Who will pick the turnips?

by Chris Bertram on February 20, 2020

I have a [new piece up at the LRB blog on the UK’s post-Brexit immigration plans](https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2020/february/who-will-pick-the-turnips). I argue that at the core of the plans is an intention to treat EU migrants and others as a vulnerable and exploitable workforce and that the logic of denying a long-term working visa route to the low paid leads to three possibilities: either the businesses that rely upon them will go bust, technology will substitute for labour, or the UK will have to start denying education to young Britons so that they become willing to be the underpaid workforce that picks turnips and cleans the elderly in social care.