LAST week’s Question Time was an “immigration special”. You would be forgiven for asking why such a show should be seen as necessary, given that this one-time institution in British politics covers the topic copiously on an average edition.

Today, the issue of immigration is indeed omnipresent, fuelling the rise of Reform UK, and deployed as a tool to rationalise declining living standards.

In many ways, this is nothing new. Divide and rule has always been a mechanism for containing and disrupting discontentment, whether in this country or as part of some colonial adventure elsewhere in the world.

At the same time, flows of migrant labour into the UK have been central to neoliberal ideology.

Seen as a driver of economic growth, the arrival of workers who can reinforce the health system

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