There are different ways in which the Tories have demonstrated their hypocrisy, but a blatant one is their position on immigration.
The Tories depict themselves as being all for free-market. In may fields they have nailed down the point that it is best to leave things to the market. The "invisible hand" of the market should be trusted to deliver. In name of freeing the market, they have weakened Unions that tried to tie the hand of the free market by protecting workers' rights. The "Market knows best" drove de-regulation and privatisation, with many abysmal results.
However, there is a field where leaving the market decide may seem like a sensible policy. And yet, here the Tories have become all for regulation and constraints to the free market. This field is immigration.
A free-market approach to immigration appears sensible: for one thing, who can decide how many immigrants should be allowed in a country to fill jobs? It is a very difficult and complex issue. Not surprisingly, governments find it challenging to plan who and when should be allowed to move to a country. Since the UK government has "taken back" control over its immigration policy by leaving the EU, the government had to issue emergency "temporary visas" for lorry drivers and again change the rules to allow more care workers to come into the country.
The point is that the Government finds it nearly impossible to assume the role of planning and estimating the needs of the job market: it would do better to let the market work! Not surprisingly, over the years Tory governments have set targets for net migration that they had consistently missed every time, and eventually decided to scrap altogether!
The latest figures show a wide increase in net migration (partly the result of people escaping from Ukraine or Hong-Kong). And yet, Tory governments insist these levels of net migration are "too high". Too high why? The take-home message appears to be that the UK needs these -and probably even more- immigrants!
There may be a sensible argument among all the posturing here: it makes sense to ensure that citizens in a country have the opportunities to build careers in different sectors, including health care and medical or allied disciplines. But to insure this, a Government must provide funding and resources. What have the Tories done? They have consistently and recklessly cut funding, resulting in lost education opportunities, inequalities, and what increasingly appears like a lost long decade. And just wait for the austerity-in-all-but-name delivered in the Autumn Statement by Hunt!
So, the Tories' contradictions on this issue just show how opportunistic, ineffective, and hypocritical is Tories' belief in the free-market!
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