‘keir Starmer’s Attempt To Out-farage Reform On Migration Will Only End Badly’

What matters most to a politician – is it to win office and stay there, or what you actually do when you get there?

I found myself asking that question as I observed British Prime Minister Keir Starmer apparently abandon his previous views on immigration, in order to try to fend off the perceived political threat from Nigel Farage and Reform.

The man who five years ago argued that “poor housing, poor public services are not the fault of the migrants, they’re political failures” is now blaming migrants for pressure on housing and public services.

The man who in June last year decried Reform party campaigners for using racist language about migrants, is now himself using blatantly divisive rhetoric to announce a new clampdown on immigration to the UK, or risk the country turning into “an island of strangers”.

The man who upon taking office last summer promised to rebuild trust in British politics, now shows that he is not to be trusted either, as he wilfully misrepresents the previous Conservative Government’s policy on immigration as being a “one nation experiment in open borders.” There are many reasons to deplore the Conservative party’s approach to immigration, including its botched Rwanda scheme, and threats to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights, but the one thing it cannot be accused of is operating a deliberate “open border” policy.  

Related reading: ‘The Cold Electoral Cynicism Behind Keir Starmer’s Blue Labour Strategy’

The man who has repeatedly declared that “growth is his number one priority”, has now announced a series of restrictive immigration measures which will almost certainly harm Britain’s economy, by making it far less attractive and harder for talented students and skilled workers to study and live in the UK, and cutting off access to much needed overseas labour for critical sectors of the economy, such as care homes.

Starmer may claim that these policies are designed to support British workers, by stopping so many jobs going to foreigners, and instead training up British workers to do them, at a higher salary. But in cases such as the social care sector, businesses simply may not be able to survive without a ready source of overseas labour. Or, they will be forced to raise their prices so high that their services become unaffordable for many users.  

Moreover, the logic is upside down, since the area where Starmer is proposing to restrict immigration the most is in the low skilled sector, while he is proposing to keep open access to the UK for the highest skilled immigrants. The consequence is British workers being encouraged to take on lower paying jobs, while foreigners are still allowed in to take the highest paying jobs.

This also goes against the tradition of successful immigration in other countries, such as the US, where low skilled immigrants take the menial jobs which locals don’t want to do, and gradually work their way up into the middle class, integrating culturally in the process.   

Even as a naked political ploy to win votes on the right of the electorate, Starmer’s strategy will fail, as the measures announced today do nothing to tackle the real source of public concern about immigration, which is the number of immigrants arriving by boats across the British Channel. It will do nothing to win over unabashedly racist, anti-immigrant voters, who will still prefer the real thing, not Farage-lite.

His announcement has deservedly drawn a storm of withering criticism from both the left and the right.

As an example of the former, journalist Ian Dunt posted on Bluesky that “Labour has chosen nativism over growth.”

From the right, Adam Chapman, Community Editor at GB News, not someone I would usually quote, wrote “The Government’s white paper on immigration, which this charlatan has just announced, is farcical. First, it doesn’t set a cap on how many get to come here, so what’s the point? And no cap means Starmer gets off the hook when his plan doesn’t work. And two, it completely ignored the issue everybody is screaming at him to do something about –illegal migrants coming here in small boats.”

However, my main concern is about what Starmer’s new immigration policies betray about his political priorities. These seem to have morphed from his noble pledge of “public service” to the country, when he first became Prime Minister, to staying in office no matter what it takes.

What sickened me most about the Conservative party in its last few years in office was not its embrace of Brexit, per se, though I disagreed on a personal level with the wisdom of that policy. It was the way it went about it – wilfully misrepresenting the costs and trade-offs of the UK’s departure from the EU, and falsely implying that we could “have our cake and eat it.”

Serial dishonesty entered British politics, and paved the way for other examples of unethical behaviour, such as the granting of covid contracts to Conservative party cronies, the Partygate scandals, and efforts to shield successive MPs from misconduct enquiries. Like in the Watergate scandal which eventually brought the Nixon administration down, it wasn’t so much the crimes, as the cover-ups, which ultimately discredited the Conservatives in so many people’s eyes.

Trumpian Echos

Likewise, one of the more nauseating aspects of politics in America today is a similar degrading of government, whereby previously normal Republican politicians twist themselves inside out in order to justify Trumpian policies and actions, which they would have been outraged about, if committed by a Democrat President.

Thus, law and order Republicans find ways to excuse Trump’s pardoning of the January 6^th insurrectionists, his attacks on the judiciary, and defiance of court rulings. Thus, free-trade supporting Republicans hail Trump’s trade policies as reflecting his strategic brilliance, being all about promoting “fair trade”, and helping bring back manufacturing jobs to working Americans – when their actual consequence has been to destroy America’s reputation for sound economic management, disrupt businesses around the world, and hurt poorest Americans the most.

Thus, pious Republicans, who once lambasted Bill Clinton for letting political donors stay in the White House Lincoln Bedroom, and Hunter Biden for allegedly trading on his father’s name to court foreign businesses, apparently see nothing wrong in President Trump’s crypto ventures, which offer blatant opportunities for overseas donors to buy his favor, or his plan to accept a luxury Boeing plane from the Qatari Royal family – not on behalf of the US, but as a gift for his personal use while in office, and thereafter at his Presidential library. This is a naked violation of the emolument’s clause in the US constitution which states “No person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office or Title of any kind whatever from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Related reading: ‘Why We Must Call the National-Populist Far Right by Its Name’

In what is becoming a common Republican evasion, Speaker Mike Johnson wouldn’t comment because “he hadn’t seen the details.’

As one American political analyst told me recently, for many Republican members of Congress, their identity as a politician has become more important to them, than what they actually do when they get there. None of them want to risk their jobs by standing up to Trump, even when he transgresses notions they previously held dear.

Are we now witnessing the same process take hold in the British Labour party?

After all, this isn’t the first time Starmer has pandered to right-wing British voters. It’s evident in his over-hyping of the recent UK-US trade deal, as a historic achievement, when all it does in practice is limit the damage of Trump’s tariff policies, and could easily be unraveled by a Trump change of heart. It’s also evident in his desperate attempts to downplay the importance of restoring smoother trading relations with the EU, or the steps which are required to achieve this,  though the potential gains from this vastly outweigh the relatively small benefits of the US-UK and recently concluded UK-India deals.

The Labour party’s desire to hold onto power is also evident in its reluctance to embrace proportional representation, to allow for a more accurate representation of political views in parliament, because First Past the Post has traditionally favoured the two larger parties at the expense of smaller parties. This calculus may change as the Reform party threatens to cross the threshold necessary to win multiple parliamentary seats – but then, this would also be a sign of political calculation taking precedence over principle.

Starmer is not a fool. He knows we know this is a political game. The fact that he feels the need to play it is unutterably depressing.

I used to push back against the cynical notion that “all politicians are the same.” I don’t doubt that Starmer entered politics with good intentions. But, like others before him, it seems that he, too, is unable to resist the lure of staying on in power, for power’s sake.