Keir Starmer wants you to know that he cares about immigration. Last week he named border security – alongside economic growth – as his top priority when abroad. Yesterday he signalled that he favours Italian-style migration deals with third countries to reduce Channel crossings.
It’s tempting to view this renewed activity as a response to the Democrats’ electoral cataclysm. Illegal immigration across the US southern border – which reached a record high under Joe Biden – was one of the issues that doomed Kamala Harris.
But put this point to Labour figures and they note – with some justification – that they moved into this political space long ago. Indeed, Starmer’s former director of strategy Deborah Mattinson has complained that the Democrats failed to heed her advice on attracting swing voters, spending “a lot of time talking to themselves”.
Labour, by contrast, has gone beyond traditional progressive framing on immigration – which, aides note, has tended to treat border control as regrettable at best and racist at worst. In an underexplored section of his party conference speech, Starmer declared that “taking back control is a Labour argument”, arguing that the Tories failed on immigration precisely because they are “the party of the uncontrolled market”.
The Prime Minister has learned from David Cameron’s humiliation by refusing to set a formal target for net migration (the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that this will, in any case, fall from 685,000 to 315,000 by 2028). Instead his primary focus is illegal immigration. There is clear political logic to this – 83 per cent of voters are concerned about the latter, according to polling by More in Common, compared to just 43 per cent who are troubled by legal migration levels (voters are both more conservative and more liberal on this subject than often assumed).
As the Democrats learned to their cost, illegal migration – and the loss of control it exemplifies – fuels discontent among voters – not least migrants themselves. Donald Trump did not attract greater support from Latino voters in spite of his stance on immigration but because of it.
By declaring that it is his “personal mission” to “smash the people-smuggling gangs”, Starmer has heightened the political stakes. The abolished Rwanda scheme, Labour likes to point out, cost £700m but never led to a single deportation. Yvette Cooper, by contrast, has presided over the three biggest return flights in the UK’s history, with nearly 2,600 forced deportations (an increase of 19 per cent compared to the same period in 2023). Small boat crossings from July to September were lower than over the previous six months but have risen significantly over the last month (something Home Office sources attribute to unusually favourable weather).
In recent history, as the BBC’s excellent new documentary reminds us, Labour has had a fraught relationship with immigration: the calamitous underestimate of eastern European migration, “British jobs for British workers”, Mrs Duffy and “bigotgate”. Starmer’s challenge is to defy this unhappy past – in an even tougher political climate.
[See also: Labour will not win a war on the countryside]
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