Answers to Readers: 2000 subscribers edition
Chagos, immigration, board game mechanics, HS2 and more...
Thank you to all of those who asked questions, and as always, to everyone who reads, subscribes, comments and lurks - I feel so privileged to have this audience.
This time we have questions on immigration, Chagos, life in the Philippines, demographic challenges, board games, left-wing writers I’d recommend and identity politics.
Rachael: What do you think the UK will look like in a couple of decades given various possible approaches to immigration?
After the 2021-2024 period, when 3.9 million people immigrated in just three years, we’re currently entering a period of much lower immigration, with net migration just over 200,000 last year, and falling. Asylum claims, however, remain high, at over 100,000, about half of which are coming from the small boats.
My central estimate for the next two years is that net migration will average 250k - 300k, in line with the 2000 - 2020 record, both because of the revealed preference of the governing ‘Anywhere’ classes, and due to economic pressures, enhanced by demographic challenges.
That would give us an additional 5 million to 6 million people in two decades, probably from a wide diversity of countries.1 That in turn means the ‘white British’ ethnic group falls from 74.4% at the 2021 census, to about 65%. At the same time, the number of ‘non-white British’ - in particular second or third generation British cizens - will have increased significantly: a third of under 18s are already ethnic minorities, and many of these will have been born here.
Sociologically, I actually think that’s a much less dramatic change than the previous twenty years, when the white British population went from nearly 90% to 75%. When I was at school in the ‘90s, it was still a good bet that an ethnically Chinese or Pakistani would have had parents who had moved here from that country, might still be nationals, and would have strong ties there. That’s now a much less strong assumption; it could equally well be that those parents will speak with a Geordie accent and support Newcastle United.
In terms of the impact on the UK, a huge amount depends on how far above or below that central estimate we go, who we take and how we handle it.
If we’re smart about it, hold net immigration to 150,000 - 200,000, prioritising high-skilled immigrants as per Neil O'Brien’s ‘grammar school of the western world’ model, prioritise those with fluent English, focus on integration, stop the small boats and reliably deport violent foreign criminals, then it could be positive. Demographic challenges mean that we need some immigration just to keep the population steady, and that level of immigration would enable house-building and allow time for people to integrate.
On the other hand, if net immigration goes up to 350,000-400,000 a year or higher, if we return to permitting mass low-skilled immigration with many dependents, continue to allow third rate universities sell immigration rather than education, and continue to abhor the legal changes necessary to carry out deportations, things could be a lot worse. It should be a matter of greater concern that in 2024, for the first time in decades outside of Northern Ireland, four MPs were elected on a sectarian basis. The grooming gangs scandal,the recent West Midlands Police affair,2 and cases such as the Batley Grammar School teacher show what is happening as our public institutions move from upholding the law without fear or favour to ‘managing community relations’ with a fear of violence, unrest, or being called racist. The 2022 communal riots in Leicester, between Hindus and Muslims, could be a harbinger of much worse to come - with the violence and demonstrations in the case of a major clash in Kashmir outweighing anything we saw over Gaza.3
One of the most fundamental truths about integration is that it takes time: just as we should reject the ethno-nationalist contention that you have to be white to be British,4 so too should we reject the open borders mantra that there is no difference between someone who arrived here three years ago, unable to speak fluent English, and someone born and bred in this country (regardless of the colour of their skin). As Sajid Javid’s excellent recent interview about his upbringing makes clear, integration is, frequently, a generational process - and none the worse for that, but it does mean there is a limit to how many people we can comfortably integrate at once.
Bryan Fries: If you had to live and work in any non-Western country for the rest of your life (with no opportunity to travel to or visit any western country), which would it be and why?
The correct answer here has to be India.
A country the size of Europe, with a similarly rich and diverse history and culture, and a wide diversity of climates and geography, from mountains to beaches.
English is widely spoken, it’s a democracy and more or less liberal, and sufficiently wealthy to have some developed areas, plenty of job opportunities, with good healthcare and education available, if one can afford it - with an economy growing at 7% a year, meaning that all this will only get better.
Plus the food is excellent!5
Sam: To what extent will the UK be able to remain as a highly-developed state, given the coming demographic crisis?
I am worried about global falling birthrates, not least because it’s happening everywhere, in all types of societies, and no-one seems to know how to reverse it; however, I’m not sure it will stop us being a highly-developed state.
The UK’s TFR only really plummeted in the last decade, and at 1.41, while far from good, is a long way above that of many European or East Asian countries - plus we have a strong ability to counter-act it with immigration, which while it brings its own problems (and is not a long-term solution, with falling birthrates everywhere), would stem off collapse. If we look at countries much further along this journey than us, or which lose a lot of their younger population to emigration, we can see a country can withstand a fair bit of shrinkage while remaining developed.
So while I think falling birthrates are likely to make us poorer, less innovative and less socially cohesive, I think we’ll remain a highly-developed state for the foreseeable future.6
Chris: Apart from the birth of your son, what was your most memorable experience when you were based in Manila?7
Living in the Philippines generated one unforgettable experience after another - it was simply such a different way of living, in a very new area of the world. Setting aside the ‘new child’ related ones, highlights include:
Sitting on the balcony of our 15th story apartment during and watching a thunderstorm amongst the skyscrapers.
Flying in a helicopter over tropical islands, before landing on an offshore gas platform.8
My first sight flying into Singapore, seeing the ships in the strait and the high tech city, and thinking I’d never seen something look more like Stargate: Atlantis.
A candle-lit dinner on the beach at Boracay for my wife’s 29th birthday.
Attending a billionaire’s gala birthday celebration and listening to Lea Salonga (Jasmine in the original Aladdin).
Figuring out how to live with three members of household staff - a maid, a nanny and a driver.
Representing the UK at the ceremony for the anniversary of the Leyte landings.9
Riding on an elephant and seeing the actual bridge over the River Kwai in Thailand.
Walking through an ash-blasted landscape in the early dawn light to reach Mount Pinatubo.
But if I had to choose one, it would be the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, where I had the opportunity to see the Foreign Office at its best. The disaster touched the heart of the British public who gave £85m; the Government added more and sent an aircraft carrier. The embassy went on to full-on crisis mode, with everyone who’d normally have nothing to do with this side of things, such as me, pulled in to work as cogs in a smoothly operating machine - responding to the crisis, reaching out to British nationals caught up in it, liaising with the military, helping to get aid out and more. It was an amazing example of what ‘the system’ can be capable of in times of crisis and it was inspiring to be a small part of it.
Alex Rich: In an era of rising populism and seemingly irrevocable division in politics nowadays, do you think there is much of a future for the pragmatic, thoughtful, compromise-based politics and policy that you generally advocate for?
The biggest issue we have driving distrust is the say-do gap: where politicians pledge they will deliver something but are unwilling to take action to achieve them. Both Sunak and Starmer campaigned on more economic growth and stopping the boats, but neither were willing to take the steps necessary to achieve this.
There are some genuinely hard problems in Britain (eg how do we improve NHS productivity), but equally, a lot of things aren’t - they’re just things our politicians shy away from:
If we want economic growth we need to strip back regulation, and particularly regulation that stops us building things - from houses to energy generation. But that means building things near people, reducing environmental protections and curbing our judicial review system.
If we want to stop the Channel boats, control our borders and reliably deport violent foreign offenders we need to leave the ECHR and then legislate explicitly to do this.
If you want to stop ‘woke’ in the public sector you need to repeal the Public Sector Equality Duty, social value requirements in procurement and other such regulations, and then tell quango chiefs that if they do this sort of stuff in future they will be fired - and be willing to follow through.
If we want to cut taxes we need to find significant savings in one or more of pensions, welfare or healthcare spending. You can probably get away with doing 2 out of 3; I doubt you can find enough in just 1 of these, given the current deficit.
And, for the left, if you want to spend significantly more on public services or welfare, then taxes are going to have to rise.
Although I hope I'm thoughtful, I'm perhaps not as moderate as you think I am: all of the above changes involve slaying sacred cows and facing down powerful lobby groups - they can't be achieved just through compromise. But unless we get leaders willing to lead rather than follow, and with the will to do what is needed to deliver the changes they claim to want, voters will increasingly look to more radical parties who are willing to do this, on both left and right.
Sumi: How does the country move away from lopsided policies that are borne out of class wars? Thinking primarily around social engineering, what are the long term effects of it? Is it not discrimination when for example, Universities ignore grades of their exams, national exams, etc and use imperfect metrics to give out contextual offers prone to gaming the system?
The only way is to relentlessly stand for meritocracy, invidual liberty and treating each person as an individual, based on their own abilities and achievements, rather than as a member of a group or class.
Like many good things, it’s endlessly under threat and needs to be constantly defended. There was obviously widespread discrimination against women and ethnic minorities until relatively recently10 - but then EDI metastasised into a monster in which people would discriminate in the other direction, change entry criteria and speak openly about wanting anyone but a white man in the role.
There’s a genuine issue in that it’s true that if two people get the same score on a test, the one who self-taught in a library is likely to be more able than the one which was extensively coached. There are perhaps some Oxbridge colleges which are genuinely accounting for this and trying to find the strongest candidates. But if you actually read what most people working in this area say, they are fully fixated on equality of outcome between different groups, on ‘equity’, and often appear to deny the very ability to accurately measure (or the existence of!) merit or differing ability - which is why you get mad ideas like abolishing or ignoring standardised tests,11 or saying hiring managers can’t see the performance reviews of internal candidates. Given the repeated, open statements of many senior people in academia, the public sector and corporations about how they want to discriminate and pursue equality of outcome, the more we can use background-blind, name-blind, anonymously marked assessments the better - and alongside that, we need to tighten up the legal loopholes in the Equality Act which permit the use of race and sex based ‘targets’, as well as so-called ‘positive action’, such as internships that are only open to ethnic minorities.12
But the right also has to be careful here. The experience in the US shows that some of those who rightly condemned the ‘affirmative action’ happening at universities and elite firms are actually just old-fashioned racists. More seductively, there can be a temptation to embrace the politics of victimhood, and start asking for special treatment, perhaps because white boys are currently doing worse in education. But you don’t fight identity politics with identity politics - that just creates an endless cycle of grievance.
Kishan: Are there any commentators (be it X-posters, Substackers, or old school journalists) whom you respect enough to follow, and even recommend, from the other side of the political spectrum to you?
I read and follow quite a few people from the left, both to learn things and to make sure I understand what ‘the other side’ believes. In terms of recommendations, on Substack, I’d recommend Sam Freedman (Comment is Freed) who writes broadly about public policy and politics, as well as Ben Ansell (Political Calculus)13 who focuses more on electoral and political issues.
In the US, I read Matthew Yglesias (Slow Boring) - who although I sometimes think I agree with him too much on markets and energy for this to count, is clearly coming at things from an explicitly centre-left perspective.
In terms of mainstream journalists, I often read individual articles, but regularly enjoy Stephen Bush from the FT and Rachel Cunliffe from the New Statesman.
What all of these have in common (other than writing well) is that their writing is typically either data rich and/or brings new insights, meaning that even when I don’t agree with them, I usually learn something. They’re all good decouplers, able to separate what they want to happen from what they think will happen, and also have a clear understanding that different things affect each other, in first, second and third order ways, rather than just asserting ‘this will happen because I think it should.’
Neil: What's the best new board game/board game mechanic you've played recently?
I love the iron and coal selling mechanism in Brass Birmingham.14 It operates so elegantly,15 with players rewarded for producing more resources precisely when they are in short supply, because they are what the game is currently using. A mark of its success is the way other players are genuinely happy when you do this massively advantageous to you thing, because it enables them to now do the things they want to do.
As a close runner-up I’d go for the scoring mechanism in Colour Brain - which could easily be transferred to any other ‘question answering game’. In the game, each round all players have to answer the same question and every player who gets it right gets a number of points equal to the number of players who got that question wrong. It’s an incredibly simple yet effective way of reflecting ‘how hard was this question?’ and scales to any number of players.
Heinrich Hyser: What do you think of the Chagos deal? Is there some secretive reasons we don't know of? Or is it simply "international law told us so".
If there’s a secretive reason then it’s not one I know about! I think it’s a terrible deal, driven by some combination of misguided legal maximalism and/or post-colonial guilt, or both. The deal fails on every front: historically, legally, morally and strategically:
Historically, because the Chagos Islands were never ruled, colonised or otherwise occupied by Mauritius, from which they are separated by a vast distance, but simply joined together as an administrative convenience by Britain when it ruled both.
Legally, because the International Court of Justice explicitly has no jurisdiction over this case, because the 2019 ruling was advisory only, and there is no international court that could make such a binding ruling. One does not show one’s commitment to the ‘rule of law’ by observing rulings that one is not legally obliged to do.
Morally, because while Britain did wrong the Chagossians grievously when it forced them to leave the islands, and would ideally commit to a programme of resettlement,16 Mauritius was not wronged, a tiny fraction of the payments are earmarked to the Chagossians. Most Chagossians now are British citizens, not Mauritians, and appear to oppose the deal.
Strategically, because the Diego Garcia base is vital to US and UK interests, and handing sovereignty to a country that may cosy up to China is the height of folly, and only increases the vulnerability of the base. Nor does it enhance our ‘soft power’ or increase our support in Africa, as can be seen by the fact that shortly after signing the deal, Mauritius joined other Commonwealth countries in calling for ‘slavery reparations’ from Britain.17
To quote someone who knows far more about this than I do:
No international tribunal can rule that Mauritius is sovereign over the Chagos or require the UK to cede the islands to Mauritius. There is no real risk to the operation of the electromagnetic spectrum, overflight access or civilian contractors.
If Mauritius were to attempt to frustrate US-UK defence interests, or were to take payments from our adversaries to enable their incursion into the archipelago, it would be a hostile state and should be treated as such. The answer to Mauritian lawfare is not to negotiate surrender.
The new treaty does not provide the UK with a veto over Mauritian actions that might endanger Diego Garcia. If it is ratified, Mauritius will be an attractive target for Chinese subversion. The government has unjustified confidence in the goodwill of future Mauritian governments.
US-UK defence interests would be much more secure if the UK retained sovereignty. For this reason and for many others — financial prudence, fairness to the Chagossians, environmental protection — the government should seize this opportunity to walk away before the treaty is ratified.
Professor Richard Ekins KC (Hon), writing in The Times, January 202618
David Edgington: In the engineering community around HS2, it is widely though that some of the greatest problems with the project have been, at least in part, caused by excessive meddling by the government, and the lack of enough ambition to invest in the long term capacity to deliver such projects more cheaply in the future. One of the most radical solutions to this, and other infrastructure problems, which I have seen is to abolish the Treasury (assumedly meant more as a way to stimulate conversation than a firm proposal). As someone involved in the civil service, what are your thoughts on this?
The key thing about HS2 is that it’s a cost-benefit question, not an ideological one. If it cost £1 million, almost everyone would support it; if it cost £1 trillion, it would clearly be a bad idea. With the cost at £100 billion before it was cancelled, and the official cost:benefit ratio fallen to less than one, for my part I agreed with the decision to pull the plug.
While the Treasury has its problems, I don’t actually think it was primarily to blame for this one. From my understanding, the main drivers of cost were:
The decision to put so much of it through tunnels, motivated by a desire to appease MPs whose constituencies lay en route.
The standard bureaucratic, judicial and other problems that dog every major infrastructure in this country, that led, for example to us building a state of the art road-bridge that led nowhere,
As you say, there have been numerous calls to abolish the Treasury over time. I personally think the Treasury gets a worse rap than it deserves: while it can be short-sighted and overcontrolling19, it’s the one part of Government that ever tries to save money which, with debt at 95% of GDP, we could do with more of.
Still, I can see the logic behind the idea that the department in charge of spending should not also be in charge of economic growth, the financial services sector and so forth - and thus we should split it into a spending department and a department of economic affairs. I’ve never been fully convinced, but it’s not a silly idea - and one of best places I’ve seen it expounded, is in The End of the Treasury, by Stian Westlake and Giles Wilkes (respectively, a former Tory and former Lib Dem SpAd).
Net migration isn’t a perfect proxy for ‘new non-British born people’, as some Brits might leave or return, but it’s good enough for this level of abstraction.
For those who’ve not followed it all the way through - and I appreciate readers may have had different views on the original decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans - more recently the Chief Constable has had to resign after the force was found to have manufactured evidence to justify the decision and then subsequently lied about it.
It is a great irony that the progressives who are most pro immigration are also typically most opposed to the integration measures that would make it work: favouring anti-British, ‘decolonised’ narratives in education, museums and broadcasting; resiling from our national story; opposing English language requirements; and cultivating divisive, identitarian politics which pits ethnicities and religions against each other, rather than promoting an inclusive, patriotic approach to British identity in which all can take pride.
Or English.
I am entirely up for eating curry at breakfast.
Though if we get as far as ‘total societal collapse, the Amish and the Haredi take over’ then all bets are off.
I’m going to answer this question in the spirit it was meant: technically, winning my Brexit essay (and the resulting fall out) would be the pedantically correct answer, but that was only coincidentally while I was in the Philippines.
My Dad worked on oil rigs, but this was the first time I’d been on one (OK, this was a gas platform, but still) which made it particularly interesting.
I didn’t often do these things, as it wasn’t really my role, but on this occasion, the Ambassador, Deputy Ambassador and First Secretary Political were all away, so I got nominated.
I think some of the problems we currently face is that societal change has occurred so quickly that many of the older generations, who started work in a time when organisations really would openly discriminate against anyone who wasn’t a white man, can’t quite contemplate just how much things have changed, and that now HR departments will be doing precisely the opposite.
It really is possible for a bright kid to buy a textbook and teach themselves how to do well on the SAT, without any training or coaching. I know this because I did it.
Fundamentally, if senior people or formal documents in your organisation say that you actively wish to hire or promote more people from identity group X, anyone not from identity group X should be able to sue you into the ground any time they don’t get hired or promoted.
Who, on proof-reading, appears to be the unintentional ‘diversity pick’ amongst these recommendations.
A game based in the Industrial Revolution, in which you have to cover the Midlands with canals, railways and factories.
Unlike much of the rest of Brass Birmingham.
For those that wished to.
One might rather say it simply demonstrates that we are easy marks.
For a fuller explanation, one can read a recent publication of his here.
I definitely think departments should be given greater control over the budgets that have already been delegated to them: the Education Secretary should be free to flex money between different skills programmes, or between different parts of the schools budget.
Thank you for answering my question - I 'd say the policies you advocate for, whilst radical in scope and effect, are still fundmantally moderate because they require recognition of compromise. 3 of those policies you have suggested (planning, finding savings and raising tax) have not found favour with populist politics and likely never will because it involves actions which appear detrimental to the electorate in the short term, instead of pinning all problems on one specific group. My real worry is not so much that politics is going to lead us down the path of radical government, but more that it will lead us to more cakeist government, which is not a recipe for a successful country.
I got to know the UK Chagossians some years ago. They (or their parents) had been appallingly treated but resettlement is now impractical. There is no infrastructure outside Diego Garcia, and rebuilding and subsequent supply chains would be very expensive - even if, as seems unlikely, they would want to swap life in the UK for a small island life.
I am not an expert on the strategic questions but agree that there is in practice no threat to the US/UK base. Would growing Chinese influence over Mauritius matter? Not sure.