This will ‘inflame extremism’: Coalition divided as Cable erupts over Cameron’s immigration speech

By Daily Mail Reporter The Daily Mail:

Last updated at 1:30 PM on 14th April 2011

Vince Cable today condemned David Cameron’s speech on immigration as ‘very unwise’ and suggested it could ‘inflame extremism’.

The Business Secretary hinted that the Prime Minister was electioneering by giving his first major speech on the controversial issue weeks before local elections.

Mr Cameron’s speech this lunchtime is the strongest on immigration by a Prime Minister for more than 20 years.

He admitted Britain has been torn apart by the biggest influx of immigrants in history and spell out how the Government aims to bring levels back down.

The address pitched him straight into a row with Mr Cable, who has been outspoken about migrant levels ever since the coalition formed last year.
Vince Cable
Mr Cameron will say immigration has been 'too high' for many years
Clashing heads: Vince Cable (left) is outspoken on immigration but David Cameron is not backing down

Today, the Business Secretary made clear the Lib Dems – who backed an immigration amnesty during the general election – were distancing themselves.

He said: ‘The reference to the tens of thousands of immigrants rather than hundreds of thousands is not part of the coalition agreement, it is Tory party policy only.

‘I do understand there is an election coming but talk of mass immigration risks inflaming the extremism to which he and I are both strongly opposed.’

More…

  • ‘I shake my head in despair’: Judge’s frustration at asylum case that is still not resolved 10 years on
  • ‘Charge every would-be migrant £30k to settle in Britain’, says Nobel Prize-winning economist
  • Lib Dem sources have tried to play down Mr Cable’s comments, insisting that the coalition partners are agreed on immigration policy.

    ‘This is a Conservative Prime Minister speaking to Conservative party activists using Conservative language,’ the source said. ‘Vince is saying that we are of a slightly different opinion on immigration.’

    Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg was shown a copy of the speech beforehand and is said to be ‘proud’ of the coalition’s ‘sensible’ approach.

    Mr Cameron later rejected the criticism, insisting he was dealing with the issue in a ‘sensible, measured, serious tone’ and that everything had been signed off by the coalition.

    ‘The country elected a Government wanting us to roll up our sleeves and deal with some of these issues,’ he said.
    ‘This speech is, I think, a very good explanation if how we are dealing with them in an extremely fair and sensible way.

    ‘I am very willing to be judged by the British people, not only on the content of the speech and the action we are taking, but also the very measured way in which it is being described and put forward.’

    He admitted there had been some ‘really serious arguments’ in the Government over the policy but insisted they had all been laid to rest.

    ‘The policy has been agreed by the coalition. It is coalition and Government policy and it is being put in place right across the board,’ he said.

    ‘Coalitions do mean you have discussions and argument within your Government. We have had those, we’ve settled the policy, we’ve agreed it. We have a very good, robust policy and that is the policy of the whole Government.’
    UK migration figures 1991-2009
    In his address to party activists, Mr Cameron blamed a welfare system which has paid Britons to stay idle and foreign jobseekers ‘not really wanting or even willing to integrate’ for turning neighbourhoods into ghettos.

    Immigration has been ‘too high’ for many years and has created ‘discomfort and disjointedness’ across the country, he said.

    The Prime Minister made the explosive claim that Labour is to blame for allowing extremist parties such as the BNP to flourish by dismissing legitimate concerns about mass immigration as ‘racist’.

    And he insisted that measures being implemented by the Coalition will cut immigration by up to 75 per cent from its peak.

    He said annual net immigration levels will fall from around 200,000 in recent years to the ‘tens of thousands’ seen under the Thatcher and Major governments.

    Mr Cameron spelt out a series of steps the Government is taking to bring down numbers of immigrants, including:

    ? A limit on the number of skilled workers coming from outside Europe of  20,700 this year;

    ? A minimum age of 21 for spouses coming to the UK;

    ? A crackdown on student visas to cut the number issued by 80,000 a year;

    ? Limits on ‘health tourism’ and illegal workers claiming benefits;

    ? Welfare reforms to end the option of a life on the dole for British workers.

    Mr Cameron rejected the Business Secretary’s warnings that limiting the number of foreign workers and students risks damaging British companies and universities.

    Immigration minister Damian Green defended the speech this morning, saying: ‘This is an item that people really care about and if mainstream politicians don’t talk about it, we leave the field open to the extremists.’

    But the BNP claimed the Prime Minister was taking up their policy and accused him of ‘cynical opportunism’.

    Spokesman Simon Darby said: ‘It’s almost like a ceremonial adoption of our policy about two weeks before any major vote. In other words, he knows what ordinary British people are thinking.

    ‘He completely ignores that until two weeks before a major poll and then all of a sudden starts pressing a few buttons to try and make people believe he’s actually doing something about immigration.

    ‘It’s a farce, it’s a con, and if we had copyright on our manifesto we’d have our lawyers round his office within hours.’

    UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage welcomed Mr Cameron’s admission that ‘mass immigration has caused division within society’.

    But he added: ‘Sadly there isn’t much he can do about it because the elephant in the room is the European Union and we have a total open border with all of them… We cannot have our own immigration policy and be part of the European Union.

    r Cameron said the Coalition's measures will cut immigration by up to 75 per cent from its peakMr Cameron said the Coalition’s measures will cut immigration by up to 75 per cent from its peak

    Addressing party members in Hampshire, the Prime Minister insisted immigration is one of the chief concerns of voters and that it is the role of politicians to speak about it ‘sensibly and reasonably’.

    He said that Britain has benefited ‘immeasurably’ from immigrant workers and entrepreneurs, pointing to their contribution to the NHS, schools, charities, financial services, fashion, food and music.

    But he added: ‘I’m also clear about something else: for too long, immigration has been too high.

    ‘Between 1997 and 2009, 2.2million more people came to live in this country than left to live abroad. That’s the largest influx of people Britain has ever had, and it has placed real pressures on communities up and down the country.

    ‘Not just pressures on schools, housing and healthcare – though those have been serious – but social pressures too.’

    Mr Cameron argued that communities are ‘forged by friendship and conversation’, whether on the school run or ‘down the pub’.

    ‘These bonds can take time, so real integration takes time,’ he added. ‘That’s why, when there have been significant numbers of new people arriving in neighbourhoods, perhaps not able to speak the same language as those living there, on occasions not really wanting or even willing to integrate, that has created a kind of discomfort and disjointedness in some neighbourhoods.

    ‘This has been the experience for many people in our country – and I believe it is untruthful and unfair not to speak about it and address it.’

    In the most provocative passage, the Prime Minister said Labour must take responsibility for the rise of the BNP, the English Defence League and other far-Right organisations.

    ‘On the one hand, there were Labour ministers who closed down discussion, giving the impression that concerns about immigration were somehow racist,’ he will say.

    ‘On the other, there were ministers hell-bent on burnishing their hard-line credentials by talking tough, but doing nothing to bring the numbers down.

    ‘This approach had damaging consequences in terms of controlling immigration but also in terms of public debate.

    ‘It created the space for extremist parties to flourish, as they could tell people  that mainstream politicians weren’t listening to their concerns or doing anything about them.’

    The Prime Minister pointed out that around 75 per cent of the 2.5million jobs created since 1997 have gone to foreign-born workers.

    ‘The real issue is this: migrants are filling gaps in the labour market left wide open by a welfare system that for years has paid British people not to work.’

    ‘That’s where the blame lies – at the door of our woeful welfare system, and the last government who comprehensively failed to reform it. We will never control immigration properly unless we tackle welfare dependency.’

    Overall, he insisted, the Government’s measures will bring net migrant numbers back down to the levels of the 1990s.

    That would mean around 50,000 immigrants a year being allowed to settle in Britain, a fall of three-quarters on the numbers seen under Labour.

    ‘Yes, Britain will always be open to the best and brightest from around the world and those fleeing persecution,’ he pledged.

    ‘But with us, our borders will be under control and immigration will be at levels our country can manage. No ifs, no buts. That’s a promise we made to the British people. And it’s a promise we are keeping.’
    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1376651/Coalition-divided-Vince-Cable-erupts-David-Camerons-immigration-speech.html#ixzz1JVU8QcFz

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

9 Replies to “This will ‘inflame extremism’: Coalition divided as Cable erupts over Cameron’s immigration speech”

  1. It seems the Brits feel they only have two options when speaking of immigration. Speech that rewards extremism or speech that inflames extremism. The U.K. has now got itself into position where speaking the truth is dangerous and refusing to speak the truth is dangerous and defeatist. Will they confront the dangers now or leave the mess for the next generation to deal with? It really is a question of morals and ethics. Two words that seem to have no place in a government retarded by political correctness.

  2. The lefties are simply cowards. They are saying that if we discuss the immigration issue it might anger the immigrants, so we shouldn’t be allowed to discuss it. They might as well get a piece of white cloth, tie it to the end of a stick, and start waving it around. They are religious pacifists; they are prepared to surrender to anyone who chooses to fight them.

  3. What is so terribly wrong is that Britiain have too many islamics socalled leaders (from nonnative background) spouting their islamic rubbish and trying to dominate the secular scene even though they don’t represent us nonbelievers from the secular world and most probably don’t speak for the majority of us from nonislamic, nonbeliever, secular world.
    Are the native british not tired of islamic asians and nonislamic asians from immigrant background dominating the native british way of life, dominating the british scene or even unpleasantly dominating the british media? I am not british but I d0 get put off when extreme islamisation or asianisation
    is imposing so many of their negative traits or negative influence on unwary decent brits.

  4. I wonder where this Cable guy lives. I bet he lives in some leafy village far away from where the immigrants live. Most villiages in the UK have zero immigrants. So for people like this immigrattion is not even an issue. Villages in the uk are wealthy and lovely to behold. I bet the cable guy lives in one such village and for him the idea of immigration is just part of his social engineering fantacies as a sympathetic muzzie totalitarian sympathiser and a national socialist and a commie socialist, all mixed up in his tiny totalitarian mind. Indeed since socialism has two sides the nazi side and the international side and loving muzzies is just what the doctor ordered for the elites it is possible to be inflicted by all three illnesses at once and be extremely angry at all times and ready to lash out at the slightest hint of dissent. He looks like an angry mixed up cable guy.

  5. All nations have the right to control who they let immigrate, unfortunately the left has managed to stop the West from maintaining control of our borders. In the US our problem is twofold, the Moslems and the illegal immigration from the Hispanic nations to the south. We are all facing major violence because of our open borders policies and the majority of politicians in all nations are ignoring the issue.

  6. -Richard

    You say that all countries have a right to control who they let in, and I agree with you, but there are many others who simply do not agree with us. They think that the developed world owes a debt to the Third World, and they also think there should be no racist apartheid borders, preferring the idea of one worldwide “appointed” government with no actual racist apartheid countries at all. Such people do not think that countries have the right to decide who comes across their racist, so-called “borders”. See what I mean? There are, as you well know, a whole lot of people, hell-bent on making the world the exact opposite of what you and I, and anyone with a brain, would want. You’re quite right. There is a huge war coming. It wouldn’t be the first Hundred-Year War, would it? This seems to be the way of the world, my friend; there will probably be a host of great new, life enhancing inventions that will come out of it, as the corpses pile up by the millions.

  7. Like any good immune system, the immigration departments of the west should screen out dangerous and potentially harmful invaders.

    If that means blockading Muslims from immigrating, so be it.

  8. It is not only the West that had tried to control who they let in or who they don’t let in or refused entry to visitor or potential immigrant. Other asian countries had been known to do that too, by greedily allowing people of certain wealth to apply for residence or certain visa or nastily imposed restriction after restriction to the poor or disadvantaged. It is also a tragedy that some people go to the west without knowing that some parts of the west had been flooded by hostile oriental, asian culture or unpleasant islamic culture.
    Asians, whether they are islamic or nonislamic should not be given special preference, regardless whether they are rich or poor.

  9. Chris while I hope this war is going to be over sometime this Century don’t forget that the last time Islam went on the march it took about 1000 years to stop them.

    As far as the open borders people go they are working to create the one world socialist government, they know that this will never happen while the west is strong so they try to weaken us. What they are ignoring is that the Moslems hate them more then they hate the rest of us, if they help the Moslems win they will be the first killed.