Leader of UKIP Nigel Farage addresses members in London, England. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Apparently convinced the euroskepticism coursing through the British electorate is here to stay, the opposition Labour Party on Thursday opened the door to tighter controls on the arrival of unemployed workers. And they chose Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna, among the few non-white senior political figures in the country, to deliver the message.
“The founders of the European Union had in mind free movement of workers, not free movement of jobseekers,” he said on BBC One television. The symbolism was straightforward: a party of labor unions and the working class, historically quite friendly to the idea of new arrivals who might bolster the ranks and also traditionally more fond of the European Union than Cameron and his Conservatives, is reminding the public of its cultural sophistication while at the same time appealing to populist resentment of cheap foreign laborers. Though E.U. leadership in Brussels might be alarmed, this is smart politics — even if it does suggest the center-left party is on the defensive, never where the opposition wants to be. Better to get out in front of what is looking increasingly (with the ascent of the U.K. Independence Party’s Nigel Farage) like a rising tide of nativist sentiment, though. And that the messenger was not a middle-aged white man helps defuse anxiety among the ranks of the socially liberal party that it is descending into the gutter of race baiting.
Of course, the danger here is that actual fans of the E.U. — including much of Britain’s business community — will feel they have nowhere to go. Labour is essentially playing on a field tilted to the right on the immigration issue (a useful proxy for larger anxieties about the E.U. as a whole), with Cameron in the center and Farage on his right flank. The good news is the utter lack of a credible challenge to Labour’s left. In that sense, party leadership feel safe engaging in this sort of jockeying with Cameron. Whether they actually siphon off the votes of working-class Britons flirting with Farage remains to be seen.
