Should we be worried about right-wing populism?

I see in the paper today that Marine La pen is doing very well in the polls in France.
If she wins the election next year, the French will have a referendum.

Oh joy! It's all going pear shaped everywhere.

I dont get why older people especially hadn't expected all this sort of thing to happen. Perhaps everyone actually did. It is not exactly new is it.
If this country and others needed a bigger population that would have been different. Or needed a much larger workforce.

Why do you think we didn't Obieone It will be true of all countries where life is improving. You improve health and you have a growing aging population to support. You improve education and you have a falling birth rate so fewer of working age to support the growing group who use the NHS on a growing basis and need care and income. I know many will choose not to believe this because they want to justify an anti-immigration stance, but it is the case. No immigration and we could have a very sad old age. Add to this the fact that the pressures on the most able of the young will cause them to leave the country and where are we?

Those who put their head in the sand will bring a very different sort of Armageddon on us to the one they are predicting. Why, oh why do you ignore the facts?

Just Google "birth rate problems in the UK" and you will find even the much loved paper of the anti-immigrant group, the Daily Mail, bemoaning the low birth rate in this country up to a few years ago. We are now beginning to raise the birth rate - women in the UK are giving birth at an average rate of 1.9 children each but even the least statistically minded should be able to see that will not replace 2 parents. To do this you need an average birth rate of over 2. In Germany they have tried to encourage women to have more children but their birth rate is only 2.4. Educated women do not want to be trapped by large families and they want to give fewer children more. They have many women who have chosen not to have any children. We may not have the problem to the same extent but that is because of immigration; 1 in 4 mothers have been born abroad and we may well be very grateful for that when some of their children care for us in our old age or design new medicines to keep us fit.

I will also add a comment on the "Or needed a much larger workforce". We did and we do. If you sent "home" all those you think should not be here because we "don't need them" who do you think will do the jobs.

Perhaps the old, or the infirm because this government has found there are few areas of benefits they can attack without hurting these groups. They have actually proved there are very few who are not working deliberately - we don't have that flexibility in our population.

Have your views by all means; we are all entitled to them but do find out whether they are based on fact or fiction. If you still want to believe what you believe even though you learn the facts do not uphold those views then you have to ask yourself why you are so anti immigration.

By the way the best way to get the people who have come from the EU and elsewhere to go is to wreck our economy. When Ireland was going through it's Celtic Tiger stage they had many immigrants; when the economy tanked most moved on to the next good economy. It is not a case of immigrants being anyway parasitic on a country; immigrants and a good economy are symbiotic; they help sustain each other.

That is exactly how the single market is supposed to work - absolutely logical when you come to think if it.
Growing economy = more jobs. Free movement of people does this efficiently. Contracting economy = less jobs. Push/pull factors.

There is a world of difference between possibly needing a few, to uncontrolled and out of control.

obieone then you misunderstand the point of markets.

I think it's logical and you think it's logical whitewave but others would rather not think about it at all and just stick, sadly, with being frightened. I do honestly believe some are genuinely frightened but a lot of fear goes away when knowledge is available.

Would you rather live in a dying country Obieone? It really does sound like it.

Do you think that countries that are smaller die, and those that are bigger live?

What do you mean obieone?

Send my EU migrants back where they came from and their families would go with them. That would leave me on my own needing much more social care and would cost more.
They would not be paying tax and NI here either to support me and others in their old age.

I'm sorry obieone but that makes no sense to me either. I am happy to reply if you could explain a little more.

Gg please explain better your post of 10.13am

dj, your post is so personal to you, that I shall make no comment.

People do realise I suppose that the many migrants coming in require immediate support and many for medium term too?

They dont just bounce into paid jobs[that require no additional benefits], and the population here dont want the jobs, so they are just filling a vacancy?

Gracesgran forgive me if I'm wrong, but i can't recall anyone on here who said they are "anti immigration" I think most of us who comment are unhappy with the amount of immigration. I grew up in south London ( Woolwich&Greenwich) I lived very happily with mostly West Indians, Asians and Chinese. I moved to Southend, another very diverse population. But now it's the shear numbers of immigrants that many people don't like.
I was in one of our local Asian shops yesterday and they had a vote leave poster!!
So I asked why? They said the same as many do: too many Eastern Europeans.
And it's not all Eastern Europeans, There is one particular race that the really don't like, and it's not Polish people.

@obieone

Many immigrants to the UK DO bounce into well paid jobs and don't require additional benefits. Many of them are filling vacancies which can't be filled by people already living here. Others CREATE jobs which hadn't been created. Immigrants can't all be grouped together, because they are all different. They contribute to a nation's wealth.

Durhamjen's post isn't personal, because there are many people who are already in the situation she's writing about.

This is classic A level geography stuff about the different stages countries reach in terms of the workforce they need.

@petra

So which race don't they like?

dd, I dont know even where to start with your post.

The situation of the immigrants at present bears no resmblance to other sorts of immigration, as well you know.

And do read petra.s post.

No, I don't know. Please explain.

Petra this is a thread about right-wing populism isn't it?

dd, I am not going to play games.If you dont know by now, you never will know why the situation now is different.

Immigrants are immigrants just as indigenous people are just that.
There is no special EU immigrant group where everybody in it needs benefits. In fact that is just what Cameron's special deal has got rid of. He has a veto if there are too many immigrants coming in, so anyone who does not want to be swamped by immigrants had better vote to stay in the EU.
Of course, you will not do that because you do like putting all immigrants into categories, of people who should not want a better or different life, or to train and be educated in this country, then work here, because that does not fit your ideology.

daphnedill Albanians. They caused a lot of trouble (and that's putting it mildly) in Southend some years ago with their 'protection' gangs.