The long run-up to the publication of the government’s immigration white paper was one thing, with plenty of predictable talk about greater rigour and crackdowns. But Sir Keir Starmer’s presentation for the benefit of the public and the media on Monday morning took the prepared tough line to a whole other level.
Here was a Labour prime minister and a former human rights lawyer of some distinction, speaking in terms that would not be out of place at a Reform UK rally – the closest political entity that the UK has to a far-right party on the European model.
As his leitmotif, he co-opted the Brexiteer slogan “take back control”, which he recast as a Labour “value”. He referred to a “one-nation experiment in open borders, conducted on a country that voted for control”, and responded: “Well, no more.”
Without rules, he said, there is a chance this country could become “an island of strangers”. There are “forces”, he said, “that are slowly pulling our country apart”. And is it “fair” to “young people weighing up their future … to see colleges in their community almost entirely dedicated to one-year courses for overseas students?”
Is any of this the language of unity and cohesion? Is it not more the language of fear?
Time was when a Conservative politician who spoke in similar terms, whether in or out of power, would have been blasted out of court by any Labour MP you might care to name. Now, it is the language of the head of our elected Labour government.
What happened? Well, two things: first, the rise of Reform – in response, at least in part, to public concern about the scale of immigration; and second, the huge losses suffered not just by the Conservatives, but by Labour, in this month’s local elections – and Labour’s defeat, albeit by only six votes, in one of its hitherto safest parliamentary seats in the country.
The immigration white paper, the timing of its publication, and the introduction offered by the prime minister would seem to be by way of the Labour government’s answer.
But it is an answer that cries out for a challenge or two.
First, will it work, in the sense of seizing back the immigration advantage from Reform? The answer is no. Labour won a landslide majority – albeit in a not ideally representative system – on a manifesto that was recognisably of the centre left. Since then, from the means-testing of the fuel allowance to the review of invalidity benefits, it has seemed to many to have careened away from what voters could reasonably expect from a Labour government. Something similar now applies with its new language on migration.
Nor will it work to steal another party’s clothes. They won’t fit – or, if they do, then that means Labour is no longer the party it was. Old Labour, New Labour, Starmer Labour – the expectation, and maybe hope, was surely of a blend of compassion and competence applied to the vexed question of immigration. Voters demanding the toughest of tough lines on immigration won’t settle for the pretender, if they think they have the option of the real thing in Nigel Farage and Reform.
But it is not only that such an approach will not work to defeat Reform. The second challenge must be that this tough, negative approach is quite simply the wrong way for a Labour government to go.
Maybe there will turn out to be a mismatch between language and substance, if and when the policies set out in the white paper are acted on. But tone counts, if not for all, then for a lot – and the campaigning dictum of one-time US first lady Michelle Obama has much to recommend it. “When they go low,” she said, “We go high.”
By all means enforce the rules, whether on migration or welfare or anything else, but let them be rules made and applied with compassion and competence, and respect for the individual people concerned. This is where the prime minister should be leading Labour on immigration, not stooping to the depths of Reform. If he cannot, or chooses not to do this, the question asks itself: what is a Labour government for?
