Kemi Badenoch has finally announced a policy. Ahead of the Labour government’s Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill being debated in Parliament next week, the Tory leader has unveiled her party’s latest offering on immigration. The Conservatives say immigrants should only be allowed to apply for British citizenship after 15 years of being in the UK as opposed to the current six. Furthermore, immigrants who have criminal records or who have claimed benefits or social housing should not be granted leave to remain, which sets them on a path to citizenship. Announcing the policy, Badenoch said:
‘The Conservative party is under new leadership. We’re going to tell the hard truths about immigration. The pace of immigration has been too quick and the numbers coming too high for meaningful integration. We need to slow down the track for citizenship. A UK passport should be a privilege not an automatic right.’
The official line is that the Tories want the government to adopt the changes, backdated to 2021, by amending their Immigration Bill next week. Of course the chances of Keir Starmer doing this, given his sizeable majority, are close to zero. Instead, the significance of this announcement is that Badenoch is finally putting some meat on the bones of what her ‘new leadership’ of the Tory party means in practice. It comes after Badenoch has repeatedly said she is in no rush to announce policy despite some in her own party urging her to do more. Tory sources argue that this is consistent with everything she has said previously as Badenoch never said no policies, just that a whole manifesto would have to wait. As for the thinking behind the new policy, the path to this was laid out in the immigration speech she made last year, soon after becoming leader. Notably, the announcement has been welcomed by Tory MPs.
Yet the timing is interesting. It comes as Reform UK regularly polls ahead of the Conservatives – with Nigel Farage’s party leading on the issue of immigration. Labour MPs also see this as a problem with a group of around 40 Labour MPs urging Keir Starmer to have a stronger message on immigration to head off the electoral threat of Reform. For Labour, the issue is that they don’t just need a message – as the government they need tangible results.
Badenoch has a different challenge when it comes to immigration. The Tories have a credibility problem in this area after immigration surged during their time in government. The shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel’s interview last week with the Sun’s Harry Cole was evidence of this. Patel defended the last Tory government’s track record only to have her colleagues disown her comments. It means in announcing this policy, Badenoch will also need an answer as to why the Tories didn’t do it when they had the chance.
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