The Sunday Poast
Immigration data and the choice between public funding and political causes.
GM.
Welcome to the now-occasional Sunday Poast, where I collect my work for other outlets in case your eager eyes missed it. Let’s get after it.
First up I wrote for Con Home on how the data desert in which our immigration debate is held is growing even more arid, after Neil O’Brien revelead that HMRC had stopped publishing data on the amount of tax paid by nationality and DWP had reached a separate decision to stop publishing data on welfare claims by nationality;
Its questionable what – if any – benefit there is to stopping publishing this data. Both decisions were couched in vague appeals to improving the accuracy of data, or that the data wasn’t relevant. In her reply to his questioning of the DWP decision, Jo Churchill made a statement stating that publication of this information had ceased on the grounds that ‘the information contained in the release reflected the nationality status of the benefit claimants at the point of National Insurance number (NINo) registration, which does not necessarily reflect the nationality at the point of claiming the benefit.’ But given the department doesn’t publish data on nationality at the point of claiming benefit either, this seems spurious.
So why are we moving towards data deletion, instead of abundance? Reponses to a separate consultation may give us an idea; when the ONS ran a consultation on International Migration Statistics Outputs in 2016, the Immigration Lawyers Practioners Association argued against quarterly estimates for unemployment and economic inactivity by country of birth and nationality on the grounds that ‘We fear its use by xenophobic politicians and media to portray all those who are economically active as scroungers.’
Following news that the Fitzwilliam Museum now will warn visitors that pictures of 'rolling English hills' evoke dangerous levels of national pride I wrote for CapX to explain how taxpayer money is no longer merely being used to enable wokery, but to incentivise it:
That institutions as wide-ranging as the Fitzwilliam, the RSPCA and National Trust are willing to participate in co-ordinated moments of culturally progressive groupthink is a measure of how widespread the problem of institutional capture has become. Enabled by vast amounts of taxpayers money, for 13 years ‘the Blob‘ has won.
Deterred by the social risk of being portrayed as philistines in polite society, Conservative governments have kept the funding taps to the ‘astroturfed agglomeration of charities, institutions and NGOs’ on full, refusing to force institutions between political causes or public funding.
I then expanded for that idea in The Critic, arguing that the time for grouchy impotence has passed, and the neutrality of these institutions must be enforced; the choice between political causes and public funding must be forced onto the arts sector. The invisible hand is sometimes an iron fist;
Allowing liberal progressives to weaponise institutions in the service of today’s political fights places them in immense danger by eroding public trust; Roger Scruton argued that institutions can only be legitimised in citizens’ eyes and become effective if they are rooted in pre-political loyalty. That is not limited to party politics but to politics of any kind, because it no longer offers a sense of belonging to a segment of the population based on their politics.
One might ask, what power does a dying government have? But even wounded lions are still lions, and the moment strikes us well; last week a review was launched into the Arts Council, chaired by Dame Mary Archer, as part of the Cabinet Office’s cross-government public body reviews programme. The first review of ACE since 2017, it will focus on finding savings of 5 per cent, and assessing if ACE funding is, as Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer said, “driving creative excellence in the arts by funding ambitious projects of the highest quality.”
If we are to tackle this, it is essential it be done before Keir Starmer takes power. As I have previously written in these most august pages; “Starmer plans to pay no attention to the notional neutrality of our institutions, and will give the Blob free reign whilst using the power of the state to entrench the progressive woke ideology it promulgates.”
Finally I wrote about Immigration data for Con Home again, this time welcoming Robert Jenrick’s move to secure reporting on the nationality and visa/asylum status of offenders:
As David Goodhart argued in his famous essay Too Diverse?, modern liberal states have abandoned an understanding of citizenship based on ethnic lines (“people who look and talk like us”) for one based on values (“people who think and behave like us”).’
But people who get here by breaking the law do not behave like the majority of us. The public are rightly concerned that, if those crossing the channel are willing to disregard the law to get here, they may be equally willing to disregard the law after they arrive. What makes the public even more uneasy about this situation is that they do not have the facts necessary to conduct a well-informed policy debate.
Finally I had great fun appearing on New Culture Forum’s Deprogrammed podcast with Harrison Pitt and Evan Riggs for a wide-range chat on the Blob, the death of political participation and why Trump’s superpower is not caring.
"I think we've we've probably given people a pretty poor return on fourteen years of conservative government." As is so often the case, I’m right.