Given the queues at Heathrow, Gordon Brown used a curious label for his proposals to create UK jobs: “fast-tracking”. On the evidence of his speech on Monday to the Trades Union Congress, there is little reason to believe that his fast track will move people into jobs any faster than through Terminal One.

While Mr Brown’s spin doctors were playing the nationalist card ahead of his speech – “British jobs for British workers” – Mr Brown kept that card up his sleeve. He presumably realises that his gentle competition with the opposition leader David Cameron to sound tough on immigration has a price. Their policies may be content-free, but they create space for politicians with more unsavoury aims.