>>2599558under the neoliberal explanation, it should help both countries and the migrants themselves. britain gets cheap labour, poland gets money sent back from workers who're earning more than they would domestically - a positive sum game, all parties benefit. under the explanation that it's all imperialism, you're just brain-draining poland - a zero-sum game. since poland has prospered, it's not too hard to play devil's advocate for the neoliberal worldview. i don't care too much for "dogma" either way because it's just marketing. "immigration is good for britain" is an easier sell and a smaller target than "immigration is on balance the least worst option for everyone but boy does the world like to force bleak choices on us"
what i'm working towards in a devil's advocate sort of way is that while neoliberalism wasn't good, we're in something else now and it's much worse. an underclass of poor (but legal and legally equal to citizens) internationally mobile migrants isn't FALC, sure, but it's a defensible social structure against other possible models - for example: an underclass of poor (but illegal) migrants, an underclass of poor (but permanently second-class) migrants, or the final success of autarky giving us an underclass of poor british people and a bunch of people in the third world dying as their countries pass wet bulb temperature.
i am, for the most part, taking it from the point of view of the migrant's interests. (although an undercurrent is that britain's recent stupidity is also part of why it is poorer.)
i don't think "liberal" is a helpful category in british politics without further definition. you've got polanski, sure, but who else? what you're dealing with is a very different beast depending on whether your "liberals" are polanski only, polanski+sultana+corbyn, polanski+davey, or polanski+starmer. (and, in a more historical sense, whether blair, for example, is 'liberal')
to the more general point: everyone in a position of power sees everyone beneath them as (less than) pets that they own in class-stratified britain.