Confronting Immigration Supporters: "The Markets"
Any party serious about delivering an immigration restriction agenda will need to confront opposition from "the markets". In this article we explain what is meant by the phrase, why they support mass immigration, and how to prepare for the confrontation.
A Force For Good promotes serious and practical immigration restriction.
However, we are under no illusions about how difficult this will be. It will require "overthrowing" massive vested interests which currently dominate and mislead our nation. It will also require massive initial "instability", economic and political.
Any party serious about making this change, will need to be prepared to stay this stormy course.
A basic policy, from day one, will be to defund hundreds of pro-immigration NGOs and "charities" of all British Taxpayer's money. Furthermore, Legal Aid must be withdrawn from the Immigration Law sector. This is basic policy. Without this, nothing can be done!
After all, it is impossible and insane to fight against those whom we are directly funding with our own money!
In addition to defunding the Invasion Migration sector, it will be necessary to prepare for "turmoil" in "the markets".
This will require having an economic team who understand what is happening and who can weather the storm. This is because one thing is certain: The economic establishment will not be happy and will fight to maintain high levels of immigration.
They will concentrate on spurious notions such as "immigration keeps inflation down".
We've already seen mass immigration being justified by this excuse, and we'll get into that below.
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY "THE MARKETS"
When we speak of "the markets", or "the market" singular, we mean the people and institutions which trade stocks and shares (the stock market) and bonds (the bond market) and those who are personally associated with such people and institutions.
These include commercial banks, investment banks, investment funds, "investment management companies", hedge funds, merchant banks, "private equity companies", pension funds, and very rich people generally. They are sometimes also referred to as "the City" or "the City of London", which is a generalisation about their geographic location.
These financial companies, and people, are also intimately connected with the government institutions of the Treasury, and bodies which advise the Treasury such as the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR); and the British Central Bank (aka "Bank of England").
We say "intimately" in the sense that many of them will speak with each other, and socialise with each other. In this regard, we can also include financial journalists who exercise considerable influence upon the behaviour of "the markets".
Many of these people (and they are all people at the end of the day) will fight to maintain the narrative that mass immigration is good for the economy. This is because they believe it benefits them economically, or because they are so rich that they don't need to care one way or the other whether it does or not, but just because they like the idea of it!
They will fight to maintain the false idea that there is a consensus on the matter. They will fight to tell us that "the markets" are going to collapse if "the markets" don't get their way, and we keep the millions of people rolling in.
As we say, for some it will be because mass immigration makes them money; and/or because they are ideologically attached to the policy of open borders.
The takeaway here is that "the markets" are better understood as real people who have financial investments, and political interests. Hence why we insist on putting the phrase in "inverted commas".
Often they, "the markets", do not care whether their investment is morally good or bad, or politically helpful to the nation. They are only interested in whether it makes them money and/or furthers their political interests.
Some might be net zero fanatics, or mass immigration enthusiasts, or loyal to particular countries. Clearly, these people are going to prioritise investments in these areas. They may even use their financial power to try to move markets in directions which compromise, or bring down, governments and politicians which they oppose.
For example, many people oppose windfarms. However, if you have invested heavily in windfarms, because you know that the politicians are putting lots of money into wind farming, then you will oppose any policy which seeks to "roll back on green energy".
Another example: If you are heavily invested in military manufacturing, then you are not going to be happy with a political leader who is trying to bring two sides together. You will support the person who wants to prolong the war. For many of us, that seems unethical. But some people care more about making money, or the victory of their side in the conflict!
If you have sufficient wealth invested in "the market", then you might even try to get "a market panic" started in order to cause problems for a government which you oppose.
WE MUST DISPEL THE ILLUSION of "THE MARKET" an an INDEPENDENT ACTOR
Here's the thing! We are deliberately encouraged to believe that "the market" is some kind of perfectly-functioning, amorphous, intangible "intelligence" which exists independently of human form, and which ultimately "corrects" everything; and to which politicians must pay homage as a subservient actor.
That's complete nonsense!
"The market" consists of real people with real financial and political interests. Whether you think their interests are right or wrong is beside the point. They exist, and they're going to try to work their will in your world for their financial gain and/or their political influence and power.
In summary:
1. The market is not some sort of mechanism which exists outside of human control. It can be influenced, and dominated, and controlled to an extent – for good or ill.
2. It is not formless. It consists of real people with real names and addresses.
3. The "market" will be "confident" when it thinks it can make money. It can make money from the best of things and the worst of things. If it thinks it can make money from a war (which it usually can) then the market will be "confident" and "buoyant" when a belligerent politician is elected. If the market is making money from "green energy", then it will be "uncertain" or "fearful" when a sceptic is elected because it means they could lose money on their investments!
Therefore, putting blind faith in some kind of "wisdom of the markets" is naïve at best; downright stupid at worst.
Indeed, the very notion that markets have their own "wisdom" works to shift focus away from proper examination of what might be going on.
Understanding this 3-point summary is an essential education for any politician seeking to bring in potentially disruptive change.
If you imagine that "the market" is some sort of amorphous, independent "intelligence" existing in an abstract realm of its own, then, quite frankly, you're not going to make it!
HOW THE MARKET WILL RESPOND TO IMMIGRATION CONTROL
Imagine a government is elected which wants to seriously restrict immigration on a fundamental level for the long-term.
Imagine a market which is only concerned about the financial benefits; putting political interests aside.
If the people who constitute "the market" believe that immigration is good for tax revenues and that it "keeps inflation down, through low wages", then the market will "panic" if it believes that the government is going to pursue a policy which will render it unable to raise sufficient money – money which it needs to pay back the bonds which these investors hold with the government.
"The market" will oppose any policy which, in their view, would mean the government might struggle to raise sufficient funds to pay back what they, the investors, are owed!
It will then seek to "sell" its bonds back to the government, in order to get its money back right now.
This mass selling is what's called "a panic" in the markets. It puts additional strain on government finances because the government is forced to suddenly find the money to pay back what is demanded.
[An aside: The bond market is an absurd merry-go-round where the government prints bits of paper (bonds) which promise a return in the future, sells them to "the market" for cash; uses that cash to fund public services etc; and then has to find the principle and interest to pay back the cash to the investors when they sell back their bits of paper to the government. Many people have asked why the government can't just create the money in the first place and forget about selling the bonds. There's no good answer to that, other than that the present system keeps certain people very rich. Anyway, we are where we are for the sake of this article...]
As we will discover below, during the premiership of Liz Truss, "the market" – in this case, mainly the Treasury, the OBR, the financial journalists, and the investors who took their cue from these influencers, including those who disliked her policies anyway – "panicked" because she advocated tax cuts and tax freezes. Their fear was that the government would soon have no money to repay the investors' bonds!
But first, let's look at a former Prime Minister who has tried to make the economic case for mass immigration...
BORIS JOHNSON and his INFLATION JUSTIFICATION for MASS IMMIGRATION
In an interview with The Sun's "Never Mind the Ballots" video programme, aired on Monday 14 October 2024, Boris Johnson explained that he brought in hundreds of thousands of immigrants in order to keep inflation down. (1)
The idea here is that in order to keep prices low, you need to keep wages low, and in order to keep wages low, you need a large amount of surplus labour.
Seriously!
Keeping wages low in order to prevent inflation has to be one of the worst-ever reasons to justify immigration.
Johnson persisted:
As we came out [of the Covid period], what happened was that we had a nightmare where we couldn't stack the shelves and we couldn't fill the petrol stations with petrol. Everybody was freaking out. Every business and every department of state was saying we need more pairs of hands to get things done.
When it was pointed out to him that this was not the promise of Brexit, which was controlling the borders and limiting immigration, he responded by explaining that his aim was to prevent a surge in inflation:
But inflation is a huge destroyer of prosperity and investment. I remember the 1970s, it was absolutely appalling. And you get into an inflationary spiral and it saps the strength of the economy completely. It saps people's prosperity. It's a disaster. So we had to get inflation down.
Not only is this argument wrong on a moral level – impoverishing the citizens of our country by important cheaper labour is (or should be) morally indefensible – it is also wrong economically. This is because large numbers of people will inevitably push up prices in other areas, including housing, public services, and the welfare system.
At least Johnson was correct to say that "everybody" around him was wanting more immigration.
For example, the Daily Telegraph, referring to the period around 2022 (Johnson resigned on 6 September that year), reported:
Treasury in the driving seat
But, as well as being undermined by the UK's inherent attractiveness, successive home secretaries who tried to get a grip on the problem have also had to contend with their own colleagues. One former Tory Home Office adviser says that the cabinet would agree in the abstract that numbers needed to come down but each secretary of state would make their case for a variety of exceptions.
The Department of Health and Social Care was always in need of more nurses and care workers; the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy wanted more hospitality staff; the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs wanted more fruit pickers; the Department for Education wanted more foreign students, the Ministry of Defence wanted more visas for Afghan citizens who worked with the UK government in Afghanistan. The list went on and on.
"One time we had Nadine Dorries, as secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, strenuously arguing for unskilled workers visas to be issued for road workers to help in the roll-out of fibre broadband around the country," he adds. "We managed to see that off because they couldn't get around the minimal language requirements."
The other departments were backed up in the demands they made on the Home Office by the Treasury, which worried about labour shortages in various sectors and the possible hit to the economy – already reeling from Brexit, Covid and the energy shock – that would result from a clampdown on immigration…Earlier this year, the OBR, on whose figures the Treasury relies, was accused of overstating the economic benefit of recent migrants by more than £8 billion – claims denied by the quango. (2)
Therefore, not only are the elected politicians, such as Boris Johnson, to blame for the huge numbers coming into the country, but the unelected "technocracy" in the Treasury, working from the OBR projections, is also pushing mass immigration.
Liz Truss, who became Prime Minister after Johnson, speaks about how her immigration-restriction intentions were defeated by both the Treasury and the OBR.
TOO MUCH FAITH in OBR "FORECASTING"
In her 2024 book (3), Truss speaks about how she wanted to reduce levels of immigration but found that the forecasting of the OBR was a serious obstacle to her efforts.
She writes:
The OBR was an obstacle to getting it done. Because of the OBR's faulty numbers, which view immigration as a positive for the public finances (and don't take account of the strain on public services or indeed the GDP per capita impact), every step to reduce immigration would make their forecasts look worse. Therefore, the government would be obliged to cut spending or raise taxes to compensate for reducing immigration! It was literally through-the-looking-glass stuff. If numbers were reduced as Suella had outlined, the OBR claimed this would add £10 billion to the deficit and therefore necessitate spending cuts or tax rises. These calculations, that I believed were wrong, were providing the tramlines for government policy. (4)
Truss pointed out that she was forced to take these figures seriously:
Despite all these flaws, the Prime Minister and Chancellor essentially have no alternative but the OBR for forecasting. Other government departments are not able to do their own forecasts (as I found when I was International Trade Secretary). According to the legislation, the OBR has to produce a twice-yearly forecast of the public finances. If the government decided to commission a different body to do a forecast, I suspect it would cause an uproar. As I saw for myself, unelected independent bodies are trusted more than politicians, so that argument would be lost. Therefore, even though I believed the forecasting process was fundamentally wrong, and even though I believed the numbers were a fiction, I could not denounce them without putting the government in an even trickier position.
There is a deeper problem than even the flawed forecasting: it is that the media and wider establishment appear to believe that the future can be predicted this way. They put far too much faith in forecasts. (5)
THE POWER of the OBR to CAUSE PANIC
This is telling us that if the OBR releases a forecast which predicts a growing government deficit (that is when the government spends more money than it receives in revenue), then "the markets" will anticipate a crisis – specifically that the government is going to run out of money to pay back what they owe the investors.
This means that the "market will panic" and investors will sell their bonds back to the government (or to each other in what is known as "the secondary bond market) in order to get the money now, while they imagine the government still has it. This in turn leads to the government running out of even more money as it dispenses what it has to these investors!
TRUSS: THE LESSONS WE CAN LEARN FROM HER EXPERIENCE
Truss uses the phrase "the administrative state". Google AI Overview tells us this means "the power of government agencies to create, judge, and enforce their own laws."
In this sense, she is referring to the arms of the Civil Service such as the Treasury and the OBR. She is also including the British Central Bank as a major decision maker in our democracy.
She speaks about the intransigence of the established forces of orthodoxy, and the fact that she simply did not have sufficient supporters on her team, including well-placed allies in the media in order to enable her ship to stay the stormy course.
She concludes:
So, what did I learn from my time at Downing Street?
The main lesson I drew is about the sheer power of the administrative state and its influence on the markets and the wider polity. I had not understood until I became Prime Minister how powerful these people are. The forty-nine days in Downing Street taught me more about that than the previous ten years in government.
I sat in Cabinets under David Cameron, Theresa May and then Boris Johnson, all the while growing frustrated over how slow progress was and how nothing much seemed to get done. I thought that with a clearer sense of direction and a more assertive attitude, it would be possible to change things, to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. I now realise that was not the case.
What I now understand is that in government you have a choice: you can either go along with the orthodoxy or you get booted out. That was essentially what had happened to me at the Ministry of Justice when I'd tried to challenge the established order. The powerful vested interests there pushed back, made my life very difficult and ultimately got me fired. I had assumed they were only able to do that because I wasn't at the top. What I now realise is that even when you are supposedly at the top, they can still do it. That is, frankly, scary.
What we saw in September and October 2022 was a government that sought to challenge the prevailing economic orthodoxy being prevented from doing so by those who had created and defended that orthodoxy. The economic establishment used its huge and unrivalled influence over the markets to undermine confidence in the elected government, stir up political resistance and force it to change course. The only way to counteract this is with vast amounts of political capital and that was in short supply when I was elected.
I faced a Conservative Party that after twelve years in office was fractious and split. They were not willing or able collectively to back a bold programme. Many of my critics said I presided over instability, and that is of course true. The case I want to make is that in the current British political system, achieving change without instability is nigh-on impossible, given the legacy of twenty-five years of economic consensus and the now ossified system protecting it. Maintaining stability means going along with the status quo. (6)
"THE MARKET" is a MYTH intended to MISLEAD!
She dropped this valuable insight – which is what we were saying at the start of this article:
This, I think, is the key to understanding why I was ultimately unable to deliver on my mandate and why my premiership ended the way it did. I came to realise there is no such thing as 'the market' in this sense. Rather, there are groups of influential individuals in the financial establishment, all of whom know and speak to one another in a closed feedback loop. The Treasury, the Bank of England, and the OBR are deeply embedded in these social and professional networks and share the same belief in the established economic orthodoxy. (7)
LESSONS FOR A PARTY WHICH WANTS TO BRING IN SERIOUS IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION
Learning from Truss's experience, we can prepare ourselves for government, thusly:
1. GIVE PLENTY OF WARNING
Perhaps one of the reasons for the over-reaction of "the markets" to Truss's policies – if we are being generous, rather than believing that they were politically opposed to Truss whatever she may have done – was that the changes had not been telegraphed far enough in advance.
That is, "the markets" hadn't been financially preparing – by investing appropriately – for such a rapidly changing circumstance.
However, in our case, a government which intends to massively restrict immigration will no doubt have been elected after signalling very heavily, and for a long time, that this will be our intention. This would give plenty of time for "the markets" to over-react, calm down, and take a more measured stance on the impact of the reforms long before they are finally implemented.
2. DO NOT BE NAÏVE. WE LIVE IN THE REAL WORLD, NOT "A MYSTICAL WORLD OF MARKETS"
Naïve obsequiousness towards the "mystical force of the markets" will be the downfall of any political movement which is trying to bring in major systemic changes. Learn from our 3-point summary above. What they call "the markets" are composed of real people, with real names and addresses!
3. EXPECT INSTABILITY, AND HAVE YOUR TEAM IN PLACE
We must expect that when we bring in these major changes, the opposition media will be awash with dire predictions. "The markets" may "panic", fearing a government unable to meet its bills. This could look bad on the evening news! Our political opponents will have a field day, calling us economically illiterate and siding with their new best friends in the City of London!
That means we need a political team in the party – and allies in the media – who understand what is happening, and who can explain what we are trying to do, and who can explain the hostile reaction in terms favourable to our side, and who are ready and able to ride it out until "the markets" inevitably stabilise again.
We must restrict immigration, and we shall prevail, regardless of "the markets".
REFERENCES
1. See The Sun YouTube channel, 14-10-24 here from 5:00; and in our video below.
2. Ben Wright and Ben Butcher, "How Brexit Britain became Europe's most migrant-friendly country", Daily Telegraph, 14-9-24, pp22-23 at 23, and here.
3. Liz Truss, "Ten Years to Save the West", (Biteback Publishing Ltd: London, 2024).
4. Ibid. p238.
5. Ibid. p239.
6. Ibid. pp280-281.
7. Ibid. pp257-258.
For more articles on this subject see our Territorial Sovereignty: Article Index
See Boris Johnson's "inflation explanation", and our comments, in this excerpt from our weekly Show, "Good Evening Britain", broadcast on 16-10-24 here:
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