Politics is hard because it invariably involves making choices between conflicting objectives. As Keir Starmer is discovering, the need to prioritise means you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Labour wants faster growth, sounder public finances, decarbonisation, prosperity to be shared more evenly between the regions, tougher controls on migration and a reset of Britain’s relationship with the EU. Doing all these things simultaneously is near to impossible.
An example of the dilemmas these conflicting policy objectives can create was on show last week when the prime minister travelled to Brussels for talks with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
Starmer stressed that he wanted a more constructive approach, to “turn the page”, and to do business in a more “respectful way” – all of which is easy to say. Any sensible politician would want the relationship between the UK and the EU to be as cordial as possible. There were plenty of warm words from von der Leyen, too.
Whether the warm words will amount to much in practical terms is another matter entirely. Starmer has made it clear there are red lines he will not cross. He has no intention of taking Britain back into the single market or the customs union, and he is also resisting EU pressure for a youth mobility deal.
Starmer’s caution is understandable. He is reluctant to make concessions on mobility at a time when public concern about migration is running so high. Better relations with the EU is one objective but they come lower down the prime minister’s list of priorities than controlling the number of people coming to Britain from overseas.
Limiting net migration is a highly charged political issue and particularly troublesome for parties of the left. But, as a new academic paper shows, it will be important if the government is to make good on its pledge that the benefits of more rapid growth are to be shared equally across the regions of the UK.
The study, by Steve Fothergill and Tony Gore of the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University, looks at job creation in the former coalfields of England and Wales between the two most recent censuses of 2011 and 2021. This period was chosen because it is only census data that provides detailed information about what is happening to local labour markets. Scotland was excluded because it held its latest census in 2022, but the authors believe their conclusions hold true there also.
What the study shows is that while 184,000 jobs were created over that decade in the parts of England and Wales hit hardest by deindustrialisation, almost half of them (46%) went to workers born outside the UK. In Yorkshire, where employment growth was the strongest, only 42% of the new jobs went to UK-born workers.
The argument in favour of free movement – that without the migrant workers the economy would have grown more slowly and fewer jobs created – does not apply to the former coalfields, where much of the job creation has been in warehousing. Growth of this sector in places such as Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire has been driven by easy access to Britain’s transport network and by the availability of big areas of flat land, often former pits.
“If there had been no supply of migrant workers from outside the UK the growth in warehousing would probably still have gone ahead in these places but the employers would have had to recruit locally, perhaps with better pay and conditions, and perhaps with a higher degree of automation too rather than just a reliance on cheap labour,” Fothergill and Gore conclude.
They say that if international migration had been lower it would have meant lower levels of unemployment and economic inactivity, fewer coalfield residents commuting to find work, and less of a brain drain as people left to take up job opportunities in other parts of Britain.
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There is evidence that some employers have made recruiting outside the UK their first choice. Employers preferred non-UK workers because they were young, fit, and prepared to accept low wages and poor conditions.
Between 2011 and 2021, considerable work on regeneration was under way. There was money for training, infrastructure, business support and reclamation of old collieries. Fothergill and Gore note the real progress made but say – quite rightly – that the fact that 46% of job creation was accounted for by non-UK-born workers is a poor rate of return for the effort, energy and funding.
Starmer is aware of the devastating and lasting impact of deindustrialisation on parts of Britain that boasted thriving local economies half a century ago. Only last week, he recalled how as a lawyer he tried to help the families of miners as the pits were being closed down.
“I worked with families and communities who were going to lose their jobs in a really important industry, and I therefore know first-hand what this country lost when we ended coal in that way.”
The mines are never coming back but if the government is serious about levelling up, Fothergill and Gore say it needs to invest more in regeneration, do more to tackle the skills deficit, clamp down on bad employers, and step up attempts to help the long-term sick back into the labour market.
They also say the evidence of their study supports Starmer’s insistence that there should be no return to free movement and a tightening up of migration rules. That is not a conclusion that will be universally welcomed, but the fact is that not enough of the regeneration effort in former coalfields has fed through into higher employment for those it was supposed to benefit.