Sir Keir Starmer, remarkably, has launched an immigration crackdown. Britain risks becoming an ‘island of strangers’ after the Tory ‘one-nation experiment in open borders’, he said on Monday. A Home Office white paper has introduced several measures which will supposedly bring the sky-high numbers down.
Most interestingly, the government will extend the required qualification period for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) – which grants migrants access to the welfare state and the ability to bring dependents – from five years residency in the UK to ten. On Wednesday it confirmed that this would apply retroactively. Which means that should this go through – there will be a public consultation – it can be expected to prevent the post-2021 migration surge known as the ‘Boriswave’ from automatically being granted permanent settlement in the next few years.
With the prime minister seemingly inaugurating a paradigm shift on immigration, the only question now is where the debate will be pushed to next
This is a hugely welcome and sensible move: if the Boriswave was a mistake, as it is widely agreed to be, there is no reason we should let it become permanent.
Still, such far-sighted restrictionism is hardly the typical brainchild of a Labour Spad or civil service wonk wedded to Whitehall immigration orthodoxy. So many will be wondering: how and when did this come to be the policy of this government of robotic lefties?
The answer reflects the quickened tempo of today’s political-media environment in the age of social media – and the increased organisation of the British right. On X, numerous pseudonymous accounts had been posting about the Boriswave and the need to extend ILR throughout 2024. In late November, when the ONS net migration figures for 2023 were revised to almost one million – 170,000 more than previously thought – online alarm about what this would mean reached fever pitch. Before long the calls to limit ILR had jumped the barrier to the legacy media. Guy Dampier of the Prosperity Institute was warning in the Telegraph that ‘time is running out’ to prevent an ‘immigration disaster’. Sam Bidwell, senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, soon followed this up with a policy blog, ‘Britain’s ILR Emergency’.
Enter Kemi Badenoch, who had received a savaging from Keir Starmer on immigration at PMQs soon after the figures came out, and the following week attempted to go on the attack but failed dismally. I then wrote here that if Badenoch wanted to improve her immigration game, she might consider campaigning on ILR. Around that time, rightly concerned about this greatest of Badenoch’s vulnerabilities, CCHQ is understood to have taken soundings on the idea of campaigning on reforming ILR. By February, it was Conservative party policy, a key plank of Badenoch’s first major policy announcement as leader.
Somewhat cruelly, Kemi Badenoch is unlikely ever to get much credit for the Tories taking the lead on this, even if she probably should. After all, it’s doubtful that Labour would have come to this idea on its own without the fear that the Tories might use it to repair their reputation on immigration, while presenting Labour as unserious. Now, however, Starmer will likely fold this into his narrative of Labour cleaning up the Tories’ migration ‘mess’.
Even so, Labour did have to be pushed to get there. Asked about the ILR extension on Monday by the Conservatives’ Nick Timothy, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper refused to say that it would apply retroactively i.e. to the Boriswave. Only on Wednesday did a government source tell the BBC that Cooper has ‘for some time been concerned’ about the coming ‘significant increase in settlement and citizenship applications’ owing to the recent migration surge.
What does this say about our politics today? On the one hand, of course, Labour’s unlikely migration-sceptic turn, even if purely cynical, shows it views public anger about immigration as a major threat. Reform’s recent triumph in the local council elections has of course been a sharp reminder of the deep trouble they’re in.
It takes a crisis to produce a change, Milton Friedman once said, and that when one occurs, ‘the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around’. The fact that ILR reform is what Labour has turned to reflects the persistence and influence of a new generation of British conservatives.
With the prime minister seemingly inaugurating a paradigm shift on immigration, the only question now is where the debate will be pushed to next. Perhaps before long the government may close the bizarre loophole by which some 1.8 billion Commonwealth citizens are presently eligible to vote in British elections; maybe it will even look at the extraordinary numbers of foreign-born people in London’s social housing. In the present political climate, who would bet against either? Today, what was once an X post is UK government policy. Tomorrow, anything seems possible.
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