The more immigrants we admit, the better George Osborne will look to posterity – and presumably to the voters in the next general election. This observation may sound counterintuitive, but only to those who haven’t lost touch with reality as irrevocably as our spivocrats have.
You see, keeping promises isn’t essential to getting elected and re-elected, but it helps. George knows this, which is why he has done some simple calculations. On that basis, having announced his spending and deficit-cutting plans, he has made promises he has no way of keeping unless net migration stands at 180,000 a year or higher.
Anyone who draws from this the conclusion that the more Syrians and Romanians we welcome to these shores, the healthier the economy will be, would only betray his ignorance of how HMG works. For our spivs operate within virtual reality, where perception is everything and truth is, well, less than nothing – it’s a big negative to be avoided at all costs.
Those who still remember what actual reality looks like won’t understand how admitting millions (the 180,000 number is only the point of departure – for the moon) of cultural aliens maladjusted to life in the West can possibly make us better off.
Wouldn’t they put a huge pressure on the social budget? Well, yes. And the NHS? Yes, now that you mention it. Education? Yes, unfortunately. And the overall infrastructure? You can say that again, though please don’t. And haven’t the government’s own figures shown that the net economic effect of immigration from the low-rent parts of the world is negative? Now that depends on how you look at it.
Here we’ve reached the crux of the matter. For such figures indeed depend on who’s counting, and how.
Of course all those migrants will cost us a pretty penny, trillions of pretty pennies. But none of the rubrics from which the debits will come are George’s department. His performance will be assessed on how the Exchequer is doing. So if the NHS has to stop treating patients altogether, that’s not George’s problem, is it? Let the Health Secretary worry about that.
George’s concern is to make sure the deficit looks small as percentage of GDP, for that’s how it’s calculated. And there George’s logic can’t be faulted: indeed the greater the number of people operating within an economy, the greater its GDP – and the smaller the absolute amount of overspending as seen in relation to it.
This is chicanery on so many levels that even listing them would try your patience. The most obvious one is that, though GDP does give some vague indication of the state of the economy, it can mislead as easily as inform.
For GDP is calculated on the basis of all products and services changing hands within the economy. For example, if you borrow £10,000 from NatWest, Britain’s GDP will increase by that amount. And when you repay the debt, GDP will go up again. Hence though this indicator has gone up £20,000 plus whatever interest you had to pay, it’s not immediately clear how the economy has become any healthier.
Of course adding a million new arrivals every couple of years will increase GDP – they all have to consume even if they don’t necessarily earn. George will then be able to continue spending like a beached sailor, driving the economy towards those huge rocks out there, without fearing for his electoral chances.
QED. That the economy is running the very real risk of ending up as flotsam on a beach is no concern of his – provided the wreck doesn’t happen within the next four years.
And we haven’t yet begun to talk about the irreparable social and cultural cost of mass, uncontrolled immigration. But let’s not. It’s just too depressing for words.