Labour's Immigration Dilemma

Labour Party still self-consciously clueless about immigration policy

It was a defining moment of the 2010 British election: Gordon Brown, after conversing with British everywoman Gillian Duffy, declared her to be "a bigoted woman".

Duffy, a lifelong Labour supporter, challenged Brown about his ability to tackle the UK's national debt while demand for welfare continued to be driven by immigration.

"We had it drummed in when I was a child … it was education, health service and looking after the people who are vulnerable," Duffy had declared. "But there's too many people now who are vulnerable but they can claim and people who are vulnerable can't get claim, can't get it."

"But they shouldn't be doing that, there is no life on the dole for people any more," Brown argued. "If you are unemployed you've got to go back to work. It's six months…"

"You can't say anything about the immigrants," Duffy complained. "But all these eastern European that are coming in, where are they flocking from?"

Brown replied that while one million immigrants were arriving from Eastern Europe, one million Britons had emmigrated elsewhere.

In frustration, Brown would later declare Duffy to be "a bigoted woman". He was still wearing a Sky News Microphone and had forgotten about it. It was a defining gaffe of the election for Labour.

The message -- which is still causing deep anxieties within Labour ranks -- was very simple: Britons were not yet prepared to accept multiculturalism as inevitable; at least not with what they had already seen.

As it pertains to multiculturalism, many countries have experienced some growing pains. But it seems that Britain has had it far worse than some other countries.

Britain is one of the only countries in the western world where Sharia courts were actually allowed to take root. The rot has penetrated so deeply that even the Archbishop of Canterbury has described the implementation of Sharia law as "inevitable".

It's on this general note that social patterns such as the troubling upswing in support for organizations like the British National Party have emerged. Many Britons, it seems, no longer recognize their own country when radical Islamists so frequently take to the streets to declare their intentions to bring the totality of British society under their extreme political ideology, which masquerades as Islam.

This is not a challenge that the British government will be able to tackle easily. Before the Labour Party will be ready to return to government, it will need to conquer its Gillian Duffy-related demons, and prepare a vigorous response to the troubled state of British multiculturalism.