Well a positive vision for the future would be some new ideological synthesis for Britain. It would involve remixing the good parts of 1950s thinking and learning the lessons from the things that have gone wrong in more recent decades.
For example, in the 1950s people would have been appalled by the idea of mass immigration. In 2023, it is at the root of many of the UK's most significant problems: the housing crisis, the collapsing NHS, the destruction of the high trust society, the shattering of British identity into dozens of cultural enclaves.
There is no honourable way to undo the mass immigration that has already happened. However, we can radically reduce it.
At the current immigration rate, it is simply impossible for the rate of cultural integration to keep pace with the the rate of influx. At vastly reduced rates of immigration, our society would have space amd time to forge a new British identity.
We have made choices that have proven themselves destructive, but it's not too late to revisit those mistakes, and then build anew from the ashes of the current decade.
It’s not just a British problem. Climate change, war, population growth, all play a factor. America and “The Wall”. Britain and the “mass refugee immigration”. Italy and theirs, Greece, the list goes on. People want to live, in security, and prosperity for their children and in some places of the world that’s not possible. So they migrate, immigrate, or become refugees of a war that only makes sense in the nonsensical. I’m not saying there aren’t problems, there are, but to put up walls and restrict humans and deny empathy is not the answer.
This is an article of faith on your part. None of the immigrants are relocating directly because of climate changes, and a minority are moving because they are refugees from an active war zone. Many are fighting age men, adventurers and opportunists.
Refugee laws were written a hundred years ago when there were frequent wars in Europe that would displace non-combattent women and children. They didn't have much option to go far beyond a neighbouring country and would likely go back home after the war was over.
Our current system of laws requires us to host any refugee or immigrant from anywhere in the world on a permanent basis.
There is no way this is sustainable economically, and much less so culturally.
The government could fix this instantly, but they choose not to.
Refugee laws were written in 1951 after people felt total shame at having kept out so many victims of the Nazis during World War 2. And the immigrants are not causing the burden on the NHS but the staffing of the NHS. Just check how many of the nurses in any London hospital are Filipino. Finally, house prices are not high because of immigrants but because governments keeps inflating the house price bubble. Any politician who tried a policy of "let's radically drop house prices" would find his career tanked by Boomer voters. Any other non-truths you want to drop to blame us immigrants for everything?
So the supply and demand economy of the housing market, how would the government reduce prices? Remember the indigenous population has sub-replacement level birthrates. Homes should be becoming more available not less- and they would be if the nations children were not being disinherited by the boomers
How would the government reduce house prices? Easy:
1) Massively build out social housing
2) Stop tax incentives, part ownership and other house buying incentives
3) Tax empty houses like in Switzerland, Germany etc etc
4) Crackdown on use of house purchases for money laundering by Saudi princes,
Russian oligarchs, corrupt Chinese Communist Party officials,
South American drug cartel bosses etc etc
The sub-replacement birthrate is a reason Britain sucks in immigrants like a vacuum cleaner. The English don't make babies, and when they do, they murder them in the womb. The immigration is the only thing stopping Britain turning into one big ghost town.
However all those migrants were basically a free source of human skill - i.e. another country poured their resources into nurturing and educating them, now the country they immigrate to gets to reap all the rewards. So it's hard to see how you couldn't pay an economic price for keeping out migrants.
I also wonder how you'd feel if the economic/political situation in your own country deteriorated so much that you felt you had no choice but to migrate elsewhere - but were no longer able to because anti-migration policies had become the norm everywhere.
> However all those migrants were basically a free source of human skill - i.e. another country poured their resources into nurturing and educating them, now the country they immigrate to gets to reap all the rewards.
A huge segment of the migrant flow comes with basically no skills, and is immediately dependant of the welfare system. The migration we are currently experiencing is a net negative for the UK
From what I've read, in most countries with strong levels of migration, the level of underemployment is almost always lower among migrants than the native born. I'd be pretty astounded if the UK was an exception.
Even just having reached adulthood and attained secondary-school level education makes you a capable worker that the country they migrate to has had to do nothing to support until that point. Any small amount of extra investment to ensure they learn the language and obtain employable-skills on top of that is virtually always going to pay off.
I'm not advocating anything - as it happens I do think it's unfair for some countries to cream off the best talent developed in other countries. But if those countries have failed to provide an environment their citizens can thrive in, they have every right to look elsewhere. And as a citizen of a country of migrants (*) I'm more than happy to have them come here. I recognise the UK doesn't really qualify the way Australia does but none of the concerns you've expressed make sense to me as a reason your nation's economy might be suffering.
(*) including my Dad, who came here as a 10 pound pom!
For example, in the 1950s people would have been appalled by the idea of mass immigration. In 2023, it is at the root of many of the UK's most significant problems: the housing crisis, the collapsing NHS, the destruction of the high trust society, the shattering of British identity into dozens of cultural enclaves.
There is no honourable way to undo the mass immigration that has already happened. However, we can radically reduce it.
At the current immigration rate, it is simply impossible for the rate of cultural integration to keep pace with the the rate of influx. At vastly reduced rates of immigration, our society would have space amd time to forge a new British identity.
We have made choices that have proven themselves destructive, but it's not too late to revisit those mistakes, and then build anew from the ashes of the current decade.