The Conservatives’ handling of affairs such as Brexit, COVID, migration and other critical issues under Boris Johnson, (2019-2022), Elizabeth Truss, (2022-2022) down to the last Tory prime minister, Rishi Sunak, left the nation polarised and many angry. That anger and hunger for change was duly reflected in the June 4, 2024 elections with Sir Keir Rodney Starmer of the Labour party becoming prime minister.
Expectedly, many British citizens had rooted for change in the background of the Tories’ implementation of free market driven policies such as deregulation, privatisation, and economic liberalisation. These, just as Brexit, have come with unintended collateral consequences on many scores, with many simply too tired, too cold, too impoverished and ready for change, irrespective of how it looks or whatever it brings.
One of the thorny issues in the election circle is migration, both legal and illegal including those arriving the UK through the Channel by small boats.
Some of the politicians and citizens blame immigrants for some of their mounting woes forgetting to acknowledge the immense benefits which the presence of foreigners in the United Kingdom ensures. For instance, if you remove the foreign workforce component currently in the UK, that includes doctors, nurses, teachers, other health care practitioners, engineers, scientists, technicians etc., the NHS, for instance, as we know it, will collapse; ditto, the entire health care system.
The economy would contract abysmally exacerbating the current cost of living crisis as many small businesses which are already struggling would fold up due to lack of patronage. Many local economies in small towns and cities would face major crisis the like of which has not been seen in the UK since the Black Death era (1348), or the Great Depression of the 1930s following the huge cost of the First World War. Also, the many boarded up shops, which are common features in many cities, towns and villages of England, Scotland and Wales would increase in number as more small businesses fold up.
Another group of people who are often denigrated with all sorts of adverse immigration policies are international students from all over the world. According to statistics from universitiesuk.ac.uk, “… in 2021-2022, a total of 151,690 students from China were studying in the UK, India,126,535 and Nigeria,14,270…Students from European Union countries were about 559,825…”
Of course, there are many others from Pakistan, Vietnam, Bangladesh Myanmar, etc. More figures from Higher Education Statistics Agency in the 2020/2021 academic year show that “…a total of 605,500 international students enrolled in UK Higher education” out of this figure 37,320 students came from sub-Saharan Africa.(HESA 2022).
The Economic Consultancy Group, London estimates that students contributed £41.9 billion to the UK economy in 2021/2022 and interestingly the international students cost only £4.4 billion. According to them, “…the UK had net economic benefits of £37.4 billion” off of the international students and yet they are seen as free loaders in many towns and cities. If that was not the case, why would the Home Office remove dependent visa application option for international students?
Succinctly put, the scrapping of dependents visa option for international students, the clamp down on foreign care worker visa applications, proposed mass deportations to Rwanda, etc. are some recent policies that have the potential of significantly reducing net migrations to the UK in years to come.
The expectation is that the Home Office under PM Starmer will redouble efforts in rounding up “over stayers” for mass deportations, and these are people majorly found in agriculture, care giving, marketing, distribution, and haulage sub-sectors of the economy. If these scenarios were to happen, they would exert severe stress on the economy leading to unintended consequences the like of which many may not have been seen before.
For instance, many of the UK universities selling “Rip-off degrees”, as recently described by Rishi Sunak, to students at exorbitant costs will literally collapse in record time because international students are their main source of revenue and so could not afford to stop facilitating international students’ study visas.
In fact without the financial component of international students, most of the UK university campuses will be overgrown by Brambles bushes, tumble weeds, bilberry, cotoneasters and bougainvillea trees within twelve months of the implementation of such policies.
Notably, right wing, nationalist fervour hardly puts food on anybody’s table or brings in new investment which invariably energises moribund local economies. To understand this simple logic is to understand the irreversible extent which policies such as privatisation has gone on in the United Kingdom for decades. For instance, Guardian research “…found that 72% of England‘s water is owned by shareholders based in 17 foreign countries.” Those countries include investors from China, India, Turkey, Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc. What would Starmer do about that?
What would he do when he discovers that free markets Tory czars had over the years sold off or out-sourced much of the UK economy to outsiders? What of the fact that over “35% of doctors” in the NHS are foreign? Or that “…In 2021, according to ifs.org.uk/publications, “…51% of junior doctors and 41% of consultants were non-white (excluding those with unknown ethnicity)?
On transportation, how about the fact that British Rails had long been privatised and that much of the owners span from Japan, Canada, Australia, Qatar to Saudi Arabia? What is there to nationalise anymore?
What about British Airports? Did privatisation and liberalisation spare them as hitherto national institutions? For instance, the popular London Heathrow is owned by “Heathrow Airport Holdings, owned mostly by Qatar Investment Authority, Public Investment Fund and CDPQ.” Similar stories are most likely to be seen in Gatwick, City, Luton, Stansted or Southend.
Free market policies; privatisation (liberalisation) and nationalist posturing do not go together. This is for the simple reason that you cannot eat your cake, turn around and have it. You cannot desire foreign direct investments and still wish to run a closed border economic policy at the same time. You cannot privatise and nationalise at the same time. Privatisation has its dark side, at the point where it stifles the voice of the citizens leaving them to the wolves of free market forces.
Privatisation in many developed and developing economies, serves the interest of the rich more than it does for the ordinary citizens. Need one argue that the failures of capitalism stems from the mishandling of its off-shoots as seen in many free markets driven by liberalisation and privatisation? Such failures over time become sources of social discontent, unrests, inflation, poverty and hopelessness especially among young people who are in majority in many of such countries.
Furthermore, failure of capitalism manifests itself whenever subsidy regime is put in place to bridge socio-economic gaps and fault lines. When government, for instance, subsidises high energy costs during the long winter months in the United Kingdom, or provides social housing; or when Nigerian government, for instance, subsidises the cost of imported refined petroleum products, or Kenyan government reverses a new stringent tax law due to unrelenting bloody riots buoyed by subsisting strangulating socio-economic conditions, all these indicate the numerous instances of failings of capitalism, which must now put on the toga of socialist or welfarist tokenisms for its own hegemonic dominance, or put nicely, political survival.
In the new United Kingdom of Starmer, it would be interesting to watch how his government will deal with relentless sale of historic buildings by cash strapped District Councils across the UK, just so as to “free up funds after a drastic decline in the number of worshippers and ministers”. How far are they ready to continue pushing for multiculturalism from where the Tories left off?
It would be interesting to see how the new Labour government would toe the line of multiculturalism while courting new investments, and meticulously balancing or moderating the weighty sentiments therein without, in the end, being seen as racist or isolationist in its approach. Those are the big questions facing UK citizens.
