Don't say serfs

it's wrong

Last week, the leader of the British Green Party, Zack Polanksi, said “I don’t know about you but I don’t want to wipe someone’s bum” while making an argument in favour of immigration into the UK. It’s a vulgar, insensitive way of talking. There are no jobs that are reserved to immigrants on account of being messy work, nor should there be. Polanksi said something stupid and demeaning.

This comment, however, prompted Henry Hill, deputy editor of Conservative Home, perhaps the publication most in touch with England’s Conservative grass-roots, to say: “It’s weird how near-explicit “we need serfs” is progressive-coded now.”

This is horrible framing, and wrong-headed to boot. Immigrants who take jobs in a capitalistic democracy are not serfs. And Polanksi didn’t say anything approximating to “we need serfs”. He said, essentially, “we need care workers, they should come from other countries”.

However crass Polanksi was, and whatever it reveals about his attitudes to immigrants, it isn’t sensible to use a word that means “a worker who is legally obliged to work a piece of land under the dominion of a feudal lord” to mean “low paid worker in care job”.

This is like the left characterising everything the right says as fascist.

Henry Hill surely doesn’t mean to deny the importance of markets, the division of labour, or the inherent dignity of every individual whatever their work. But in his pursuit of an effective immigration rhetoric, he mirrored Polanksi’s “us and them” framing.

It’s fine to oppose immigration. I happen to think immigration is a good thing, both for the immigrants and for England, and I think the evidence supports that view. But as the right debates this issue, it would be better to avoid this sort of framing.

Maintaining a language of free individuals is essential for liberalism today, whether you are in favour of immigration or not. Just because the Green Party leader says something demeaning doesn’t mean we need to follow-suit.