I think the other problem is Labour does rely on the migrant vote in some places, now. I don't mean that offensively or whatnot, but it's just my opinion.

Apparently, from the figures eventually released over the London election, the "Ken Freindly" areas all had higher populations of Muslims/Ethnic votes, than the majority of London which votes for Boris, the White, Afro Carribean and Indian suburbs communities who had lived there for several generations or so.

The other problem is it's not really an issue the left has ever been able to deal with, especially as since it's first significant and "proper" Labour government, the Atlee government of 46-51, called for Indians and Afro-Carribeans to come here to help rebuild the country, and it's a mindset that didn't go away when it probably needed to.

Enoch Powell's speech has also made it a horrible nettle that sucessive governments daren't touch, and the last two conservative Tory campaigns, including Micheal Howard's "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" campaign failed because it questioned Labour's migrationary policy, or rather, lack thereof.

Now, sitting here on the centre-right, I've always felt that both sides tend to "miss a trick" when the rest of us see it a mile away. The Tories post war didn't think about scaling back the War-like Rhetoric and looking into a more socialistically minded state from the way the whole country had bonded together during the war and subsequently lost.

It happened again with Major in 1997, where the country needed to move on to something that the government didn't see because it had worked frantically behind the scenes since Black Wednesday and had fixed the problem of the economy, only to realise they had said nothing to the elecorate, or seemed to be doing nothing during the time. It's why Major is now being exonerated by the Tories these days, because folks realise that a lot of it was "behind the scenes" coupled with personal scandals that did it in for Major during the 1997 campaign.

Labour, perhaps, is making the same mistake now on immigration, despite the promise of tough new border controls they're not really controlled at all, and often seem and feel ad-hoc so they don't offend the Guardian and Independant readership and even seem to be "Crisis? What Crisis?" in attitude.

The fact the Poles settled and distributed themselves evenly across the country has also fueled the immigration debate because, for the first time in several generations, there are migrants in some communities that last had people from India arrive in the 1950s.

The Tories however, seem to have, once again, found the "Sweet spot" between grasping the issue properly, while going at it with kid gloves. They're talking about immigration in general, not as a racial issue as often distorted by certain chunks of the press, perhaps thanks to the poles, but as a socio-economics issue.

Society needs to be able to "drip feed" migrants into it's local population so they don't suffer "culture shock" from the sudden large body that often isolates itself into a "ghetto" of some form [I said as much on another post here that seems to have had the whole blog entry vanish]

It's also necessary so the public services can cope with the numbers too. by arguing it more on these issues you can bring in better controls and even control immigration  without coming across as anti-migrant, or "BNP-like" or whatnot.

When spoken like that, and carefully thought out, it's an argument that people go "That's what I was thinking too." and it thus "resonates" with the voters because it's more of concern for the NHS and for the culture-shock, rather than the issue of race. 

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