Don't Vote Labour Again (Part 17)
On Starmer's phony immigration pivot
It was revealed on November 28th that a net 900,000 immigrants had come into the country in the year ending June 2023, rather than the 740,000 previously reported. That was up 44% on the same period in 2022 (510,000), and 20% up on 2024 (728,000). It was a cataclysmic number, at a time when our country was rending at the seams, and barely functional. It has meant we have continued to be in that state.
That a Conservative government oversaw this is truly disgraceful, although not exactly a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. The centre-right is supposed to at least grasp the unpopularity of mass immigration, even if it keeps it going, and is supposed to maintain sensible numbers. In recent years that perception has become more and more tested, until it now resembles a naïve fiction.
We do not yet know how many immigrants have come under Labour (since July 2024) or will arrive by June 2025. One might assume it will be less than the 906,000, given that it has already come down by 20% (data may change) under the Tories, but it remains to be seen. There is another factor which *might* make the numbers lower. A slow-learning Labour has begun to perceive immigration's unpopularity, and is making noises in that direction, clobbering the Tories on what is supposed to be their home turf.
After the announcement of the revised figure, there was a distinct pivot from Labour that raised a few eyebrows. On November 28th, Starmer did a quite extraordinary speech - not in terms of quality, but in terms of some of its language. It was noteworthy because out of his mouth came hints of talking points the dissident right have been making for years. Just a few months ago, you might have been locked up for saying them (especially if you said them while throwing a brick). But here they were from Starmer himself:
The previous government were running an open borders experiment... Time and again – the Conservative Party promised they would get those numbers down. Time and again – they failed. And now the chorus of excuses has begun. We heard that from the Leader of the Opposition yesterday. But what we didn’t hear - what the British people are owed - is an explanation. Because a failure on this scale isn’t just bad luck - it isn’t a global trend or taking your eye off the ball.
No – this a different order of failure. This happened by design, not accident. Policies were reformed deliberately to liberalise immigration. Brexit was used for that purpose, to turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders.
Global Britain – remember that slogan? That is what they meant. A policy with no support and which they then pretended wasn’t happening.
There had been mumblings from Labour about reducing immigration before, where party figures floated the idea in the period leading up to the election. In November 2023 Darren Jones said we should have a “normal level”, which was “a couple of hundred thousand” rather than the 700,000 (really 900,000) that had just been announced. Two-hundred thousand is still ridiculous, of course, but for Labour it is progress. Starmer had also criticised the NHS for relying on migrant workers, and broadly suggested we need to (I'm paraphrasing) train up British people to do British jobs. However, the rhetoric of this November 28th speech was a real gear change.
There was much excitement and also anger about the speech from the online right. Some considered it a liberty, and that he was being a flip-flopping fraud as usual. I fall more into that camp. Others believed it was a win for them, showing that the Overton window was shifting. Others felt vindicated in their assertion that 'based Starmer' was going to be Blair 2.0, would be an improvement on the Tories, and would consign the traitorous Conservative Party to the dustbin of history. For this reason such figures even voted for the creep, and until now they have looked rather daft for having done so.
Should the dissident right really be excited about the language? Let's look at it. The key phrases are "this happened by design", "experiment in open borders" (used twice) and "a policy with no support". The latter ties in to the 'we were never asked' concept, first popularised by Enoch Powell. When the dissident right, or indeed some on the dissident left, use these phrases, they know exactly what they mean. They likely refer to the notion of 'the Great Replacement' - a supposed agenda to subvert the ethnically indigenous (white) populations of the West through the import of Africans and Asians. The argument is that these new populations will assert their own cultures, leading to multiculturalism, and a weakening of the host culture's hegemony. There will also be social mixing and inter-ethnic relationships and procreation. This is intended, so the narrative goes, to prevent nationalism and for progressives to atone for the sins of the past, namely colonialism and slavery.
If people don't go this far, they still believe the migration is a result of irresponsible hyper-liberalism whereby corporations, allied to the big political parties, can procure cheap labour from around the world. That is still a 'deliberate design', but not one motivated by ethnic replacement. One could of course believe that both things are true, that different actors have different agendas, and the cumulative effect is the still the destruction of our nation.
Yes, Starmer uses these phrases, but not in a way that commits himself to any right wing position or policy. These are what are often called 'dog whistles', I believe. He is touching on concepts in order to appeal to a certain audience while being able to deny it later. Of course, Starmer and Labour have no credibility on this issue. They started mass immigration approaching hundreds of thousands in 1997. That was the real "open borders experiment". Labour is simply projecting - accusing their opponents of doing what they do themselves.
Starmer obviously does not believe these things. Or at least he does not oppose these things, otherwise he would not be the Labour Prime Minister, having dedicated his life to upholding them. He will offer no material measures to stop them. Anybody who believes he has seen the light, and will pull the plug on the whole rotten business, needs their head examining.
What are the takes you could have when hearing the speech?
One, which I have just dismissed, is that Starmer is converting to the dissident right's outlook and becoming 'based'. Another is that he is - in plain sight - admitting that both parties are pursuing population replacement, but is blaming the Tories and Brexit instead of Labour.
He might not be referring to the ‘Great Replacement’, but to the hyper-liberalisation which pushes for cheap workers. I do feel it much more likely that with 'by design' he is referring to this. Indeed, supporting this is a line from a subsequent speech where he said: "The Tories lost control of immigration, opened the borders, deliberately, to conceal the extent of their economic stagnation".
The cheap labour importation process can be seen as a function of neoliberalism, which has been the consensus of all major parties for the last 30 years (with that brief Corbyn blip). Blairite Labour might be willing to do more public spending and infrastructure investment, but it is still wedded to big business (and thus cheap labour), austerity, supranationals and some degree of privatisation. Either he can't see Labour has been taking this approach, or he knows full well and is projecting again.
This is apparent because he barely mentions the corporations behind the cheap labour, and rather is targeting the Tories and Brexit. He wants to undermine his opponents, rather than change the system. He's realised that linking mass immigration to things is a way to discredit stuff he hates (even though, ironically, he loves mass immigration).
Starmer is not correct to say Brexit was 'used' to liberalise immigration. The European Union was certainly used for such a thing. Its free movement allowed workers to transcend visa restrictions, meaning a ready supply of unskilled labour for the corporations. When that got source got cut off in the UK, and it was politically untenable to continue free movement, the Tories had to find one elsewhere, thus they upped cheap labour from outside the EU (which already made up around half of our immigration). That's not really 'using' Brexit - it's simply being wedded to cheap workers and finding another source of them when Brexit interferes. Labour would have done the same thing were it in government after 2020.
'Using' Brexit would imply that the Tory leavers were always set on upping levels from outside the EU. There was certainly a contingent that were in favour of this, but generally speaking such Tories wanted a balance, with more opportunities for the Commonwealth and Anglosphere to come here (there were difficulties in doing so, while the EU was receiving preference). Some certainly may have had particular links to and been lobbying for countries like India, which is always pressing for more visas. However, I don't think this contingent was enough to be decisive. The result, of course, is the same - a country rapidly spiralling into something resembling the third world.
If we're saying Brexit was 'used', then so was Covid and the economic damage that followed it. In a recent interview, Boris Johnson admitted he upped immigration after Covid in order to stop inflation (from June 2021 to June 2022). Presumably Sunak carried this on in the following, record-breaking, year. The logic here is that fewer cheap workers would mean companies paying higher wages and thus less investment by business, with the costs passed on to the consumer. Indeed there had been slow immigration in 2020 (only 35,000 from January to December) and doubtless the government thought the country was due a larger amount in the next few years to balance things out. Curiously enough Starmer doesn't mention the Covid factor because he too is implicated in locking down the country, and again, Brexit and the Tories are his targets.
Whether with "by design", Starmer is referring to neoliberalism or population replacement, does not necessarily matter. Whatever he means, it's probably because he has focus-grouped the subject of immigration, realised it is unpopular and is throwing some raw meat to the Red Wall. Because he's not been too specific, he can deny it later if there is a progressive backlash. Strangely, there wasn't one from the Starmtroopers, only the Momentum types. Starmer had given the Labour moderates permission to be reactionary, when if a Tory had said it then their outrage would be indistinguishable from the Corbynites’.
Red Wall voters, of course, are in the process of having their heads turned by Reform UK. It is obvious Labour have noticed this, and was confirmed further when during the Assisted Dying debate the next day, Starmer crossed the House of Commons to act pally with Nigel Farage. Voters might see this and think, 'oh he's on the same page' or at least 'he's not so bad after all'.
The last explanation is that Starmer just doesn't understand what he's talking about, and is all over the place. Perhaps there are the proverbial monkeys with typewriters coming up with on-the-fly party policy. It's possible, but it's much more likely there is some calculation. Even if Starmer and many of his advisors are stupid, not all of them are. It seems Morgan McSweeney is an upgrade from Sue Gray.
For evidence supporting the notion Labour is simply paying lip service to the issue and has no intention of acting on it, we need only look to the 2024 manifesto. Legal immigration did not feature at all in it, despite the noises about reducing it that preceded the election. Neither will Starmer, in his current guise, commit to a figure with which to cap immigration. A reluctance to set a cap is madness to me, for any party. In recent years is only the centre-left SDP that has done. The SDP proposes 50,000 per year, while we work out what our work visa needs are. Even Reform will set no cap. The first sign that someone is not going to deliver something is their refusal to set terms or name figures.
Following the speech, Labour continued to go on the attack. They released a video which showed how in government Kemi Badenoch had pushed to remove the cap on work visas, leading to even more numbers coming. In Prime Minister's Questions on December 4th, he hit her again with the point. In the next PMQs he repeated the “one nation experiment in open borders” line. He’s obviously very pleased with himself on that one.
On this, it's a fair cop. Nobody can claim she or her party in general have been anything other than atrocious on the issue. In the leadership contest I was always a Jenrick man, because he seemed to have a newly converted zeal for taking on the problem, and was prepared to leave the EHCR in order to gain control of irregular migration. It might have all been pretence, of course, but it still showed promise. Indeed, several dissident right types had actively encouraged the election of Badenoch, believing it would weaken the Tories and hasten their destruction. Her policy weakness in comparison to Jenrick was part of this, but so too was Badenoch's own status as an immigrant to this country, with a pointedly African full name. This, such figures had it, would undermine her credibility on immigration and allow both Labour and Reform to attack. Needless to say, these voices rejoiced when Kemi won, but it may be short-lived. Jenrick might not have to wait long to get another shot.
As Punch and Judy politics, what Labour has done in flanking the Tories from the right is quite effective. The 'dog whistle' invocations of dissident conservative ideas made some headlines and may have misled a few Red Wall voters who need an desperate excuse to keep supporting Red Team. But they were just that - invocations, lip service, a fancy dress moustache and glasses. The manoeuvres are completely fraudulent because of Labour's previous actions and their inability to make concrete policy.
And even as an eye-catching power play, the attack was short-lived. In the following days, Starmer hyped up yet another relaunch where, this time, he was finally going to get things back on track. This was it - do or dare - the history books beckoned. On the morning of Thursday 5th December he walked out to a press pack waiting eagerly to savour every wonderful statesmanlike moment. A heat pump engineer named 'Bliss' introduced the Prime Minister, who walked out with a rictus grin on his face. The camera shook adjusting to his stance as he gave the preliminary platitudes and lame jokes. Then he looked down and began to read.
And we all fell asleep. The relaunch was absolutely dire. It was low energy, full of jargon and incomprehensible word salads. Missions, foundations, milestones and 'pillars of mission-led growth' intermeshed in some hideous politico spider web. Immigration was only mentioned in passing (200 words out of around 3000), and the focus was mainly on the irregular or illegal types: "This government will reduce immigration – legal and illegal. Because that is what working people want".
When did ‘working people’ last figure in Labour’s priorities?
The media hated the speech, in a marked change from the honeymoon period, and they didn't hold back. No journalist asked a positive question. They jumped all over him and he limped away, hopefully to get a bollocking from some Malcolm Tucker character waiting in the wings.
Old, boring, woolly Starmer was back, and it was clear that he was going to achieve very little. This was not some based Caesar who will reclaim our homeland. Nor was it some Machiavellian third way Tony Blair. Politics is more than just a sales pitch - it requires substance and joined-up thinking. And when you can't even manage a sales pitch, let alone the substance, you really are worthless.