Now Ed Balls admits Labour got it wrong on Eastern European immigration

Former Schools Secretary and now Labour leadership contender, Ed Balls, has written in today's Observer about the issue of immigration.

While continuing to lazily smear Conservative allies in Europe, Balls now says that Labour were wrong not to impose transitional controls on immigration from Eastern Europe in the mid-Noughties:

"There have been real economic gains from the arrival of young, hard-working migrants from eastern Europe over the past six years. But there has also been a direct impact on the wages, terms and conditions of too many people – in communities ill-prepared to deal with the reality of globalisation, including the one I represent. The result was, as many of us found in the election, our arguments on immigration were not good enough... In retrospect, Britain should not have rejected transitional controls on migration from the first wave of new EU member states in 2004, which we were legally entitled to impose."

Jonathan Isaby