Ineffective

A few rare words from Gordon Brown today on the subject on immigration, speaking to the House of Commons Liaison Committee. We never expected them to be too encouraging, did we?

Gordon Brown sparked fresh fury over mass immigration yesterday by explicitly ruling out a limit on Britain’s spiralling population growth. The Prime Minister insisted the country should continue to “draw on the skills and talents of people around the world”.

He claimed any attempt to put a cap on immigration would be “ineffective” ...

A strange word to choose, since whether a cap would be "ineffective" rather depends on what you're trying to achieve. If the aim is to overwhelm local public services and further antagonise alienated communities at a time of recession, than yes, a cap would be "ineffective". If the aim is to prevent this, however, and to prevent the population hitting Phil Woolas' limit of "70 million", than a cap would in fact be quite "effective".

Of course, a full cap is impossible anyway because we're not an independent country, but there's a big world outside of the EEA.