Brother, don't you walk away

Yvette Cooper's speech yesterday, in which she called on the government to respond more positively to the refugee crisis spilling over from the Arabic world, has rightly been acclaimed for its statement of basic humanity. But there's one bit that I think is a little misleading.

'Hungary and Sweden have had three times the number of asylum claims as Britain,' she pointed out, 'even though they are smaller countries.'

Well, yes, that's true, but is it relevant? Is land area the correct measure for the proper allocation of refugees? Other people have recently attempted to shame Britain by producing figures showing number of refugees accepted in relation to national population. And again, that doesn't necessarily seem relevant.

Personally, I don't think it's sensible or right to try to make such comparisons at all. Cooper's core argument is sufficient - that it's simply wrong to turn away from such a crisis: 'It's immoral, it's cowardly and it's not the British way.' This attempt to quantify our obligations is misguided.

Apart from anything else, if we are to draw up league tables, then neither area nor population is sufficient, since these don't confront the most commonly heard claim: that 'Britain is full'. If we're going to use a measure to compare countries, then surely the more appropriate method would be to factor in both area and population, by looking at density.

So I thought I'd post some graphs, to see if it helped at all. These are the population densities of the fifteen most populous countries in the European Union:

The UK is the third most densely populated of the major European nations, though it should be noted that there's a pretty steep fall-off after the top two. But you can see the pointlessness of Cooper's comment about Sweden: the geography of the place means it's not really comparable, so why compare?

If we then break down the constituent countries of the UK, you get this result:

To put that in the context of the first graph: Wales and Northern Ireland would come between Italy and the Czech Republic in the top half, while Scotland comes in just above Sweden at the bottom. England, meanwhile, has almost exactly the same population density as the Netherlands, despite having an area more than three times the size.

But that's not really enough information either, because of the vastly disproportionate size of England compared to the others. So, breaking it down further, we can separate out the English regions and include them along with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland:

Which would suggest that London is somewhat skewing the figures. London really is full, while Scotland's virtually empty.

Apart from that, I'm not sure we get very far. As I say, I'm not convinced that these things help any discussion of immigration or asylum. Better to stick with Cooper's moral message: 'How can we be proud of our history of helping those who fled conflict if our generation turns its back?'

Latvia, Leeds and Labour

'On immigration and Labour's trade union link, Ed Miliband's leadership actually represented a shift to the right from the Blair years,' wrote Owen Jones in the Guardian last week.

Certainly as far as immigration goes, he's perfectly correct. But then, in purely political terms, perhaps Miliband was right to move the party's position.

In 2004 eight East European countries (plus Malta and Cyprus) joined the European Union, the largest enlargement the organisation has ever experienced. This was the occasion when the likes of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined, and the occasion that sparked a steep rise in immigration into the UK from European countries.

The then prime minister, Tony Blair, was enthusiastic about the arrival of the new member states. This was, he declared: 'A good day not just for Poland, Latvia and Cyprus, but also for Peterborough, Leeds and Carlisle.'

So how did that work out politically? Well, the good news is that Labour still holds four of the five parliamentary constituencies in Leeds. But the fifth - Leeds North West - fell to the Liberal Democrats in 2005, and has been retained by them ever since.

Meanwhile both Peterborough and Carlisle, which were held by Labour at the time of Blair's comments, have fallen to the Conservative Party, in 2005 and 2010 respectively.

From a Labour Party perspective, that seems to be the problem with the public - they don't appreciate what's good for them.

Why Ukip?

One of the most striking aspects of British politics in the last twenty years has been the absence of a left-wing party.

With both post-Thatcher Conservatives and post-Foot Labour gradually shuffling towards the centre, space has opened up on either flank for new political forces. But there has been nothing on the Left, save for George Galloway and a feeble little Green growth in the last few months. Meanwhile the right has been very handsomely served. First by the Nick Griffin incarnation of the BNP, and then by Nigel Farage's Ukip.

In one sense this is entirely predictable. The British left has been fixated on incoherent, internecine squabbling since the 1970s and is clearly incapable of finding a popular voice. It can mount the occasional single-issue campaign but only in response to initiatives on the right: Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League in response to the National Front, the anti-Poll Tax campaign, the Stop the War Coalition. When it tries anything with a broader frame of reference - the Socialist Alliance, say, or the TUSC - no one really notices.

But in another way, the lack of a left party is a bit odd. Because my impression is that there is a left-of-centre consensus in Britain, waiting to be expressed and not finding itself articulated by the Labour Party. (It was there in the mid-1990s, had Tony Blair only recognised it.)

What has been missing, maybe, is the one overarching issue, the thing that catches the attention and encapsulates a wider view of society. Which is where the right has been so successful, of course, since it has, at its core, a deep dislike of immigration.

Why have right-of-Tory parties done comparatively well in the last decade? Perhaps these figures tell the story:

That steep rise in non-EU immigration under New Labour, followed by the steep rise in EU immigration - combine that with a government that failed to defend its policies, and that's the reason for Ukip.

Put another way: If you add up the net migration figures for each of Margaret Thatcher's eleven years in power, you get a total of 26,000 people. If you do the same for each of the thirteen years of New Labour, you get 2.8 million.

But that's net migration. That might be relevant in terms of concerns about the capacity of the infrastructure to cope, but we all know that's not the real issue. The underlying concern is about culture and identity and about the number of foreigners. So, if you add up the total of the immigration figures in each of Thatcher's years you get 2.5 million people. And in New Labour years: 7.25 million.

These are not, of course, the numbers remaining at the end of each period. Many of those recorded entering the country (students, for example) stay for only a fixed time. But the figures have a certain, comparative function. The scale of immigration under the Labour government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown really was quite exceptional, and - as far as I can see - there was, and has been, little attempt to explain the phenomenon.