Nowhere in his piece on the working class and immigration (Britain is in the midst of a working class revolt, 17 June) does John Harris provide a detailed assessment of the levels of migration he discusses. 170,000 new migrant workers each year in an economy of close to 32 million workers is hardly swamping the labour market. It represents growth of well below 1% as a contribution to the labour force. By comparison, there are around 750,000 teenagers in each single year age group, most of whom will enter the workforce at some time. Yes, migrants and UK workers should be working in good conditions and with appropriate remuneration. But working-class Britons also benefit from the lower prices of our service sector, whether by buying clothing online or home-delivered food. Working conditions need to be improved, but focusing only on immigration and the labour market is misleading.
Peter West
London
• John Harris’s piece was one of the best and most insightful in years. We have seen this tragic pattern before, from Munich in the 1920s onwards. Now, with the Front National in France and Trump in the US, we see it again. It must be faced, and in the ways that Harris has suggested.
Dr Christopher Catherwood
Cambridge
• Much of the middle-class left has unfortunately minimised or dismissed what should be their bread-and-butter issues – low pay, the unavailability of social housing, pressure on education and health services in working-class areas.
In response to those who link these problems to immigration, instead of deflecting blame to where it belongs – on government cuts and the running down of infrastructure at a time when the population is expanding – they have too often promoted (with an evangelical fervour unrecognisable to the less well off) the benefits of what Marx called a “relative surplus population” (or reserve army of labour) to “the economy”, as if the economy were social-democratic in nature rather than run in the interests of the rich.
When the left disconnects from the lived experience of the proletariat, it creates a dangerous vacuum: we should be mindful that there could be even higher prices to pay than Brexit.
Peter McKenna
Liverpool
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