If you play with fire…

Posted on January 31, 2009 by bobpiper

Prime Ministers don’t write their own speeches, and we are daft if we think they do. They employ ‘experts’. People who can pen a memorable phrase or capture the mood of the nation in a soundbite. So it almost certainly was with the banal “British jobs for British workers” that has come back this week to bite Gordon Brown on the bum with all the ferocity of Thatcher’s “There’s no such thing as society” gaffe.
As Andrew Grice points out today in the Independent, the phrase started out as “a job for every British worker”, a phrase which probably sounded good originally in the speechwriters mind, but even that doesn’t look so clever now. How it got turned it to the later phrase, with its ambiguity about immigration, we don’t know. Whether Brown did it in some stark appeal to British nationalist instincts, or whether, as he is prone to do, he mangled the phrase in his speech and didn’t later admit to it, who knows?
What we do know is that the notion that the British government, or any other nation signed up to the Maastricht Treaty and the Single European Act (thank you Mrs Thatcher and Mr Major) can prevent the flow of labour across their borders, even during times of deep economic crisis, is a complete fallacy. Total Oil are doing exactly what the EU legislation was designed to do. Allow labour from the poorer parts of the EU to migrate into those areas where there was more work. The market will then depress wages, reduce costs and increase profits.
Thatcher knew that when she signed Maastricht. Of course, she didn’t want all that Social Chapter stuff giving workers more rights and protection, and that is why the old crone turned so viciously against the EU in her dotage. She had been mugged by the European social democrats.
What we also know is that Gordon Brown was fully aware of the ridiculous promise contained in that second phrase… but as Grice writes:

If Mr Cameron had announced a policy of “British jobs for British workers”, Labour MPs would have queued up to accuse him of racism. No one is suggesting Mr Brown has a racist bone in his body. But he was playing with fire and has been burnt.

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8 Responses to If you play with fire…

  1. jailhouselawyer says:
    January 31, 2009 at 3:48 pm

    “No one is suggesting Mr Brown has a racist bone in his body”.
    Oh dear, I did, however, I was more concerned about the workers who went on unofficial strike in an attack on foreign workers and claimed that “if you are out of work, it can seem so unfair”. They aren’t, it’s not, and I don’t like bloody big Ifs!

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  2. Bob says:
    January 31, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    OK, John, you were. But you were wrong.

    Reply
  3. jailhouselawyer says:
    January 31, 2009 at 9:11 pm

    Bob: There’s always a first for everything.

    Reply
  4. Tim says:
    February 1, 2009 at 10:34 am

    Thatcher didn’t sign Maastricht. Just saying…
    And one of the elements of the original social chapter that she was so opposed to was, um, the free movement of workers across the EC (as it then was).
    Oh, and Thatcher didn’t really say ‘there is no such thing as society’ at least not in the way you suggest, but I think you knew that one.

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  5. Robert says:
    February 1, 2009 at 10:40 am

    I cannot believe what Brown has now said, British workers have to compete with other contractors and workers, yes we have to send in the Unions to see how low we are willing to work for, lets see the starting rate is £5.73 and we work down wards. I think before long we will be like some Asian countries people will work at home for 20p a day.
    In the 1960s and 1970s site agreements on large scale building contracts like Power stations the wage rate was set between the employer and the Unions and the main contractor. When I worked at Drax and Pembroke the rate of pay were placed in stone and nobody could be paid less, all contractors had to work to those agreed rates and if anyone did not pay it, the door was open and they left. Now we have contracts returning to the lowest bid the only way you can do this is through cutting wages hence companies from oversea are beating contractors here.
    Brown has stated workers must compete, yes with lets say Pakistan.
    God I give up New Labour slave Labour.

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  6. Bob says:
    February 1, 2009 at 3:44 pm

    Tim, you’re right, she signed the SEA which led to Maastricht as night leads to day.
    And she did say exactly that. The quote was…
    “I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.”
    Seems pretty clear to me… at least as clear as ‘British jobs for British workers.”

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  7. ifabloke says:
    February 2, 2009 at 9:46 am

    Yes, Gordon will have expert speechwriters, but I can’t believe that ‘micromanage man’ does not edit them all himself and that the words were his own. The problem is that then he was advocating protectionism, and now he’s not. You can see the irritation in Mandelson’s face when dealing with this subject – I would love to know what he really thinks!

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  8. Tim says:
    February 2, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    Yup – and the second half ‘there are men and women and there are families’ is as important as the first half. It’s one of those lines – like ‘on yer bike’ that is routinely trotted out to make a point virtually opposite to the one the speaker intended.
    And the SEA only ‘inevitably’ led to Maastricht in the sense that the initial Treaty of Rome (dealing with steel and coal) led ‘inevitably to the Lisbon Treaty. Whiggite inevitability is a bit out-dated these days.

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