Brown's Lurch to the Right

Nick Robinson and Matthew d'Ancona, among others, have commented on Gordon Brown's TUC pledge to deliver "British jobs for British workers," speculating on how such a phrase would have been portrayed by the media had David Cameron delivered it.

Looking beyond such "harsh realities of political life," the truth is that our European masters would never permit such employment protection rights. Moreover, given that employers are usually going to take on the best person for the job, then presumably the immigrants accused of "stealing our jobs" are better qualified and/or better experienced than the natives whom they are supplanting — which would seem to imply that there is something wrong with British education and training, requiring a more direct and substantial remedy than any diversionary "British jobs for British workers" sticking plaster.