When it comes to immigration, Keir Starmer has been ‘on a journey’. As a young barrister, he authored a review in which he argued that all immigration law was ‘racist’. As a new Labour backbencher, he called legislation to make renting to illegal immigrants a criminal offence ‘everyday racism’. While running for his party’s leadership, he demanded an ‘immigration system based on compassion and dignity’, pledged to ‘defend free movement’ and backed a letter objecting to the deportation of 50 Jamaican criminals, including burglars and rapists.
The white paper explicitly rejects the reigning Whitehall orthodoxy that immigration brings growth
Unveiling the government’s immigration white paper this week, however, Starmer announced that not only is ‘the idea that immigration should be controlled’ a ‘core value’ of the Labour party, but that it’s also something he’s long believed in. If Britain doesn’t reduce immigration, he said, we’re on track to become an ‘island of strangers’ – language robust enough for one former Labour MP to compare him to Enoch Powell.
The invocation of Powell’s name has long been used to police the borders of the immigration debate. But 57 years on from his inflammatory intervention, it is high time to consider migration as coolly and rationally as other public policy questions without attributing wicked prejudice to those who express concern.
Labour’s white paper has been in the works for a while. But its launch came less than a fortnight after Reform UK’s triumph at the local elections and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election – Labour’s 16th safest seat. Starmer’s proposals to (among other things) restrict settlement rights for some new migrants, pause the recruitment of overseas care workers and improve English tests for would-be citizens must be seen in the light of Reform’s advance.
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