UK coalition divisions reopen over immigration

By IRNA,

London : Divisions in Britain’s coalition government on immigration reopened Thursday with Business Secretary Vince Cable accusing Prime Minister David Cameron of making a “very unwise” speech that could “inflame extremism”.


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Cable, the most senior Liberal Democrat in the cabinet after deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, suggested that Cameron was speaking more in his capacity as Conservative leader with three weeks to go before elections to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and a series of local councils.

“I do understand there is an election coming but talk of mass immigration risks inflaming the extremism to which he and I are both strongly opposed,” he told the BBC hours ahead of the prime minister’s scheduled speech.

“The reference (by Cameron) to the tens of thousands of immigrants rather than hundreds of thousands is not part of the coalition agreement, it is Tory party policy only,” he argued.

Cable provoked controversy last December when he was recorded by undercover reporters threatening to bring down the government and describing the pace of some of its reports as a ‘kind of Maoist revolution’ that was ‘in danger of getting out of control’.

He also lost his responsibility for media regulation after he warned he had “declared war” on Australian-American press tycoon Rupert Murdoch in his bid by News Corporation to take full control of BSkyB, Britain’s largest satellite broadcaster.

But despite calling the prime minister unwise, political analysts in the UK suggested that the 67-year old business secretary was unlikely to be sacked as there was no desire to escalate the dispute between the Lib Dems and Tories on immigration at such a crucial time.

Cameron triggered the unprecedented cabinet row by declaring in his speech that immigration undermines social cohesion, despite recent research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council which found that deprivation, not multiculturalism, was the root cause of fragmented communities.

Afterwards, he sought to play down cabinet divisions over the Tories insisting on setting a cap on immigration, which is not in the coalition agreement, when telling the BBC that it was ‘perfectly legitimate’ for Cable to argue his case.

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