Starmer's personal attacks on Sunak start the ball rolling..

Throughout history, all developed nations have enjoyed real growth and progress through migrant labour

In this country it was the Irish who sunk our mines and built our railways, in Germany it was Turks and migrants from Southern Europe who rebuilt the country after the war. The UK invited people to come here and work from the Caribbean after the Second World War, we also hired thousands of health care professionals from the sub continent.

The influx of Eastern Europeans through "Freedom of Movement" raised growth, it encouraged the rapid expansion of industries which had barely existed in this country, or industries that struggled, the Salad Growing Industry for example.

Other industries flourished because of the willingness of European migrants to do the unskilled jobs on National Minimum Wage that our own people were reluctant to do, these including the food processing sectors, hospitality, tourism, catering and care work.

Freedom of Movement had a positive effect on the UK economy, there were many companies who struggled to fill vaccancies, some food producers had permanent labour shortages.

The idea that you simply push up wages to attract people is a non-starter, because it does two things, firstly it creates the same problem somewhere else, secondly, by pushing wages upwards until it attracts workers, it also drives up costs - in the food industry the competitors are almost all European countries, you make British products uncompetetive.

Freedom of Movement is a "Freedom", it was a freedom enjoyed by British people as much as other Europeans, but its a freedom that has now been taken away from us. I can no longer simply move to Cyprus or France and buy a property and live there, its now more complicated. Brexiters have taken freedom of movement away from us.

It’s rank ignorance red. Straight out the ‘woke and virtue signalling for  dummies ‘handbook.

I was responding to this post by Bentley  >>

"Brexit has taken away the problem of cheap Labour stagnating wages and work conditions. It also has taken away small villages and towns effectively being over run by ethnic groups. Maybe they ex remainers should imagine their town being overrun by brexiters.

Scary eh?

I never raised the issue of race or racism, Bentley did, and I certainly never suggested that Brexit voting people were racists, though a fairly large proportion obviously are.

Why should people find it unbearable for young Polish people, or Czechs or Latvians to live in their town or village ?, how does having a Polish family living next door impact your quality of life, or affect your way of living. ?

The overwhelming vast majority of young Eastern European migrants are decent, hard working people, who came here to work and create a better life for themselves, most integrate very well with British society.

I repeat - only a xenophobe would have an issue with Eastern Europeans living in their neighbourhood