The advantage of protectionism is that it traps income and skills investment costs within the native economy which enhances growth.

So long as business faces an austere harshly competitive environment where wages can fall to the world market rate, labor protectionism works. Unfortunately in theis country the wrong kinds of employment protectionism have taken a grip and have ruined the economy.

Why not stop all immigration altogether until we achieve full employment and all domestic workers are found decent work? Isn't this what the so called Labour party used to strive for? However, now you mention such policy you're called a bigot in our PC dominated world.

It isn't going to work and it's dawning on him.

Bonus: his acts of cruelty against the sick and disabled are going to stack up the JSA figures big-time. Of course, he won't die in poverty. They might.

In France the French may be French. In America, the Americans may be American. In Holland its OK for the Dutch to be Dutch.

But in Labour is it still biggoted for the British to be British?

The technocratic way this article is written with its lack of compassion is an insult to the millions of Uk citizens who now face an ever more brutal welfare regime while competing for joblets with motivated migrants who in many cases accept or are forced to tolerate much lower wages/standards of h/s, etc.

In fact, imo, , I’m on the left, but I think the left position on all this is untenable: basically leaving the hundreds of thousands of young British people(of all colours remember) to swing: they will now face competing with confident fit and motivated migrants(the best from around the world) and who will accept much lower H/S standards, housing conditions, etc for low/minimum wage jobs/joblets or face benefit sanctions/no benefits.

It’s a damn race to the bottom, and no Leftie should be defending this situation especially with knee jerk cries of racism, no wonder the left gets nowhere. Globalisation is making the U.K one big labour transit camp with all the consequences for all its citizens and the Left offers just platititudes and in a bizarre turn makes moral somersaults and defends what is basically neo-liberalism..

Sounds like " British Jobs for British Workers "

I can remember the unchartiable response to that statement, from the Conservative Party.

@ Martin L, British politicians are elected by the British people, and they should be expected to represent British people. So yes, I believe that instead of going abroad and looking for foreigners, businesses should be looking at indigenous workers, and should be prepared to offer training if these workers don't have all the requisite skills.

This nonsense about British people being lazy needs to be debunked. Many towns and cities in this country used to be the industrial powerhouses of the world. Birmingham was called the workshop of the world, and then there were places like Manchester, Stoke on Trent, Dagenham, etc which have seen manufacuturing jobs offshored to Asia, and to compound matters, the few jobs that remain are taken by immigrant workers willing to undercut wages. How is this fair?

The reason why there is such youth unemployment is not because of a lack of skills, but because our flexible labour market has allowed floods of immigrants to come into the country, and reduce wages. It's basic economics: Increase the labour supply, and price (wages in this case) will decrease. For whatever reason Labour (the party of the working class apparently) seemed happy with this situation.

Yes, we need to improve the skills of the young people in this country, but that alone is not enough. We must say no to globalisation, no to immigration and no to free trade. Then we can maybe become a world superpower again, and restore some pride in Britain.

If immigration (and migrant labour) is not controlled, a far right party with more organisational skill than the BNP will make major inroads in white, working class contituencies like Birmingham, Stoke on Trent and Dagenham. The BNP, despite their ineptitude and Fascist policies, had excellent results in the three areas mentioned, because the people there have been abandoned by Labour, who have chosen to chase the votes of immigrants and left these people to fend for themselves, which is a shocking dereliction of duty.

What a surprise that we don't hear a word about this grave injustice done to our youth from the trade unions. Where's Bob Crow now? He would be completely justified if he complained about foreign workers being employed on the Olympics site in East London (his hometown) and on London Underground, but do you hear him complain? Of course not, because he (like all other trade union leaders) believe in globalisation and are staunchly pro mass immigration. It's like the turkeys voting for christmas.

All this and the pathetic specimen of the humen race (evil Ian Duncan Smith) is kicking the sick and diabled out of their wheelchairs making us believe that they are capable of imaginary work when nobody wants to employ them.

Every stage of Duncans welfare reforms is going to end up like all the other Tory policies that are half baked and unworkable, A Diabolical Mess!

The difference with all these pathetic, unworkable, unfair welfare reforms is that everyone enjoys watching and kicking the vulnerable that do not have a voice and everyone is going to happily push through these reforms because the Government has its hands on the purse strings which makes it an easy target.

I wish someone would wipe that pathetic smile of Duncan Smiths face and soon because I believe that he is enjoying inflicting misery upon the vulnerable and poorest in society.

Some are surprised that those Eastern Europeans whose countries have entered the European Union should seek to split from nations which have successfully shaken off the chains of Soviet control.
With consummate ease, Lech Walesa took to Western ways: Poland's best dressed man and a pop star son to boot. Why not whole populations?
Before both World Wars Eastern Europeans emigrated to Western Europe and the USA.
Having all that entrepreneurial spirit quashed out of them by the Soviet Union and their own home grown communists, the opportunity to express their aspirations abroad is too good to be true.
After all, Iain, Margaret Thatcher went down a bundle on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Iron Lady - geddit?
Why wait a hundred years for Eastern Europe to catch up with the West. British employer certainly know which side their bread is buttered on and will continue to engage the most willing and the most skilled. Stop nannying!
GottinHimmel, Iain! What vas the Cold War all about? There was an English Pope - yes?

Slavonic Suite

Unfortunately @MartinL and @hughmarkey are completely correct. I happen to know a factory owner in the Midlands who would love nothing more than to employ indigenous British people. He offers a good wage - certainly way above the minimum. The work is physical and hard. He bemoans the fact that the young white working class Brits won't last 2 weeks in the job because it involves hard physical labour, and he has to employ people from Poland and Romania the whole time because they last for years im the positions. He would prefer young Brits, because sometimes the Poles and Romanians can't work after having the crap beaten out of them by the local unemployed British born. It also means he gets a reputation for employing Eastern Europeans which also makes the local hostile to his company, and makes it harder to employ people. He's always looking for new workers. However even the indigenous Brits who take the jobs there are lazy, often off sick and never last. I don't like lazy generalisations, but this is one example which unfortunately lends itself to them.

I don't believe there are easy answers, however and I also don't like to see wages reduced because of globalisation, my line of work in IT means if I was contracting I couldn't compete with the wages quotes offered by young, able and intelligent Indian or Russian programmers. But rather than go out and moan about it, I have to change my modus operandi. I am sick of tired of this sentimental self-mythlogising by the white working class as an excuse for racism and indolence and self pity. Yes there are times, they won't get work because other people will work for wages lower than some are prepared to accept, but that isn't the case all the time. If they really can't get work at all, then become councillors, politicians and start making a change that way instead. There is a huge gap in the market for intelligent, articulate and honest politicians in case anyone hadn't noticed, and plenty of things that need changing.

If IDS is correct how come the businesses have immediately retaliated by saying they don't want to have to pass over the best skilled people? I thought Britain wanted to compete on a world stage, in sports, in business, in the arts, instead of telling everybody about how good things were when there was an empire.

Iain Duncan Smith united his party over Europe, made it the largest party in local government, and took it to parity and beyond in the opinion polls. The 2005 Election threatened to turn into a proper contest, and that not only between colours of rosettes, but between ideas.

So, in a lesson to Ed Miliband, a putsch was staged, with almost all Conservative MPs as much spectators as the rest of us while the thing was played out on the rolling news channels. Remind me, how well did the Conservative Party then do in 2005?

But IDS did not go away. He did sterling work on poverty, and in the run-up to the last Election he gave at least one interview saying that he did not care which party implemented his preferred policies in government, just so long as they were implemented. And now, he is in a position to implement them.

From that platform, he has today repudiated the capitalist system, which corrodes to nought everything that conservatives exist in order to conserve. There cannot be an unrestricted European or global movement of goods, services and capital without an unrestricted European or global movement of labour, i.e., of people; or vice versa.

Now, will IDS recognise that the most obvious solution is also the best? There would be none of this trouble if workers were still required, as a condition of employment, to produce their union cards.