SOUBRY ECONOMICS

On BBC’s Question Time last week, one of the panellists was Anna Soubry – a former Tory MP and fanatical Remainer.

In a discussion about the failure of the NHS to cope with the current numbers of patients, and its the strike action of its employees, Soubry came out in favour of the NHS and its demands for more money, and went further. She asserted that the NHS was unable to recruit new nurses and doctors and that the UK should allow EU doctors and nurses to fill the vacant positions, just as had been the case when the UK was in the EU. She described the current claims of vacancies as being the result of market forces.

This is not the first time that Soubry has prattled on about there being a need for mass immigration due to market forces – as I pointed out in Turbo Brexit (see below). Prattle is not too strong a word. Where are all houses, school places, hospital beds, roads etc coming from to accommodate mass immigration? The bills for all these things will either be unpaid and dumped onto the English public (leading to a housing shortage, higher house prices and rental prices, packed schools, an overwhelmed NHS, congested roads and packed railway carriages), or else will be catered for by the Welfare State, for which the public fund via the tax system. This is Ponzi economics and has nothing to do with market forces. It amounts to a vast, unaffordable subsidy.

Soubry lost her seat in parliament at the following general election. Evidently, she told her voters to ‘suck it up’ (see below) and they voted her out of office.

Turbo Brexit, page 77:

Even so, in 2018, that ‘case’ was buttressed by the emergence of a new phenomenon in the history of economic discourse: Soubry economics.

In an exchange in The House of Commons with, primarily, the Labour MP Caroline Flint, the ardent Remainer and Tory MP, Anna Soubry, held forth on her contribution to economic and political philosophy. Hansard recorded:

‘The right hon. Lady [Caroline Flint] represents an area of the country that I know quite well; I am from north Nottinghamshire – from Worksop – and I also represent the constituency of Broxtowe. It is often quite peculiarly unique, and perhaps a little bizarre, that those who complain most about immigration are in areas where there is actually very little of it. That is the point: it is about the fear of the stranger – the fear of the unknown – and we have a duty as Members of Parliament to make the positive case in our constituencies for immigration and to have these debates with our constituents.

It is true, and I agree, that in some parts of our country a large number of people have come in, but these are invariably Polish people, Latvians and Lithuanians who do the work that, in reality, our own constituents will not do. It is a myth that there is an army of people sitting at home desperately wanting to do jobs. The truth of the matter is that we have full employment, and we do control immigration. How do we control it? It is called the market. Overwhelmingly, people come here to work. When we do not have the jobs, they simply do not come.

Now, it is right, and I agree – this is a sad legacy of previous Labour Governments – that there has not been the investment in skills that this Government are now making, and they have a proud record on apprenticeships, by way of example. However, I say to the right hon. Lady that she must speak to the businesses in her constituency, and she must ask them, “Who are these people? Where have they come from? Why have you not employed locally?” I have done that with the businesses in my constituency, and some have told me that they have probably broken the law. They have gone out deliberately and absolutely clearly to recruit local people, and they have found that, with very few exceptions, they have been unable to fill the vacancies. They take grave exception to anybody who says that they undercut in their wages or do not offer people great opportunities. It is a myth, as I say, that there are armies of people wanting to work who cannot work because of immigration.

The huge danger of the argument being advanced by some Opposition Members, as the hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) said, is that people play into a narrative that, instead of looking at other factors in life, turns to the stranger and – history tells us the danger of doing this – blames the foreigner, the unknown and the person with a different coloured skin or a different accent, when there are actually other reasons for the discomforts and the problems people have in their lives.

I say to Opposition Members that they should be proud of their fine tradition. What they should be doing is making the case for immigration and then saying this: “Suck it up!” No alternative has been advanced in this place other than the customs union and the single market. Let’s grab it – let’s do it and move on.’

It should be remembered that Soubry was a fanatical Remainer during the EU Referendum and has been aggressively arguing against a genuine Brexit ever since. She has always been ultra politically correct and has always been in favour of mass immigration. She is a Tory MP but is not a Conservative in any sense.

Paradoxically, Soubry was having a disagreement with Caroline Flint who, as a Labour MP, might be expected to be more favourably minded towards mass immigration and a policy of Brino than Soubry. That that is not so demonstrate how politically correct and hostile to the English Soubry is.

The case put by Soubry is that ordinary people’s concerns about immigration are invalid. Such concerns are ‘fear of the stranger’ and that MPs should confront such concerns rather than take account of them. Those who oppose mass immigration should ‘suck it up’ and better get used to it as there is no alternative. That those who oppose mass immigration might actually live in a low immigrant neighbourhood and might wish to keep what they have and value was lost on Soubry.

For Soubry, mass immigration is controlled by the market and is a reflection of market forces. Businesses employ immigrants as they will do work at wages too low to attract the English. The English are to blame.