Reform’s proposal to scrap indefinite leave to remain for foreigners is racist, according to Keir Starmer. ‘I do think it’s a racist policy,’ the Prime Minister told the BBC yesterday. ‘I do think it’s immoral – it needs to be called out for what it is.’ Removing people who were here legally, he said, was wrong. That’s a reasonable stance for a lawyer, but odd for a PM, whose role isn’t compliance with the law but deciding what new laws should say.
Starmer is wrong about Britain. We live not only at the least racist point in history, but in one of the least racist countries in the world
Supporters of Reform are not themselves racist, Starmer was quick to say – merely ‘frustrated’ by 14 years of ‘Tory failure’. But the Prime Minister could soon regret his remarks.
Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump supporters a ‘basket of deplorables’ during her 2016 election campaign – an election she went on to lose. A close ally of David Cameron described Tory activists as ‘mad, swivel-eyed loons’ in 2013, opening a chasm between the then prime minister and his party’s grassroots. Starmer has been more careful with his language, but his thinking appears to be the same. By calling Reform’s plan ‘racist’ and brushing off voters’ concerns as mere frustration, he’s making his own statement about the British people being deplorable, swivel-eyed loons.
With his suggestion, Starmer is wrong about Britain. We live not only at the least racist point in history, but in one of the least racist countries in the world. Those points are too valuable to be cheapened by neglect. Our country can be unfair, cruel, fretted with ignorance and misery – but it is kinder, fairer, and more tolerant than ever before. Racism deserves to be taken seriously, which means taking our progress seriously.
France is more racist than Britain. Italy is too, as are Germany and Spain. I have no knowledge of Ireland beyond its current ghoulish anti-Semitism. Scandinavia appears worse than we are, although I judge from a distance. Russia is horrifically racist, and China and Japan not much better. I have worked in several African countries and each has been a world worse than ours when it comes to judging people by their skin or their ethnicity.
North American racism makes ours look tame, and while I have no direct experience of Central and South America, I see no reason to suspect either of being an oasis of open mindedness.
About the Middle East it is better not to think. But we don’t need to rely on impressions alone. The World Values Survey asks people if they would object to having a neighbour of a different race. In Britain, the number consistently falls below 3 per cent. Figures are often two or three times higher in Western Europe, higher still across Eastern Europe and Asia. A comprehensive 2023 study by King’s College London confirmed this, ranking Britain as one of the most tolerant societies in Europe on a key metric of racial acceptance. From North America to the Far East, few nations demonstrate such a high level of stated public tolerance. Britain has become a better place because brave people have fought to make it so and because kindnesses have accumulated. It is distasteful, in the extreme, to minimise such achievements.
We’re not just amongst the least racist nations, we’re also not stupid – and any politician who presumes voters are is on the road to either authoritarianism or failure. When I was born, 6 per cent of those in Britain had been born elsewhere. The figure was 4 per cent when my parents were born. When their parents came into the world, it was 2 per cent. Today, it is 17 per cent and rising. Worrying about this figure is not stupid. Who are the people who are coming to our country? What are their values? What will they do to our culture, our economy? These are not contemptible concerns. Writing them off as racist or stupid is insulting. Proposing that the reasonable response is the introduction of mandatory ID cards for all is unhinged.
I don’t deny that scrapping indefinite leave to remain would cause profound harm to many people, including a large number of residents who enrich our country. The real question is whether the policy will do more good than harm – and that depends on whether its consequences are worked through intelligently and humanely. In our own interests, we would want to maximise the immigration that helps our country. In the interests of decency, we would wish to reduce the number of lives any change destroyed.
Our progress has been real and it remains fragile. We did not always have an innate sense that signs reading ‘no Irish, no blacks’ were so unthinkably foul as to be both criminal and un-British. There was a lot of hard graft to make progress, and conservatism did not lead the way. But when the progressive left ignores people’s reasonable concerns – or, worse, dismisses them as racist or stupid – they breathe life into the far right they so eagerly hallucinate.
There are serious issues to discuss here, but they merit a serious response. When Starmer insists on treating immigration anxiety as racism, he mistakes Britain. People are not deplorables, nor loons, nor fools. They are citizens of one of the most tolerant nations on earth, and they want their leaders to take them seriously. Politicians who misjudge them not only insult their electorate; they obscure one of Britain’s quietest but greatest achievements – that here, more than in most places, racism has steadily lost.
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