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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Labour Party immigration scandal

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was - Delete - There is a clear consensus that the article is a synthesis of reports that create an article that is not encyclopedic - Peripitus (Talk) 03:00, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Labour Party immigration scandal

Labour Party immigration scandal (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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The subject of this article does not exist – there is no such thing known as “Labour Party immigration scandal”. For a couple of days there were a couple of media reports picking up on a purported admission by a former no10 speechwriter about one small aspect of UK immigration policy. Briefly the topic fed into the usual political and media knockabout, which two days later moved on to something else, as usual. WP:NOT#NEWS, and WP:NOTABILITY (quote –“ it takes more than just a short burst of news reports about a single event or topic to constitute sufficient evidence of notability”) surely apply here. We do not need or deserve individual articles detailing every criticism of some aspect of every government’s policy or of a party’s policy platform. Nor do we need a running commentary on the cut and thrust of daily politics in every country.

The page exists, it would seem, simply to provide a platform for tabloid outrage and to push the views of editors who believe that the Labour government’s immigration policy is part of some nefarious conspiracy of some sort, contrary to WP:SOAP and WP:NPOV. Content has also been added to the page above and beyond anything to do with the original alleged “scandal”, eg the two sections here, presumably in a bid to push that view yet further. Those who questioned whether this brief minor spat needs a whole page to itself, as opposed to a brief passing mention in a wider encylopedic entry about immigration into the UK (such a page already exists), were told that the article is needed because “all the naive liberal-leftists have a hard time swallowing how disgracefully they have been violated and used for political gains by a corrupt political elite”, here, and that they were engaged in a “left wing attempt at a cover up job” and that this is “not the Soviet Union”, here. Yes, there are sources for most of the material, but that does not of itself confer notability, and of course they mostly reflect a couple of days of news reporting, primarily in tabloids such as the Daily Mail and Daily Express. Nickhh (talk) 16:59, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Yes, it is indeed all a plot, and my Labour party membership number is 435677AF. That aside, there seems to be some confusion here, as I highlighted in the deletion rationale - is the "scandal" Neather's comments and the brief fuss they caused, or is the "scandal" the wider issue of Labour's supposedly bad immigration policy, which means we just chuck in every day's criticism of it in the media from now on and forever? And do we do the same for every policy of every UK government, Conservative and Labour, since time immemorial? Sorry, but this is not a scandal, and it is not notable, regardless of media coverage and the fact that WP readers need to know THE TRUTH.--Nickhh (talk) 17:24, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Two weeks coverage in the mainstream media so far, still continuing today is "brief" coverage? No, not really. You show your colours when you say "regardless of media coverage". What you are saying by this, is you don't care that the media is covering it, you don't care if the Government have issued a public apology or the Shadow Cabinet has initated an official inquiry. You just don't like it and wan't it covered-up ASAP. WP:Verifiable, WP:Reliable and WP:Notable—all things which the article falls into. You personally don't get to decide whether something is notable, we can't use your WP:Opinion as a reference. The mainstream media, the politicians, the Shadow Cabinet and the Home Secretary are what we use. - Yorkshirian (talk) 17:37, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Point of fact: The government have not issued an "apology" for a "scandal", despite what you have said above, and despite what you are trying to make the page in question say. Nor am I aware of what powers the shadow cabinet in the UK has to initiate an "official inquiry". The opposition and media have criticised an aspect of government policy, and the Home Secretary has said they have made mistakes in an area of policy. That's called politics. And I am quite right about notability and media coverage - see the quote from WP:NOTABILITY I pointed to in the nomination, which you seem to be happily ignoring, as you are the question about what this "scandal" actually involves; although you appear to be arguing, from what I can tell, that it is indeed pretty much anything you fancy to do with the current government's immigration policy. --Nickhh (talk) 18:05, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. A load of newspapers kicking off about the government's immigration policy (as they do frequently) does not make a good topic for an encylopedia. Other than the newpapers involved, I don't see any other sources establishing this as a scandal. Cordless Larry (talk) 18:01, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep : The article suffers NPOV and possibly synthesis issues for sure, and the political POV-pushing/talk page behaviour by article authors is despicable; but coverage is wide verifiable, reliable (BBC, Guardian etc.) and therefore notable. The SOAP and NPOV issues brought on by nominator -which I agree exist and are to be dealt with- can be dealt by editing, not deletion, per WP:ATD policy. AfD is not a way to solve a NPOV battle. Bringing the article to WP:NPOVN is a better option. A merge could also be, but proposing a merge does not need AfD. --Cyclopiatalk 18:04, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but there is no "scandal", the thing that is the purported topic of this article does not exist. It's more than just NPOV. --Nickhh (talk) 18:07, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If the saying "scandal" is POV (and I agree it can be), rename the article "controversy" or whatever suits better. If there are irrelevant sections in the article, trim them. If the remaining content can be merged in the general article about immigration, so be it. But this doesn't mean that this information has not to be covered. There has been indeed a surge of articles on leaked stuff about Labour immigration policy. I agree it is not a full "scandal", but more of a controversy that can be merged in a parent article. Yet it doesn't mean we have to delete this article: quite the contrary, what has to be done is to discuss the issues on the talk page / relevant noticeboards and eventually merge it (if necessary). --Cyclopiatalk 18:24, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: subject one of the most notable political topics in the UK. Only positions put forward in article are referenced reports from mainstream media and quotes by politicians; thus clearly not "SOAP". The mainstream media are the only sources used throughout, which passes WP:Verifiability with flying colours. - Yorkshirian (talk)
Comment: I agree, SOAP is not applicable here, and that it's mostly mainstream sources. But the newspapers have complained about immigration for as long as I can remember - how do you decide what stories should be in this article? --h2g2bob (talk) 20:11, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Reply: WP:SOAP calls for objective reporting from a neutral point of view. That's hardly the case with opinion pieces from the Daily Mail entitled, for example, "The slow-motion New Labour putsch that swept our nation away", "The outrageous truth slips out: Labour cynically plotted to transform the entire make-up of Britain without telling us", and from the same author in the Spectator, "Trying to stuff the cat back into the bag". Further, I wouldn't call "emigrate.co.uk", the "Daily Star" or 24dash.com mainstream media. Lamberhurst (talk) 08:38, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I initially suggested this page should be merged to "immigration to the United Kingdom since 1922", but I now believe it should just be deleted. It's a coatrack for putting any negative immigration news story. The "related stories" don't seem to be related unless the article is about the entire immigration system in the 1990s and 2000s. In that case it would be part of "immigration to the United Kingdom since 1922". With it's current title, it's just a content fork of the main article. --h2g2bob (talk) 20:06, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong delete. The article is a pure POV synthesis of newspaper stories which amounts to a journalistic exercise rather than an encyclopaedic one. The few definite facts within it drown in a sea of mostly very predictable opinion pieces from people commenting on things in general. The very introduction asserts that Andrew Neather had claimed that the Government "set about a deliberate policy of encouraging mass third world immigration, to socially engineer a multicultural society". Very significantly, none of the five references which follow actually link to what Andrew Neather wrote; indeed at no point is his actual article used as a reference (for the record, it's "Don't listen to the whingers - London needs immigrants", Evening Standard, 23 October 2009, p. 14). This may be because Andrew Neather did not use the terms "third world" or "social engineering"; they were terms inserted into the debate by those who reacted to his article. (Be it remembered also that the thrust of his article was to contend that immigration was a good thing that had benefited London.)

    When Neather read some of the comments about his original article, he wrote a second in which he complained that his meaning had been distorted and that "there was no plot" to make Britain multicultural; the main goal of migration policy was to solve skills shortages. This second article is not referred to at all. ("How I became the story and why the Right is wrong", Evening Standard, 26 October 2009, p. 15.)

    It may be contended that, if these POV problems are ironed out and a firm NPOV razor applied to the article, and it is moved to a neutral title (it is not by any reasonable terms a 'scandal'), that it might become acceptable. Unfortunately I do not think so. Migration policy is a continuous stream rather than a series of atomised policies. The events described in this article can fit better if integrated in the text of Immigration to the United Kingdom since 1922 but they need to be rewritten from scratch rather than starting with anything in this article. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:27, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. The BBC is not an "official Government source". It is a public corporation, editorially independent of Government, and has a stated commitment to impartiality.[2]--Pondle (talk) 20:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Precisely. And I do wish people would stop talking about "censorship" and "left-wing" politics, as if this has anything to do with it, quite apart from being a rather tedious and unwarranted breach of WP:AGF. As has been noted several times, if there's any political agenda at work here, it's rather transparently coming from the other side, as it were. This is, quite simply, a non-notable non-scandal, according to any serious and reliable source. I for one would just as forcefully be supporting deletion of any page that had been cobbled together in a similar fashion under the heading "Conservative Lisbon Treaty U-turn". --Nickhh (talk) 22:02, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But why non-notable? Reciprocal tossing of political bias accusations aside, it seems that both issues you talk about are legitimate and quite notable events in the current evolution of contemporary UK and if we can have detailed coverage of them, why not having it? --Cyclopiatalk 12:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Nickhh; yet convinently most of those who want to hide this are pro-socialist and/or Labour supporters. Which is a clear conflict of interest and political motivation. When the history books are written on this topic, if activists manage to hide this article, it will have to say that Wikipedia was censored. The Times, The Telegraph, Spectator, The Mail, BBC, Guardian, Daily Express, Daily Star, The Sun are reliable mainstream sources, used throughout the article (over 30 references). Not one "unreliable source" can be found—the only problem you have is the media isn't matching your views in this case. Absolutely no original research or synth is contained. Politically the centre (Tory), the centre-left (Lib Dems) and even some in the Labour Party such as Frank Field have been in uproar over this and that is why there is an official inquiry and an apology by the Home Secretary, so you can't claim its some sort of ultra-hardliner conspiracy against Labour. - Yorkshirian (talk) 19:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yorkshirian, it would help your cause avoiding to appeal to conspiracy theories about censorship. Please assume good faith. --Cyclopiatalk 20:02, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Good point. I was just trying to express what I see from this position. It seems ridiculous to me that some can claim that the sources aren't "reliable" enough when everyone in the mainstream media from The Times to The Guardian to The Telegraph are used in the article. - Yorkshirian (talk) 20:08, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No one has claimed that most of the sources used are not, in a general sense, reliable sources. The problems with this article go beyond that, and have been explained at length by a succession of editors (for example - NOTNEWS? NOTABILITY? The fact that Google searches reveal nothing known by this name?) You haven't actually addressed any of those points, and instead insist on repeating bizarre vague claims about censorship and political bias, while also inventing non-existent "official inquiries" and claiming that there has been an apology for the "scandal" from the home secretary. --Nickhh (talk) 22:30, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.