Who controls whom?
by Tom Bentley
Last week I wrote a piece on the state of the immigration debate pre-election for openDemocracy.net. It recalled the kind of open, fundamental, wide-ranging debate we tried to provoke with People Flow in 2003, and the fact that this year's party politics has gone in precisely the opposite direction.
While we might say 'election rules' apply or 'that's politics', the problem is that the way the parties trade blows helps to shape the definition of issues and the political risks for years to come. I don't think any of the promises to 'control' the movement of migrants emitted in the last few weeks are remotely viable in practice. But the debate about the proposals has almost all been about the nature of the rhetoric - whether people approve or disapprove of it. Is this helpful?