BRITAIN MUST BAN MIGRANTS

Tuesday July 19 2011 by Macer Hall, Political Editor

BRITAIN should shut the door to more migrants to protect jobs for native workers, a Labour adviser said yesterday.

Lord Glasman, Ed Miliband’s chief policy guru, wants a temporary halt to immigration to ensure British people are first in the queue for jobs.

The Labour peer also urged the Government to renegotiate EU rules allowing the free movement of migrant workers in a decisive break with the open door policy of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

“The people who live here are the highest priority. We’ve got to listen and be with them. They’re in the right place – it’s us who are not,” he said.

His remarks follow a report he has written for the Labour leader and sparked fresh anger last night over the relaxation of border controls by the last Labour government that allowed more than five million immigrants to settle in Britain.

Mr Miliband yesterday tried to distance himself from the remarks by claiming he had not read them. Lord Glasman spoke out on immigration in an interview for Fabian Review, the journal of the Left-wing Fabian Society think-tank.

Britain is not an outpost of the UN [United Nations]. We have to put the people in this country first.

Lord Glasman

“We’ve got to reinterrogate our relationship with the EU on the movement of labour,” he said.

“It’s legalistic, it’s administrative and it’s no good. So I think we have got to renegotiate with the EU.

“Britain is not an outpost of the UN [United Nations]. We have to put the people in this country first.”

The peer believes that the previous Labour government’s backing for mass immigration from Eastern Europe helped undermine support among traditional Labour voters.

Last month the Daily Express reported that nine out of 10 new jobs created in Britain go to migrants.