THE CONSERVATIVE AND LABOUR PARTY MANIFESTOS - ALL QUIET ON THE IMMIGRATION FRONT

In recent days the two main political parties contending for office in the May General Election have delivered their respective manifestos. Both make interesting reading, as much as for what they don’t offer as for what they do! A few crumbs of tax giveaway from both, each promising to financially protect Britain’s number one social icon the National Health Service. From Labour a definitive stated intention to make the country a fairer society, offering job security to large numbers of young workers by abolishing the nasty practice of zero hours contracts, increasing the minimum wage and abolishing the hated bedroom tax. From the Conservatives a reprise of Margaret Thatcher’s promise of home ownership with a discount of up to 35% for those who live in charity trust housing, that is if they can afford to raise the deposit which with today’s inflated property prices will only be available to couples both of whom have good jobs! Never mind, at least the offer is there and naturally only to all decent hardworking people! So if you’re decent but haven’t got a job you can kiss it!

Both parties also promise to get tough with wealthy tax avoiders and multinational companies who use the countless loopholes in the Inland Revenue’s tax collection regime to salt away billions in overseas tax havens. By getting hold of money from sources like that and in addition continuing making serious cuts in welfare benefits that so many unemployed and poorly paid wage earners rely on, both Labour and the Conservatives swear Father, Son and Holy Ghost to reduce the ‘financial deficit’ caused years back by the casino speculative activities of bankers and other booted and suited jolly jack the lads of the City of London under the stewardship of Gordon Brown’s Labour Government and NOT, let it be said, by the miserably paid kids on minimum wage zero hours contracts who now have to pay for it all.

With the economy the main thing for both parties is to get rid of the wretched deficit! Well it doesn’t really need much of a brain to work out that the British Government banknote printers could rustle up the two hundred billion in sweet red fifties in just a couple of days, same as they’ve already been doing for the last five years simply by continuing their nifty little program of QUANTITATIVE EASING… which basically means printing money that you haven’t got!

But no, neither party could possibly think of doing that when it’s much easier to socialize the banker’s debts by kicking away the crutches of the Welfare State from the jobless and poor who depend on them. The Tory-Lib-Dem Coalition have already been doing it for years without a qualm of conscience and with Labour’s support and both Cameron and Miliband promise to continue the robbery. If elected to govern however, Labour, having abandoned all its old socialist values, will make benefit claiming tight as a duck’s arse and further increase the misery for the jobless and homeless but at least it promises to do one seriously good thing… removing part of a gigantic burden of debt from the shoulders from many hundreds of thousands of students. That at least is honorable!

As for Liberal Democrat pledges and promises, quite frankly they’re a bit like a washing powder. Whatever the color of the clothing these political tarts take a turn with you can be sure they’ll claim that it’s due to them that everything comes out whiter than white when actually it comes out looking like shit. You know, a bit like all their promises of electoral reform!

These then are a taste of what the two main parties have to offer. However as I said in my opening remarks, both manifestos are important as much for the things that are missing as for the promises they’ve made and the single great issue missing from both is immigration. Neither party seems willing to talk about it let alone put anything on paper. Why is this? Why are they so coy about the subject, so fearful of even discussing the issue? For the Labour the reasons are clear. Recent Labour Governments were responsible for allowing a wave of uncontrolled mass immigration into Britain, mainly of Muslims from SE Asia, closely followed by close to a million Poles all in a period of ten years duration. During the current Coalition the problem of uncontrolled immigration has continued with the appearance of hundreds of thousands of new arrivals on an annual basis from the Baltic States and Central Europe. Indeed, most of the eastern side of the United Kingdom from Norfolk to Newcastle could be mistaken for Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. If Labour gave the nod to Pakistan and Bangladesh from 1997 and with it a welcome to countless Islamic fundamentalist terrorist sponsoring preachers, the Tories deluged the towns and cities of Lincolnshire with cheap labor from the former Nazi loving Baltic States.

This latest wave of immigration from east Europe is a problem resulting from Britain’s membership of the European Union and cannot be stopped except by its termination. The issue is serious because it affects the job prospects of millions of British citizens. For the Labour Party leadership, termination of membership is out of the question. It refuses to debate the issue or allow British people to have their say on the matter in a Referendum. They’d like the problem to just go away but it won’t because the issue of immigration is so central to the concerns of the electorate. In this respect Labour’s caught between a rock and a hard place. They have to deal with the issue because the electorate demand it but they can’t because they’re wedded to Europe same as a large part of the Conservative Party. As a result the issue of immigration and its control has become a stalking horse for Nigel Farage and is indeed pivotal to UKIP’s policy of Britain’s termination of membership. The fact that the two go hand in hand has set alight the current election campaign with the Party set to win 15% of the vote!