Swiss back referendum

Some more good news from Europe. The Swiss have voted in favour of a proposal to apply limits to immigration.

This has brought criticism from government and business leaders in other European countries. Interestingly, the line of criticism has mostly been "you can't expect to trade with other countries in goods and capital if you don't have a free movement of labour".

That's not true - there's no reason why, for instance, Australia can't supply iron ore to Japan whilst Japan sells us cars, without a mass transfer of population between the two countries. You don't have to have open borders in order to trade in goods.

What the criticism of Switzerland shows is the mindset of those in charge of most European countries. They are committed to a regulation of society by markets and bureaucracies. They are pressing a market logic by which people become interchangeable units of labour rather than persons with deeply felt communal identities to uphold.

Anyway, congratulations to the Swiss People's Party for having taken the initiative to organise a referendum on the issue.