Scapegoating the scapegoater

 

Jonathan Portes in his review of the The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Postwar Immigration by David Goodhart http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n12/jonathan-portes/an-exercise-in-scapegoating

opens his review in the following way:
There are two major problems with contemporary British society, according to David Goodhart in The British Dream, and both are primarily caused by immigration. The first problem is economic: the plight of the white working class, especially the young, and the decline of social mobility. Goodhart argues that low-skilled immigrants have taken jobs from unskilled natives, leaving them languishing on benefits, while high-skilled immigration reduces both the incentives and opportunities for ambitious and talented natives to move up the ladder. Many find this thesis convincing, and it has been accepted as fact by much of the political elite. There is, however, almost no evidence to support it.
No evidence!!!  Well, where is the evidence that there is no evidence?

At the end of the article the reviewer accuses the writer of scapegoating, but is this not
a form of scapegoating itself. A form of finger pointing and name calling if you say something
to the Liberal left intelligentsia which does sit well on their ideologue menu, you more often than
not get a finger pointing  name calling.

But the emotive terms, liberal/illiberal, right/left, conservative/democrat, are no more than the current play of ideas in the zeitgeist of a changing world.

And how does one form an opinion on immigration in this rapidly changing world. One's opinion
is either formed by the media, and the armchair experts on everything they chauffeur  in so they can tell us how to think.  Most of whom are not free agents put are in the pockets of those who pay them
publishers, media moguls, political parties et al.

So one's opinion has to be anecdotal, one forms an opinion by direct experience.  The anecdotal
then becomes a concensus (the rise of UKIP in the UK) amid howls of protest from the established
political parties, who are hell bent on protecting their interests ie keeping power.