British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has 10 compelling reasons to take voter anxiety about immigration deadly seriously: Weekend opinion polls show Reform UK, the insurgent anti-migration party, enjoys an unprecedented 10-point lead over his Labour Party — and that is 10 months after Starmer’s landslide election victory.
Immigration has become the No. 1 issue in the polls. After Reform’s recent breakthrough in local elections and its capture of one of Labour’s safest parliamentary seats, its leader, Nigel Farage, boasts that he has usurped the Conservatives’ place as the main opposition and presumptuously talks of forming the next government. The prime minister gets little credit — so far at least — for his trade deals with the US and India. Fleet diplomatic footwork dealing with Ukraine and managing his relationship with US President Donald Trump do not cut much ice either. However, all politics is local — as even former British prime minister Winston Churchill discovered after winning World War II, but losing the 1945 general election on domestic reform.
So, Starmer on Monday launched a major policy paper outlining a raft of new measures to cut immigration numbers. Can the former human rights lawyer, who has been a strong supporter of European legislation extending refugee rights, convince public opinion that his government really means business when it comes to “taking back control” of immigration and asylum? British voters, the only jury that now counts for Starmer, would be skeptical. They have heard it all before when it comes to pledges to make the borders less porous. For two decades, politicians of all stripes have pledged to reduce net migration numbers below 100,000 (copyright then-British prime minister David Cameron in 2010) and “stop the boats” of illegal migrants and asylum seekers crossing the English Channel from France (then-prime minister Rishi Sunak last year). Repeatedly, their efforts have been half-hearted, ineffective or muddled — and often all three, even though promises to curb the influx played a large part in the pledges that got them elected in the first place.
Illustration: Mountain People
While there is still popular support for attracting talent and skilled labor from overseas that places no burden on public finances, the failures of British politicians to get to grips with voter anxiety about foreign workers have had momentous repercussions. The 2016 referendum to leave the EU was heavily influenced by Cameron’s broken promises on migration. Not long before the vote, then-German chancellor Angela Merkel made it clear that a temporary brake on Europeans entering the UK was not even up for discussion as part of a renegotiation package on membership. Leave campaigners gleefully promised to bring back control of UK borders and much else.
At a deeper level, repeated broken promises on migration have also helped undermine faith in the democratic process — across the West as well as in the UK. For many liberally inclined affluent folks, rising numbers of incomers and a blind eye turned to abuses of asylum systems were not much to fuss about. That has given succor to populist parties prepared to bend and break the rules of the old political game to their advantage. Yet it is not just populist nationalists who are to blame; increasing levels of public discomfort have been evident for years, allowing Trump, Farage and their European equivalents to exploit those concerns.
If Starmer is to avoid the fate of his hapless Labour and Conservative predecessors, from Gordon Brown to Rishi Sunak, he must confront the received Treasury and Home Office wisdom that migration is always and everywhere financially beneficial for expanding the economy. While that is mathematically true — if we pack in another 10 million migrants into the UK, GDP would inevitably grow — what about GDP per head? Putting the raw numbers aside, does it make the UK a happier and more cohesive country? Starmer seems to understand this political nuance, saying on Monday that “we risk becoming an island of strangers” and pointing out that growth had stagnated over the past few years while net migration figures exploded, reaching almost 1 million in a single year under former British prime minister Boris Johnson.
Recent European migration into the UK has been largely beneficial, although there is evidence that wages at the lower end of the labor market have been depressed by foreign competition. However, since Brexit, the average age of migrants has increased, they are more likely to bring in dependents, less likely to return home to their countries of origin in Africa and the Indian subcontinent, and might cost the British taxpayer more than they contribute once pensions, social security and housing are factored in.
While the plans announced by Starmer this week fail to set any hard targets for reducing net migration, they belatedly recognize that Britain must redouble efforts to train its unskilled domestic workforce to plug some of the vacancies that employers have become accustomed to filling with foreign workers, with an emphasis on care-home workers. Other measures include increasing the English-speaking requirements for migrants and ending automatic settlement and citizenship rights after five years.
“We will create a migration system that is controlled, selective and fair,” Starmer said.
The failure of successive governments to control UK borders against illegal migration and manage an efficient labor market have become symbols of “broken Britain” — and turned the voters against the political class. Now Starmer needs to own the change — not just mouth the slogans.
Martin Ivens is the editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Previously, he was editor of the Sunday Times and its chief political commentator. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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