Here is my theory about the less enlightened section of the national press. It is not that they necessarily hate black people or gay people or Muslims or even benefit scroungers. It is just that they have a business model, and one of the constituent parts is fear of The Other. They believe they have a good idea about who the core readership is, and one of the ways they prise a reaction from that readership is through shrieked alerts and cautionary tales about The Other. The Other is taking your job, burgling your house, lowering your wages, eating your swans, filling your waiting room, stealing your sexual partners. This is part of the commercial DNA. You pay your money and, for a fleeting moment, dark tales of The Other trigger a reaction. An interactive experience for as little as 60p. Online, you get rage and shivers for free.
With that in mind, consider how they reported last week’s University College London report on the benefits of migration, so as to fit that business model. They had a choice. Option one was the revelation that EU migrant arrivals between 2001 and 2011 contributed £20bn more in taxes than they received in benefits. This was very good news because £5bn was from the newest 10 EU members, including Poland and Romania. The doomsters told us at the turn of the year that Romanians in particular were going to get sick, claim benefits and not work at all.
Option two was a less straightforward story. UCL looked at data from 1995, this time considering the tax/benefit contribution of all non-UK-born migrants, and found that non-EU immigrants paid in £118bn less in taxes than they received from the state. This was mainly because many of those counted had already been in the country for some time, paying tax prior to 1995, had got old and had reached a point where they required public services commensurate with an ageing population. There was also a statistical caveat over the cost/benefit ratio of their children.
All was clearly set out in the report. As was the fact that, using the same calculus, the net contribution of non-migrant Brits was minus £591bn. The Guardian, FT and the Independent chose to prioritise option one and mentioned option two. The pedlars of fear and rage did the opposite. Skewed and misleading. Regrettable but inevitable. Think of The Other and its place in the business model. How could it have gone any other way?
