British jobs for British workers

Is an impossible promise, and the PM is a fool for ever having said it. Like everything that would sit more comfortably in a BNP manifesto, the idea is semantically seductive but ultimately illiberal and fantasist.

The UK is a member state of the biggest single market in world history. Italians have as much right to work in the UK as British workers (notorious for their immobility) do to work in Italy. That is what is meant by the free movement of labour, alongside capital and all else that keeps the EU rich as birthrates decline and productivity growth stalls.

If we start making populist exceptions the whole thing comes apart; in a similar vein the UK Government is quite rightly condemning protectionism in world trade. Frankly as long as the job gets done and the workers are treating with respect and the necessary protections their nationality is irrelevant. The fact that Total is a French company working in the UK and now contracting out work to Italians should be a cause for intra-European celebration, not regret.

Gordon Brown is at his worst when he addresses Labour, mainly because he seems to put being PM second to being leader of that party. The men on strike may be on the wrong side of economic history but they are right to be angry when the political elite send out such contradictory messages. After all, how concerned did the Prime Minister seem when all the best City jobs were being hoovered up by professionals from Europe, the US and beyond? Where is the workers' bail-out?