Recent media attacks on economic liberalism (free trade, open markets, light regulation, etc) in the centre-Left media are finding a sympathetic hearing amongst BNP commentators. A couple of examples.
1. The Migration Policy Institute report into immigration was translated by the Guardian into “Eastern European immigration ‘has hit low-paid Britons”.
This was echoed on the BNP’s website last night: “The expansion of the European Union has definitely caused wages to drop in Britain, a new official report by the Migration Policy Institute has revealed.”
The real quote from the MPI report reads: “There is no strong reason to expect a significant negative impact on wages or employment in response to the recent immigrant influx.”
The Migration Policy Institute was a subtle report, careful to point out that the benefits of immigration, and also to highlight that we should avoid trapping British workers in low skill jobs.
While mainstream economists believe that at the very worst immigration has a neutral effect on the economy, the YouGov / MigrationWatch poll released on Sunday showed that in marginal seats even Liberal Democrat voters believed 51% to 21% that immigration had a bad effect on the economy. Is it any any surprise when the media twists stories to play up to popular prejudices?
2. We can see a similar anti-liberalism in the media response to Cadbury / Kraft deal. Typical of centre-Left coverage is the Guardian headline: “The sad lesson of Cadbury is the City still holds the whip”.
BNP Legal Director Lee Barnes shares this view (though with a anti-Semitic twist): “We must stop the asset stripping of British companies by avaricious American globalist corporate Jewish controlled companies owned by people such as Irene Rosenfeld the director of Kraft”.
Economic liberalism provides the prosperity that pays the nation’s bills and ill-informed attacks on immigration and corporate take-overs support opponents of economic freedom, like the national socialist BNP.
