If you don't want to be called "racist" for talking about immigration, don't do it like Brexity Jim
It's not "racist" to merely talk about immigration. This article is about immigration. However it is "racist" to use hyperbolic language and tell outright lies about the subject like Jim Ratcliffe did
The Billionaire Brexiteer Jim Ratcliffe has caused a massive stir with his divisive and inaccurate comments on immigration, and his subsequent non-apology (apologising for causing offence to "some people" rather than for the actual comments).
A lot of people like to complain that they’re "not allowed to talk about immigration" because they get called "racist" for doing so, and Ratcliffe’s comments are a perfect encapsulation of this issue.
It’s not purely the fact that people talk about immigration that gets them called "racist", it’s the way that they’re doing it.
I’ve written about immigration on many occasions without people calling me racist, but then I don’t tend to use divisive hyperbole, or tell demonstrable lies about the issue like Brexity Jim did.
The main focuses of criticism against Brexity Jim’s comments have been his use of the word "colonised" to imply that immigrants have taken control of Britain, and the brazen hypocrisy of crying about immigrants being such a problem when he’s tax exiled himself in Monaco in order to avoid paying UK taxes.
However the bigger issue for me is the fact that he outright lied about the scale of immigration by claiming that "the population of the UK was 58 million in 2020, now it’s 70 million. That’s 12 million people".
This is a demonstrable lie.
Yes, there has been some large scale immigration since Brexit came into effect, with the population rising from 67 million in 2020 to 70 million now, but that’s largely due to the Tory policy of fixing their self-imposed Brexit Labour shortages with mass immigration from outside the EU.
It’s quite insane to see Ratcliffe complaining about the large scale post-Brexit immigration surge; drastically exaggerating the actual numbers; using divisive hyperbole; and throwing his support behind the extreme-right Faragists, despite the fact they’ve just poached Robert Jenrick from the Tories, when he was the government’s immigration minister during the immigration surge he’s been lying about.
The main reason for this unprecedented increase in immigration was the Tory Brexit shambles that Ratcliffe wanted so much.
Boris Johnson’s lazily plagiarised version of Theresa May’s Brexit shambles resulted in Britain imposing economic sanctions on itself (by quitting the Single Market and the Customs Union) and causing dramatic labour shortages across multiple economic sectors (by scrapping Freedom of Movement).
The only way the Tory government could hide the dire economic consequences of their Brexit mess, was to boost GDP by increasing the population of the country.
The UK has managed to maintain an anaemic GDP growth rate under its self-imposed Brexit sanctions, but if we divide the GDP figures by the actual population to look at the GDP per Capita figures, we’ve actually been getting poorer, which matches the widespread feeling that living standards are collapsing.
It’s not immigrants who are to blame for collapsing living standards either, it’s a combination of austerity obsessed Westminster politicians refusing to invest in the country; greedy corporations and property-hoarding landlords squeezing as much profit out of families as possible; and tax-dodging billionaires and big businesses hiding their profits overseas to avoid paying their fair share in tax.
Aside from Brexit, the UK is facing the huge demographic problem of an ageing population, with ever more pensioners; a declining birth rate; and a shrinking pool of working age people.
The declining birth rate has been clearly exacerbated by the depraved Tory policy of economically sanctioning families that have more than two children.
In order to maintain a stable population we’d need around 2.3 children per female. Some women can’t have kids, and some women choose not to have kids. That’s a fact. So in order to maintain a stable population, some families need to choose to have more than two children.
Instead of helping these families out with social support, so their kids can have the healthy nutrition; decent housing; and good opportunities that will help them become the productive workers of the future, the Tories decided to impose economic sanctions, and create strong disincentives.
It’s telling that the Faragists (who Brexity Jim is supporting now) are insisting on re-introducing the two-child economic sanctions, and bribing the worst people in Britain into supporting their child impoverishment scheme by promising them a sub-1% reduction in the cost of a pint of beer.
We’ve got three choices when it comes to the demographic issue:
Encourage British families to have kids, and provide social support so that those children are well equipped to become the productive workers of the future.
Use immigrant workers to make up labour shortfalls.
Do neither and allow living standards to collapse for pensioners and workers alike.
It seems obvious which choice Farage and his party want to make, given that they’ve poached Robert Jenrick from the Tories, who was the guy who oversaw the biggest immigration surge on record as Tory immigration minister.
They’ll keep up the vitriolic anti-immigration rhetoric and lies, whilst quietly using immigration to obscure the economic damage caused by the Brexit economic sanctions they wanted, and their stated policy of deliberately impoverishing parents who choose to have sufficient kids to maintain a stable population.
It seems like you’d have to be as ignorant as Brexity Jim to throw your support behind them.
Conclusion
It’s not merely talking about immigration that gets people called "racist".
I’m talking about immigration now, and not expecting anyone to call me a racist.
It’s ignorantly ranting about the subject like Brexity Jim did; using grotesquely hyperbolic language like Brexity Jim did; and telling outright lies about it like Brexity Jim did.
The egregious hypocrisy of blaming immigration for Britain’s woes whilst based in Monaco for the purpose of avoiding tax didn’t help Brexity Jim’s case all that much either.
So, if you don’t want to be called "racist" for talking about immigration, it’s not hard. Just try not to be an ignorant, offensive, lying, hypocritical shit-head when you do it!
Froggage also repeated the lie about 12 million. They know that their base are unlikely ot fact check them. They also never own the fact that this situation is entirely of their own making.
Not forgetting that Jim’s companies, over the years was and continues to be a beneficiary of government grants and loans offers totalling nearly £200 million to date Now who’s a benefit taker Jim???