ‘strategy’ as alien, but also the utility and purpose of armed force then Europeans will remain utterly divided and their collective strategic voice will decline into nothing more than the murmurings of the strategically-deranged.

Europeans are part of world security however much many seem to wish to deny it and it is no good Europeans playing tactical chess whilst the rest of the world plays strategic poker.  Surely that was this week’s message from the two B-52s flying over disputed islands in the South China Sea.  Of course, a European strategic culture can be fashioned of a sort from the more cuddly parts of international engagement but it would be utterly without balance.  Europe’s armed forces must not become lightly-armed fig-leaves for European neo-pacifism.  Europe must have teeth and those teeth must be sharp. 

We British may not be flavour of the month in Europe (and we really do not care) but it is worth quoting the motto of the Royal Navy which within the next decade will again become Europe’s only truly strategic navy:  “Si vis pacem, para bellum” (if you wish for peace, prepare for war).  Europeans thankfully are not facing war at home but many around the world are.  Europeans must at least be thinking about that.

Faced with an ever-expanding military task-list and yet ever-shrinking military forces and resources for Europeans strategic unity of effort and purpose will be the critical politico-military ‘commodity’.  That in turn will demand European politicians and military leaders stop confusing politics with strategy. In other words, the future force must be a real force! 

As Plato once said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war”.

Julian Lindley-French

Iranian Nukes: Breakthrough or Cave-in?

Alphen, Netherlands. 24 November.  On the face of it the agreement between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Russia and US plus Germany) group of nations is one of those moments in geopolitics which could re-order security both regionally and globally.  Iran has agreed to slow efforts to enrich uranium to weapons-grade in return for the relief of some $7bn worth of sanctions.  With inflation running at around 40% per annum in Iran and the regime under growing domestic pressure Tehran clearly has a need to end its domestic isolation.  However, if this interim agreement is in six months hence to be confirmed as a permanent agreement it will need to pass two verifiable tests.  Does the agreement reflect a fundamental shift in Iran’s foreign and security policy posture?  Is the Middle East made safer (and by extension the world) by this agreement?

 

First the deal. In return for the easing of sanctions Iran has agreed to give International Atomic Energy Authority inspectors daily access to the Natanz and Fordo nuclear sites.  Sunday Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif tweeted (a sign of the times?) that under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Iran has an “inalienable” right to enrich uranium.  Technically he is correct as a state may indeed enrich uranium up to 5% beyond which weapons research can commence. 

Does the agreement reflect a fundamental shift in Iran’s foreign and security policy posture?  Critically, the test of Iran’s bona fides will not simply be adherence to this agreement but whether Tehran’s regional strategy also shifts.  That would mean a markedly less hostile posture towards Israel, including less support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, less interference in the Syrian civil war (and other neighbouring states) and less interference in the Gulf.  As yet there are no signs of such a shift.  Rather, President Obama seems to be gambling that this agreement could bolster President Rouhani and the ‘moderates’ in the Tehran regime and might in time build sufficient confidence to engender a shift in Tehran’s strategy.

Is the Middle East made safer (and by extension the world) by this agreement?  That depends.  Both Israel and Saudi Arabia have condemned this agreement.  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has called it an “historic mistake” and that Israel reserves the right to defend itself.  Sunday morning the leaders of several Gulf States flew to Riyadh for talks with the Saudi leadership which has also privately condemned this agreement. 

Critically, if Iran is not seen to observe and more importantly held to observe this agreement then Saudi Arabia could well take forward already advanced talks with Pakistan for the development of a nuclear capability.  If that happened then the nuclear genie would be well and truly out of the bottle and the NPT would finally be seen the world over as a busted arms control flush. 

So, is this agreement worth the risk?  Yes but.  Yes, in that any attempt to break the deadlock with Iran could if successful help eventually (and I stress eventually) lead to an agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians which is the cornerstone conflict in the Middle East.  However, France was absolutely right to insist on as tough a verification regime as possible.  Indeed, my own sources have told me that the talks three weeks ago came close to agreeing a very soft accord that would only have encouraged those in Tehran who believe that in the wake of Syria debacle Obama is so politically weak at home and so desperate for any foreign policy success that he would agree to anything.  It is in such ignorance that Tehran could make a dangerous miscalculation.

For the Europeans at the table there is also serious food for thought.  Let me for once pay tribute to Baroness Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy sort-of-supremo.  I have in the past been very critical of the Lady from Lancashire helped I might add by comments made to me by some of those close to her.  However, she has proven to be an able chair supported ably by diplomats from Britain, France and Germany.  If this is a way Europeans can begin to exert real influence then it could help end Europe’s interminable strategic shrinkage.

However, one of Ashton’s weaknesses is that she hails from the old CND (anti-nuclear) left of the old British Labour Party.  She has singularly failed to understand that Europe’s much-talked about soft power only makes sense if there is credible hard military power that underpins it.  If she and others in the Euro-elite believe this accord is proof that Europe can exert influence thought soft power alone then she and the rest of Europe are at some time in for a rude awakening.

As I wrote in a previous blog – Europe must together speak softly but work out how to carry a bigger stick!

Julian Lindley-French

Sea-ing Strategic Sense

London, England. 22 November.  Sea Sense 2013.  Fifty years on from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the ending of what Jackie Kennedy called the Camelot presidency I was asked to consider “NATO in the Future Maritime Domain” at the NATO Maritime Commanders conference here in London.  The link is important because in the wake of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the moment the world came closest to nuclear annihilation, NATO politics were by no means easy.  Indeed, the tension between the Americans and British one the one side and President de Gaulle’s France on the other would lead France in 1966 to quit the Alliance’s military core.  Back then NATO took the idea of strategy seriously.  Today I really wonder.

 

Entitled Sea Sense 2013 this fleet commander’s conference should really have been called (finally) Sea-ing-Strategic Sense.  I carefully noted down the issues discussed: high north, Gulf security, Asia-Pacific power shift and the US pivot, friction in the East China Sea, Baltic security, the Middle East and the end of Sykes-Picot, the Horn of Africa, piracy, drugs, terrorism, trade security, the littoralisation of world populations etc. etc.  However, instead of seeing them as part of an emerging strategic picture many of the admirals present chose instead to break them into short-term ‘manageable’ events. If navies do not think strategically who will?

This management approach to world security is killing NATO.  It is a failing that was brought home to me when someone suggested that as there were no clear threats there was little or nothing to plan for.  Nonsense!  By the time a threat is apparent it is too late for sound defence strategy.  It is friction that one must consider if one is to successfully set strategic priorities and use sound strategic judgement thereafter to make the necessary decisions.

And that is what struck me about yesterday’s debate when one sets it alongside a strategic giant such as John F. Kennedy.  Kennedy made mistakes – the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and Vietnam to name but two.  However, they were mistakes of ambition.  The cycle of strategic retreat that is killing NATO is established first and foremost on a denial of ambition.

When I rose to speak I wanted to achieve two things.  First, place NATO navies in their true twenty-first strategic context.  Second, establish a new set of principles of for how navies, armies and air forces work together to maximise peace-building and affordable strategic influence. 

As I spoke I could feel the resistance to what I was saying and I knew why.  Fleet commanders, like their counterparts in armies and air forces, have been utterly bruised by a political class that really no longer wants to hear uncomfortable strategic reality.  Indeed, one does not build a career pointing out such truths unless that is you are me…and I have no career.  This culture of strategic denial is reinforced by the legions of civilian advisors around leaders who wilfully confuse politics with strategy.  The maritime domain will be critical to a strategically-renovated NATO but that in turn will means a non-US NATO that has sufficient ‘high-end’ naval and amphibious assets to be credible in what is going to be a new age of power. 

Back in 1963 NATO’s maritime strength was built on what was then a very genuine special relationship between President Kennedy and Britain’s Prime Minister of the day Harold MacMillan.  Indeed, the two had last met at MacMillan’s Birch Grove estate back in July 1963 not knowing it would be the last time they would meet.  Today the special relationship is not-so-special, hollowed out by a disinterested Obama and a Britain that has devalued its all important strategic currency – its armed forces. 

That is about to change.  With the launch next June of HMS Queen Elizabeth, one of two giant aircraft carriers, and with a new Royal Navy under construction, Britain is finally making a statement of real strategic intent that will force both an over-stretched US and an utterly un-strategic Europe to take note.  Britain should use the occasion of next year’s launch in Portsmouth to bring political and military leaders together from across the Alliance and beyond to consider NATO’s (and the EU's) real strategic role in the world’s maritime domain. 

There is a profound irony that stalked this conference.  NATO has an immense strategic opportunity if only its leaders can seize it.  The West is no longer a place it is an idea as evinced by the presence of so many partners from the world over.  And, much of that global idea is at sea.

As a citizen and tax-payer I call upon NATO leaders to end this appalling cycle of short-termist, strategic retreat and finally Sea Strategic Sense.  You can start by reading my January book – Little Britain: Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power…for that is what it is about.

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Realism: Julian's Europe Dilemma

Schiphol Airport. Netherlands, 20 November. The traffic here in the Netherlands is always a problem which is why I have to leave at sparrow's fart to get here to Schiphol Airport. I am on my way to London to engage with NATO admirals and talk strategy.  The good news is that yesterday I finally finished my long-awaited book (at least it is long-awaited by me and my long-suffering wife).  Little Britain considers British and European strategy in a changing world.  You will soon be able to download it for a very reasonable price.  Stop pushing at the back there! 

 

Sitting here reading various reports I suddenly felt the chill-wind of politics on the back of my ageing neck.  What got me going is a new report by an old French colleague Francois Heisbourg which nearly made me fall of my chair.  He is now advocating what I have been banging on about for two years - the European elite project/experiment has got too far ahead of the will of the European people - at least those who have to pay for it - and must be re-considered.  Specifically, Francois is calling for the careful dismantling of the Euro so that the EU can be re-established on firmer political ground.  Amen to that!

 

However, the growing body of leaders, people and 'experts' who are now calling for a re-think and an end to the 'any Europe at any cost' nonsense also creates a dilemma.  As political parties across Europe begin their campaign's for next May's European parliamentary elections in the hope that Europe's citizens might this time notice the politics of Europe has become utterly polarised.  The fanatics are by and large those in receipt of other people's money and the sceptics are by and large those who have to pay. Who do I vote for?

 

At the Euro-fanatic end of the spectrum there is the likes of Britain's Nick Clegg - former denizen of the College of Europe and former Eurocrat - who now says it is "unpatriotic" for any British citizen (me) to even consider Britain's place in the EU.  This is in spite of the self-evident fact that the EU has become an anti-competitive, over-regulated, increasingly intolerant mutual impoverishment pact. At the extreme Euro-sceptic end of the spectrum there are the likes of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Martine Le Pen in France who see the EU as a "monster" that needs to be put back in a box.  Whilst I have some sympathy with that thought I have no sympathy whatsoever with many of their other views on race etc.     

 

Here's the problem.  I believe in the idea of a mechanism that enables European nation-states to work together effectively in a hyper-competitive world for the good of all Europeans.  However, I utterly reject the European super-state nonsense that oozes from every cracked joint of Brussels mortice.  I believe in the free movement of European poeples but I utterly reject the blind mass-immigration of cheap labour it has generated which has so disfigured European labour markets.  Borders must be controlled.  I am also a social progressive who believes society must evolve and change and that opportunity should be afforded to all irrespective of class, race, gender, orientation etc.  However, I also believe in national identity and patriotism as the fuindamental creeds for vital socal cohesion.  I am also a firm believer in a European defence that is compatible with the transatlantic relationship and an EU that is compatible with NATO.

 

And yet none of the mainstream political parties offer that.  One either has to be a Euro-fanatic in which case any criticism is a form of heresy and one is subjected to the latter day equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition.  It is not without irony that yesterday Monty Python announced they are re-forming = "bring on the comfy chair" (you have to be old to understand that joke).Or, one has to be a 'get out at all costs' Euro-sceptic of the UKIP variety, which by the way is now a mainstream political party as far as most people are concerned even if the elite try to paint them as extremists.

 

What is needed is a centrist, gronded political party across Europe that is really committed to real EU reform.  This is not the pretend reform British PR-Meister David Cameron is talking about just to get himself out of a self-dug political hole.  This the kind of reform that will see structural changes in the cost of the EU and its governance and which will mean the end to constant bale-outs and the addiction of some members to European Regional Development Funding.

 

That is why I created Euro-Realism to challenge the thinking of extremes.  In particular the stupid orthodoxy that if Europe does not constantly deepen (elite euro-speak for more power for them) it will collapse and Europe will trigger the Third World War or that by constantly transferring money east and south without reform Europeans will somehow become prosperous.  It is utter and dangerous nonsense that in and of itself will doom Europe to failure over time.

 

My suspicions are that there are millions out there like me who like me believe in their nation-state, are not against co-operation but who utterly reject the doctrinaire and dogmatic nonsense of the Brussels elite and their fellow travellers.

 

Perhaps I should start my own political party.  Any followers?

 

Julian Lindley-French 

     

    

Sheffield Disunited

Alphen, Netherlands. 16 November.  Historians will look back on this past decade as perhaps the most irresponsible in British politics since the appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s.  Former Home Secretary Jack Straw now talks of a "spectacular mistake" for which he takes partial responsibility.  The decision the Blair/Brown Government took back in 2004 to allow uncontrolled immigration from Eastern Europe has only been compounded by the obsession with the ghettoising multiculturalism which has all but ended Britain's once famed social cohesion.  As ever Britain's out-of-touch political elite do not have to live with the consequences of their irresponsibility as tensions are played out daily in Britain's tinderbox inner cities.  Nowhere is this dangerous situation more apparent than in parts of my own home town Sheffield. 

 

In the Page Hall district real tensions are developing between groups of recently-arrived Roma and local residents.  The Roma are said to be trying to impose their culture through intimidation on the local population. Even Euro-fanatic Nick Clegg has called for the Roma to make more effort to integrate, but then again he has a Sheffield constituency to defend.   

 

It is of course vital not to simply blanket all immigration as bad - which is the mantra of the Right.  One only has to see the legions of bright, young people from Eastern Europe and beyond who bring so much energy and dynamism to London.  However, the way EU immigration is meant to work is that so-called free movement is part of the single European labour market.  All well and good.  Many fellow Europeans do indeed come to Britain to work and do indeed add real value. 

However, what the British Government masks from its people is that in addition to the talented and hard-working there are large numbers of uneducated and unemployable people arriving in Britain.   The tension starts when having arrived lawyers representing these communities ensure that human rights legislation prevents their removal and gives them full access to a Welfare State that was never designed for such an influx of poor immigrants.

 

Sadly, such is the loss of faith in the British state of ordinary Britons that fellow Sheffielders of all ethnic backgrounds are now forming vigilante groups to "protect themselves".  And yet London does nothing about it other than to suppress information that points to the social disaster that is unfolding as a result of Westminster's political irresponsibility.  Indeed, I am aware of at least two Home Office (Interior Ministry) reports that cite the damage done to British (mainly English) society by uncontrolled immigration from Eastern Europe and which if government has its way will never enter the public domain.  One report points to the particular damage that has been caused to social cohesion and other to the impact of Eastern European organised crime gangs on British society.   

The people of Sheffield and many other cities have been subjected to a failed political and social experiment.  My once proud city shows all too clearly what happens when a poor, foreign, traumatised community with markedly different values is suddenly and wilfully injected into the heart of a community already struggling with poverty and other tensions.  In the past decade Sheffield's foreign-born population has gone from 10% of the city to 20%.  Sheffield and many other British cities simply cannot cope with any more.     

 

The government says it is addressing these so-called 'pull factors'  in the forthcoming Immigration Act.  It is as usual smoke and mirrors as London cannot and will not change the most fundamental of 'pull factors'; European legislation which London has signed up to and human rights legislation which then gold plates European law.  It is an appalling mess and all Britain's out-of-touch mainstream politicians are doing is hunkering down, hoping the coming wave of immigration is not too big and that somehow they can ride out the political storm it will inevitably create. They also pass laws that suppress dissent under the banner of equality and preventing race hate. What a price to pay.     

 

The Economist last week made the silly suggestion that Britain's only problem communities were poor and British.  Not only is that factually wrong the newspaper failed to point out that the despair felt by such communities is driven by the belief that they have been abandoned by the British Government.  It is not entirely true but neither is it wrong.  What people witness daily is the kind of immigration that turns a once rich country into a poor society.  It is for me depressing and utterly frustrating to watch the more so given it is my home town that is being broken by the irresponsibility of Britain's leaders.

 

It will take many years to overcome this disaster. Only if British politicians re-establish a proper grip on borders and immigration, abandon multiculturalism and start the long road to assimilation and integration through education will British society begin to rediscover social cohesion.  It is by no means impossible.  Indeed, I have just been listening on the radio to a leader of the Roma Gypsy community in Britain who is a fellow Sheffield United FC fan - good lad. He is a classic example of successful integration in which people can have multiple identities and still be loyal to the state and contributing members of society.

As a Sheffielder I do not care if people are black, white, yellow or whatever as long as they are part of a society that functions as a society. The British Government must do more to ensure newcomers integrate and in Sheffield the Roma really must do more to be part of my great city.  Fail and far from uniting Europe the belief will grow that all the EU is for is to transfer Eastern Europe's legion problems to Britain (and elsewhere).  

 

Sheffield's sorry tale also raises that most fundamental of questions - when are British politicians going to put the interests of the British people before those of everybody else?  Until politicians answer that question with real action all they are doing is creating the breeding ground for the far Left and far Right to exploit.  Indeed, the most pressing security challenge facing Britain is the social disintegration of its inner cities. 

 

Why does this matter?  The story of my home town is being repeated across Western Europe, although nothing like as acutely as in Sheffield.  Come 1 January a new wave of poor immigrants will arrive from Bulgaria and Romania.

As for the apology Jack - it is a bit late and a bit rich.  For me this is personal - I was born less than a mile (1km) from Page Hall.  I really am a local Sheffield lad.

Julian Lindley-French