Warnings over Brexit from the big powers

I don't think the people meant that at all. I think the people conflated the Australian system for handling asylum seekers (camps on remote islands) with the Australian system for voluntary migrants (ie the points system) and added in a little bit of panacea and a little bit of grass being greener.

We do indeed have what is called a points based system. We are on our second version of it but that is smoke and mirrors because the points serve no purpose in the system. In the UK system, we no longer say that to get a visa you must achieve English language level B2 to get a particular visa. We say you must get 40 points for English language. You get 40 points for having language level B2. You get nil points if you have B1 and you only get 40 points is you have C1. Occam Razor's would remove the reference to points.

I am not aware that Australia uses any kind of data analysis to determine points values. As far as know they are an impressionistic governmental decision.

The essential weaknesses with points systems are that it is the immigrant, not the government, who decides how the points requirement is met. All the government can do is set the points awarded for a particular desirable characteristic and the overall points score for getting admission.

Governments are constrained by politics in setting the overall points score. Employers, in-laws and others with an interest in visas being awarded aren't interested in the points system. They just want the system to work so that the people they are interested in are admitted. The UK as a nation might be interested in giving visas to science PhDs but the middle class family in Maidenhead want a visa for their would-be daughter in law who is an American with a liberal arts degree and a pleasant personality and works in a bookshop. Your overall points score tends to be set to not exclude people like her.

The problem then is that the Azerbaijani with very poor English, no cultural links to the UK, a non-working non-English speaking wife and three kids, gets enough points on the back of his PhD in physics and the £10,000 capital in his bank account.

Of course we know of a points system for admission because UCAS runs one. I appreciate that individual universities do not set the points score for each qualification but they do so collectively by comprising the UCAS board.

I want admission to Cambridge to read maths. I have grade 8 flute and grade 8 piano. I have A* A levels in Latin, history and English and grade A in maths. If Cambridge was a "points" rather than a "grades" university, I would be in, wouldn't I?

Our present immigration system is a "grades" system. The government decides precisely what you need to get in. If that is B2 English language, B1 isn't good enough and if you have C1 that doesn't give you a compensating pass in some other aspect of the process.

I appreciate all of this.

What I am saying is that when you point this out to people who support immigration restrictions their response will not be, "Oh well in that case let's have ten billion African asylum seekers.". Their response will be, "Let's come up with a different system that can achieve my goals.".

What are those goals? I argue to select only immigrants who will observe social harmony and be net contributors to the country. You have said that there are political pressures to do otherwise. That is true, both here and in Australia. The people who have voted for Brexit to send a message on immigration are saying that they want those political pressures to be removed.

The establishment for instance does not want to openly favour white English-speakers with English-speaking parents in immigration. The population, frankly, does. The fact that you have phrased your example in the way you have suggests that on some level you do too.

First of all "Brexit means Brexit" but nothing more.

The point about an election is that you can apply an artificial device to say that anyone who voted for a politician voted for every line of that politician's manifesto even though that, as a matter of fact, is untrue. With the referendum, there was a single question. Having had an answer a lot of people are saying what it "really means" which in many cases is different from the campaign they ran. There is no doubt that virtually all racists voted Brexit. It does not follow that all Brexit voters were racist, despite what certain parts of the Remain camp were arguing.

The American needs to be part of a debate that we are not having. Since May's cap on tier 1 "work permits" was introduced in 2010 we only hit the 20,000 or so annual cap for a few months in 2015. For the rest of those five years, the UK was under-subscribed for work permits. Yet we were letting in 300,000 plus non-EU immigrants a year. The vast majority of immigrants to this country are not coming in by the routes we are trying to heavily restrict. Likewise over 90% of asylum seekers do not claim asylum at the border. Asylum is almost entirely claimed on arrest by overstayers and illegal entrants.

In reality almost all immigrants are economic immigrants. Proponents of the points system want economic immigrants to be selected on grounds of social and economic use. Opponents of the points system reply that most immigrants, even if they are economic immigrants, do not enter via an economic route on paper, and therefore wouldn't be be captured by this system.

This is not an objection at all. Permitting economic immigrants to come in via non-economic routes is not an amendment to our constitution. We can simply apply the economic criteria to everyone.

But how much do you recall India being mentioned in Dickens or Bronte?

We can't simply do anything without it being on the political agenda. As the public doesn't understand the impact of non-economic immigration routes, public reaction is almost always in terms of the favourable facts of a particular case, not on immigration as a whole.

The public at present think they can reduce big numbers by tightly restricting small sub-classes.

The public doesn't know that most people are coming in by the back door and would be outraged to learn that they are.

I agree that this is not simple and it is not really "we". This, like the death penalty, is an issue on which elite opinion has diverged so drastically from popular opinion that policy is not really being formulated democratically. The Brexit referendum is the result.

The public is very aware of the ways in which immigrants arrive, how can they not be, given the 24/7/365 coverage of it going back years in the tabloid media, not to mention numerous TV shows?

It isn't a question of elites-vs-the people. That is just they hype that the organised right, especially the UKIP end of it, wishes to portray. Most areas where large numbers of migrants live are stable and accepting. Highest numbers supporting anti-immigrant agendas are concentrated in traditionally Tory areas where the right wing tabloids have a high degree of penetration. It is a struggle between elites - between the lying, deceitful, very rich elite who control parties like UKIP and parts of the Tory Party and the rest. The current anti-migrant hysteria is entirely fabricated by that group, regardless of the facts.

The public doesn't know that most people are coming in by the back door and would be outraged to learn that they are.

I agree that this is not simple and it is not really "we". This, like the death penalty, is an issue on which elite opinion has diverged so drastically from popular opinion that policy is not really being formulated democratically. The Brexit referendum is the result.

A majority of voters want immigration to be dramatically reduced. Almost no one in parliament does.

Democracy presupposes an informed debate. Popular opinion isn't of value if it isn't informed. If it isn't informed, we call it a mob and send in hussars. Revolutionary tension occurs when one group says it is fit to participate in government and another group says it isn't.

The public's usual cry when an outcome is not how they expected it to be is "they never told us" and of course that has long been the cry about the 1975 European referendum.

The death penalty debate in the UK is shaped almost entirely in terms of morality, wrongful convictions and deterrent value. In a sense that is an "easy" debate. Lawyers however know that where support for the death penalty is not wholehearted, the principal effect of introducing the death penalty will be to reduce convictions. If the death penalty is reintroduced, its supporters will not accept the blame, when (not if) this occurs.

There are a catalogue of policies; unit fines, the CSA, the Dangerous Dogs Act, Indefinite Sentences for Public Protection that were massively popular measures when introduced but which when they turned into fiascos for reasons that were entirely predictable to the informed resulting in the cry of "they never told us".

If I ask a question "do you think burglars should be locked up for longer?" it is obvious that the answer that the public will give is "yes". However it should be obvious that this entails "but that means fewer criminals will go to gaol or those, other than burglars, who do go gaol will serve less time"; but the public doesn't think that unless a lot of time and effort is spent explaining this to them.

Can you really blame the elite for thinking they simply can't be bothered to explain this to those who don't "get it" spontaneously. The opposition understand it. The think tanks and the "industry" understand it. Why should we waste our breath explaining the bleeding obvious to those who don't get it.

And then sometimes you will get politicians who get beguiled by the populist cry and the CSA happens; or you will get events running out of control and the Dangerous Dogs Act or the Institutional Child Abuse Inquiry happens.

Very, very occasionally you get something like Brexit..

But since he majority of voters do not understand who those immigrants are, why they are here and what the consequences would be if they were not here, their views are utterly informed.

What has happened for 40-50 years is that what you might call elites but this is much wider than the country's power-brokers, educated opinion might be a better term, haven't bothered to explain this because it is self-evident. What you are seeing now is a cry of regret from those people that they did not take the time to educate the public that their health service would collapse, their buses would not run and their pensions would not be paid but for immigrants.

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But Japan does not have immigrants, and it does have public transport - better than ours - and it does have a healthcare system - better than ours - and there is no doubt that the pensions in Japan will be paid, the only question is how expensive they will be for the young. The elite is simply wrong.

And to achieve this, Japan has had a "loss decade" which has now extended for a quarter of a century. Japan has had what, only one quarter in the last 25 years when its economic growth has exceeded an annual rate of 2%.

Japan is living on the wealth generated in the years 1945-1990.

In 1990 the Japanese economy was three times the size of ours. It is now less than twice the size and per head we are now substantially richer than Japan having been substantially poorer in 1990.

And to achieve this, Japan has had a "loss decade" which has now extended for a quarter of a century. Japan has had what, only one quarter in the last 25 years when its economic growth has exceeded an annual rate of 2%.

Japan is living on the wealth generated in the years 1945-1990.

In 1990 the Japanese economy was three times the size of ours. It is now less than twice the size and per head we are now substantially richer than Japan having been substantially poorer in 1990.

Many people in Britain when offered the choice of no cultural change and a 10% lower GDP per capita will take it. The elite doesn't want to but that is not a more correct answer, it is a different value judgement.

Given he's (essentially) out of office in 2 months - and that numerous other US politicians have said that they will definitely want to deal with the UK very quickly - I think we can all agree his comments are pretty irrelevant.