It's clear that some people consider the recent report from the House of Lords on the net effects of immigration as the last word on the subject.

Regular CentreForum contributor, Philippe Legrain doesn't agree.  His piece for CommentisFree challenges the Lords report on no less than nine grounds. He is also not taking any prisoners in tone of the article - for instance, his summary of the membership reads:

"the committee is chaired by Tory has-been John Wakeham and also includes two Conservative ex-chancellors, Black Wednesday Lamont and boom-and-bust Lawson."

Its headline isn't much more conciliatory - "Clueless in the Lords"

Its interesting to note that as Legrain's argument develops through the article it relies more and more on intangible - or at least unquantifiable - factors.  For example:

"Ninth, and most important in the long term, migration stimulates innovation and enterprise, and thus faster long-term productivity growth... But where do these new ideas come from? The exceptional individuals who come up with brilliant new ideas often happen to be immigrants. Instead of following the conventional wisdom, they tend to see things differently, and as outsiders they are more determined to succeed. Twenty-one of Britain's Nobel-prize winners arrived in the country as refugees.

Also in today's news

We haven't looked across the Atlantic for a little while.  A glance at our favourite American election website, electoral-vote.com, shows that the site is now running the feature that makes it so much better than its competition. It takes polls from individual states and projects them to an electoral college vote.  There are problems with the methodology as the polls ask a variety of different questions and at this early stage the polls that the stats are based on are pretty few and far between. Nevertheless, it gives a more convincing picture about how the election is going than most nationwide polls.

The headline figures show that McCain is ahead of either Clinton or Obama at the moment. However, the number of 'barely republican' seats is much higher table when he is pitched against Obama than he is against Clinton.

How these tables shift over the next few months will keep us many of us glued to this excellent website.

McCain vs Obama
Totals

McCain - 324
Obama - 205
Ties - 9

	Strong Dem (142)
	Weak Dem (33)
	Barely Dem (30)
	Exactly tied (9)
	Barely GOP (141)
	Weak GOP (55)
	Strong GOP (128)

Totals

	Strong Dem (74)
	Weak Dem (82)
	Barely Dem (47)
	Exactly tied (31)
	Barely GOP (50)
	Weak GOP (110)
	Strong GOP (144)

CentreForum director Alasdair Murray has written an article for Open Democracy responding to the recent reports of a 'brain drain' of educated graduates from the UK.

The money quote:

...the reality is that this trend is neither new nor alarming. The surge in skilled emigration has as much to do with the recent strength of the British economy - and especially the housing market - as it does with any political failings. Rising affluence combined with EU freedom of movement rules and the voracious appetite of other growing economies for skilled labour have liberated more British people than ever to choose where they want to live.

Read it in full here...

David Cameron looks increasingly desperate as he turns to an old Tory favourite - immigration - to try to win ground back in the polls. Only, according to Iain Dale in the Telegraph, it's not a lurch to the right a la the 2001 and 2005 campaigns; it's simply a moderate, sensible position ("David Cameron wobbled, but didn't fall"). But the Tories can't have it both ways, and once again the policy implications of Cameron's statement are unclear. To simply say that immigration needs to be "controlled" is a non-policy, as we do not currently operate an open border policy. On the other hand, if the Tories are going to propose stricter controls than we have at present, they have to be prepared to defend the (right-wing) political logic behind that policy.

Unfortunately, the case for it is poor. Cameron's repeated comment that there are "too many" immigrants for us to deal with belies the fact that the numbers have not increased significantly over recent years. But even if they had, immigration brings far more economic benefits than problems, as argued eloquently by Philippe Legrain in a chapter of a forthcoming CentreForum publication on globalisation. And even there were economic problems - even if our resources were a pie being cut up between everyone in the country - the underlying logic of the Tory argument is that British citizens deserve rights and opportunities more than those from overseas. This is why many people do see a current of xenophobia or even racism in even the moderate Tory rhetoric, and why implicitly to make such an argument is to 'lurch to the right'.

Which leaves Cameron with only one potential argument. The Times reports that the newest prong of the attack, launched by Damian Green, is the claim that immigration harms social cohesion ("Tories step up campaign for immigration controls"). Admittedly, this touches on a genuine political issue, unlike the economic argument. But given that we unavoidably do have a multicultural society, and this isn't going to change any time soon, any solution to community tensions has to involve engaging and reconciling the existing groups within our society, not preventing new immigrants from arriving. The argument that " the perception is as important as the reality", or that we need to reduce immigration to prevent the really racist parties from making the issue their own, is a cover for appeasing and making concessions to racist sentiment. And that certainly isn't going to improve community relations.

Also in the news:

• Tory election hopes look bleak, with a YouGov poll announcing that the Tories are 8 points behind Labour, and Cameron a whopping 24 points behind Gordon Brown (Telegraph, "Tory blow in polls fuels election speculation")
• An autumn election may be looking more likely, with it being considered as a strategy to prevent a divise row over Europe within the Labour party (Independent, "Brown urged to call autumn poll to quell referendum calls")

Yet again the colossal scale of city bonuses is back in the news, with the Guardian reporting that this year they have reached a mind-boggling £14 billion ("City bonuses hit record high with £14bn payout"). Immediately George Monbiot is on the case ("How the neoliberals stiched up the wealth of nations for themselves"), claiming that such inequality is part of a broader capitalist agenda blamed for everything from mass homelessness to the breakup of the welfare state.

In fact these issues may not be as related as Monbiot suggests. While huge bonuses do seem somewhat obscene, the media furore surrounding them obscures two more important points. The first is that in terms of social breakdown, the gap between the super-rich and the average is far less important than the gap between the average and the super-poor. The second is that, while huge bonuses do not in themselves take money away from the less well-off, the failure to tax them does.

Thus the more important issues may be those of tax evasion and, particularly topically, corporation tax. This is brought into sharp relief by today's FT's leader, "A third of UK's biggest businesses pay no tax ". Not only is corporation tax ineffectively enforced - it is spread out inequitably between companies, failing to incentivise or reward socially beneficial practise. Moreover, an oft-overlooked area in which greater international co-operation is needed is the fight against tax evasion, with tax havens draining money away from the countries in which the wealth is created. Admist all of this, the true obscenity looks like the Conservatives' recent plans to actually lessen corporation tax.

Thus social evils cannot all be put down to the simple existence of the capitalist system. To decry the high-earners from the sidelines for their moral depravity won't help anyone on the ground. We must accept that of course business and its high-earners will be self-seeking and profit-driven, but find more efficient ways to harness that profit for the public good by taxing it more effectively.

Also in today's news:

• Nick Clegg has been previewing the Lib Dems immigration debate to be held in Brighton this autumn. ("Call for selective amnesty for illegal migrants')
• Lembit Opik has been arguing that his appointment Shadow Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Secretary does not mean that the Lib Dems don't take the subject seriously. ("Opik says UK Lib Dems serious about business")
  

Mary Dejevsky offers some disturbing conclusions about recent European election results in the Independent. Close scrutiny of polls in Belgium, Sweden and Austria suggest that far right movements are gaining traction at the expense of those  political parties rooted in the prevailing consensus of centre ground appeal.

            Dejevsky asks if Cameron’s efforts to reposition the Conservatives on the terrain mapped out by Blair may be an example of "generals planning for the battle they have just fought rather than the real battle that lies ahead?"

            Austria’s election ten days ago resulted in a defeat for the Centre-Right government of Wolfgang Schussell and is likely to produce a grand coalition of the main parties led by the Social Democrats. Surely an encouraging result for all European liberals who remember the rise of Jorg Haider’s Neo-Fascist Freedom party to a power sharing  coalition with Schussell in 2000. Unfortunately, Dejevsky points out that the greatest winners in percentage terms were in fact Haider’s heirs.

            “The reason that Mr Schussell is no longer Chancellor is that his centre–right government was not far enough right for many of its former supporters… And - lest there be any confusion – their electoral appeal resided on one thing: hostility to immigration… The combined message is disturbing. It is that the issues clustered around immigration, Islam and cultural difference are issues on which people are voting.

            By hewing with such determination to the centre ground, Mr Cameron may be missing the evidence from Europe that shows the political centre ground is moving.”

Mary Dejevsky - The Independent

            It is important to recognise these alarming trends in the mood of European voters reflected in the governments or more commonly the local councillors that they choose. But Dejevsky is also correct to emphasise that the far right remains on the fringe of political power. To do otherwise is to contribute  to the scaremongering favoured by the very movements we deplore and perpetuate the myth of an impending clash of civilisations. Michael Howard’s tactics at the last General Election revealed that in the most part “We are not thinking what right-wing politicians are thinking” on issues such as  immigration. The focus of sections of the media and in recent weeks from senior politicians such as Jack Straw and John Reid upon the issues of immigration, Islam and community divisions, risks whipping up a cultural and potentially an electoral crisis which is in no way inevitable. In this respect, Cameron’s arrival in the centre ground is wholly welcomed.