Has Labour woken up?

Within a couple of days of my previous post, the goal posts of the ‘debate’ about immigration (this being the thing ‘we aren’t allowed to talk about’ yet constantly discuss) were moved in an even harder direction by Nigel Farage. At a press conference, he announced that Reform’s policy is now to abolish ‘indefinite leave to remain’ and, even more radically, to do so retrospectively, so that the rights of existing immigrants, and not just future ones, would be changed.

Whether that announcement was the trigger or, more likely, the intention was already there, this set the stage for a discernible, albeit ambiguous, shift in Labour’s approach to Reform and, with that, to the wider politics of Brexitism.

Farage’s shape-shifting

It doesn’t really matter to Farage that his latest policy proposal gave rise to a range of criticisms of its practicality, its legality, its economic impact, and the false financial claim of the £234 billion saving it would deliver. As Vote Leave showed with the infamous ‘£350 million a week for the NHS’ claim during the referendum, rebuttals can serve only to lodge falsities in the public mind, or at least to seem like quibbles about detail.

Nor does it matter much that Farage almost immediately resiled from applying this policy to those with EU Settled Status. That doesn’t affect what he wants to achieve in making indefinite leave to remain a talking point, and in promoting the general principle of retrospective changes to immigration status, with all the misery of insecurity that creates for millions of people. Thus, having only a couple of weeks ago raised the prospect of ‘mass deportations’, which he used to oppose, he has shifted the dial again, and it is notable that the speed with which he is moving is now increasing. How long before a full-on ‘repatriation’ policy becomes the locus of debate?

It's worth recalling that the background to this is, indeed, Brexit. There was a time when Farage, and his erstwhile vehicle of UKIP, campaigned to leave the EU whilst invoking Norway as an ideal. That is, escaping from Freedom of Movement didn’t figure. It’s true that Farage and UKIP had abandoned that position by the time of the Referendum, but many other Brexiters continued to espouse it. As for Farage, his position became that all he wanted was an ‘Aussie-style points system’ of state-managed immigration policy and, at least at one stage, ruled out an immigration cap.

Other Brexiters were more explicit about what this implied, arguing that the issue about Brexit was not to do with levels of immigration per se but simply that those levels should be determined by the ‘sovereign British parliament’, on the basis of an assessment about what level and type of immigration was wanted. And this is exactly what happened once the UK left the EU. So when Farage now presents what he calls the ‘Boriswave’ of increased post-Brexit immigration from, predominantly, non-EU countries as being a terrible betrayal of Brexit and those who voted to leave, he is denouncing the consequences of a policy he supported, even to the extent of standing down Brexit Party candidates in Tory held seats in the 2019 election.

Appeasing the unappeasable

Of course, it is true that many leave voters did believe that what they had voted for was a reduction of immigration levels, and plenty of them seem to have thought that this would apply to all immigration, and not just to immigration from the EU. But that is part of the overall story of how Brexit was sold with multiple, conflicting promises, and multiple, conflicting models. These included the now even more established conflation of immigration and asylum-seeking, and even the message to existing immigrants from, especially, the Commonwealth, that Brexit would make it easier for them to bring family members to Britain. So it is important to understand that the current situation grows out of Brexit, and out of the political dishonesty of Brexit, and especially out of the political dishonesty of Farage and the various incarnation of his parties.

But it is also important to understand what this shows. Underneath all the dishonesty there is a single direction of travel. The anti-immigration lobby, with Farage its most high-profile voice, is never satisfied. Whenever its demands are accepted as ‘legitimate concerns’, and policies devised to meet them, a harder set of demands is made. As Ian Dunt discussed in a recent post on his ‘Striking 13’ Substack, Brexit was supposed to assuage complaints of “uncontrolled immigration” yet, despite all the chaos and damage of Brexit, the same complaints persist. If anything, they have become increasingly vociferous, and increasingly framed in terms of English ethnonationalism.

The question, now, is just how much more this country is going to sacrifice on the altar of ‘controlling immigration’ in order to appease the unappeasable?

A line in the sand?

It’s just possible that with his latest proposals on indefinite leave to remain (ILR) Farage may have crossed a line which enough people will defend. For one thing, it is an unpopular policy: the most recent polling shows that 90% of people support the current ILR rules, and only 3% support Reform’s proposals. For another, the evident impact on the economy in general, and upon particular sectors including construction, the NHS, and universities may be even less palatable now, with the economy flatlining and so many of those sectors in permacrisis. For a third, the removal of ILR runs counter to the ‘legitimate concern’ about ‘integration’ espoused by at least some parts of the anti-immigration lobby.

However, what is perhaps more important is that Farage’s proposal has for once galvanized a discussion about immigration which is not solely about economic impacts but about morality, especially because the idea of retrospectively changing the rules under which people already live here is so transparently unfair (the same, of course, could be said about Brexit, which is why many leave campaigners pretended that it would not have that effect).

At all events, suddenly there was talk of how the Farage proposal would not just do transactional damage but would “change the soul of Britain”. Most importantly, before, during and after this week’s Labour Party conference, Keir Starmer talked in that register, calling Farage’s ILR policy “immoral” and “racist”, and saying it would “rip this country apart”. He also spoke of being in “a battle for the soul of Britain” with Reform, of the need for a “patriotic renewal” which challenges Farage’s plastic patriotism, criticized Farage for his dislike of modern Britain, and attacked the politics of grievance. Meanwhile, Rachel Reeves spoke bluntly in her Conference speech about the Reform Party being “in bed with Vladimir Putin”, whilst Ed Miliband attacked Farage for his connections with the global network of ethnonationalist populists epitomized by Elon Musk [1].

Two steps forward, one step back?

It may be churlish to criticize these developments, especially for me since, in my previous post, these were exactly the kind of positions I was urging Labour politicians to take, whilst implying pessimism that they would do so. It’s true, as many have remarked, that Starmer can be criticized for being too late, although that’s no reason not to applaud him now. But I certainly don’t want to fall into the ‘purism’ trap of dismissing anything that is imperfect as being worthless, a trap that has long snared many on the left and even more dramatically, in recent years, on the right.

Even so, there is a sense that the Labour government, whilst taking two steps forward, is taking one step back (or, less optimistically, the other way around). Thus, at the same time as Starmer was denouncing Farage’s ILR proposals, the new Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, was announcing plans to ‘reform’ ILR by setting out “tougher” conditions, including increasing the time before it can be applied for from five years to ten. It’s true that these plans were already being developed by her predecessor, Yvette Cooper, so they weren’t directly a reaction to Farage’s latest intervention. But they were conceived within the same strategy of trying to meet, rather than challenge, ‘legitimate concerns’.

It’s also true, as the government claims, that this is different to Farage’s policy, and Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff made as good a case as there is that Mahmood is mounting a genuine challenge to “the shocking rise of ethnonationalism”. Yet Labour politicians still don’t seem to grasp that by constantly accepting that there are ‘legitimate concerns’ about “uncontrolled immigration” and “open borders” (when the reality is that immigration is not, and has never been, ‘uncontrolled’ any more than borders have been ‘open’) in general, or, in this case, about existing ILR rules (which, as the polls linked to earlier show, are supported by the overwhelming majority), they cede ground to Farage and invite his inevitable denunciation of their reforms as inadequate.

For all that Labour’s latest discussions of immigration policy are an improvement, this basic problem remains, and was also illustrated by the government’s latest proposal to deny family reunion rights to individuals who are granted asylum. There also remains a constant slippage in government messaging between discussions of legal immigration, illegal immigration, and asylum-seeking.

The Digital ID distraction

As for Starmer himself, he chose to wrap his denunciation of Reform up with the announcement of a new Digital ID card, framed entirely in terms of cracking down on immigrants working illegally in the UK and controlling borders. Whatever the merits of an ID card scheme in general (I’m agnostic, but not really qualified to discuss it), this was an absurd framing.

For one thing, it was politically inept. For such a major policy announcement to come out of nowhere, with no preparation of public opinion and little explanation of the technical details, seemed more panicky than principled. It is highly probable that it will result in a long and protracted political battle over an unpopular policy, diverting energy and political capital from the government’s main priorities, and, I wouldn’t be at all surprised, ending up never actually being delivered.

In any case, even if it is delivered, it seems unlikely that it will have much impact on illegal working since those working illegally and those employing them are, by definition, willing to break the law. And any impact it does have will be unmeasurable since, again by definition, the number of people working illegally is, and will remain, unknown. It also provided, yet again, an illustration of the impossibility of appeasing the anti-immigration lobby which, for years, has been insisting, falsely, that ID cards are needed to counter illegal immigration, but have now suddenly swung to denouncing them as ineffective, authoritarian, and ‘Un-British’.

All that aside, by tying his critique of Reform’s immorality together with the announcement of his ID card scheme, Starmer is still framing his position in terms of taking the wind from Farage’s sails by appealing to potential Reform voters. That blunts his moral critique, but it also makes little sense electorally. As a new study from the Nuffield Politics Research Centre at Oxford University shows, Labour is not losing many votes to Reform, it is losing them to the LibDems, Greens and ‘don’t knows’.  It is this which will determine the next election. The most likely route to Reform forming a government is if it crosses the inflexion point where the First Past the Post system (unfairly) under-rewards it with seats to one where FPTP (unfairly) over-rewards it. That will happen if the Reform vote share holds up at around 30%, or perhaps just the high-twenties, and Labour fails to hold together the anti-Reform vote [2].

A new boldness?

Even so, if, as I wrote a fortnight ago, there is a battle underway for the “soul of Britain” then at least there are now signs that Starmer and his government realise this, and are willing to engage in it. There are plenty of weapons to deploy against, as I call it, Brexitism. They include constantly reminding voters that all the promises made for Brexit have proved false. Interestingly, for, I think, the first time, Starmer this week made this point on more than one occasion, including mentioning how Brexit had actually exacerbated the flow of irregular asylum-seeking by referring to the ‘Farage boats’ (his implicit point being that the UK being outside the Dublin regulations has created a new ‘pull-factor’ for asylum seekers). At the same time, the government is being slightly less reticent about the ongoing ‘reset’ with the EU including, now, embracing the idea of a Youth Mobility Scheme, which it had previously resisted [3].

Invoking the failure of Brexit is important, because support for it is one of the foundational beliefs of Brexitism, and because it is the principal example of the track record of Brexitism in practice (the constant chaos and incompetence of Reform local councils is another). This in turn means that there is every reason to be suspicious of the current promises coming from the very same people whose promises for Brexit have been discredited.

For particular example, it’s easy to see how those, including Farage and Robert Jenrick, now calling for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) do so in identical terms to those that were used to sell Brexit. Claiming that in one bound Britain will ‘take back control’ (ignoring other legal constraints, and reputational damage), dismissing warnings of what it would mean for Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement, blithely assuming easy agreements being made with other countries etc. Farage even cites Australia as a model for his mass deportation policy.

It’s equally easy to imagine how, if they get their way about the ECHR, and all the promises prove false, they will say it has ‘not been done properly’, or has been ‘betrayed’. It’s even easy to imagine some of the precise ways they will do so: ‘of course, we promised a British Bill of Rights, but we never dreamt that the activist lawyers and unelected Establishment politicians in the House of Lords would slip in provisions which sabotaged the will of the people’.

So there are obvious reasons to challenge those advocating ECHR derogation but, as with the immigration ‘debate’, that challenge can only be weakened by the way that Starmer (and Mahmood) are now talking about the need to reform how the Convention is applied within British courts. It’s possible there is a case for this (I don’t know, but I have heard some perfectly reasonable legal experts suggest this is so), but at the present moment it is highly impolitic to pursue it. Doing so immediately concedes to the Brexitists that there is a ‘problem’, and immediately sets up their ability to claim that only they have a sufficiently robust solution (somewhat akin to the way that David Cameron’s pre-referendum ‘re-negotiation’ with the EU rebounded on him).

Farage’s friends

Immigration aside, there is also much more mileage to be got from attacking the Brexitists for their overseas affiliations. The madness unfolding in Trump’s US offers a clear warning of what the Reform Party would mean if it came to power in Westminster, as can already be glimpsed in its misguided attempts to emulate Musk’s DOGE in its local councils. And the way that Farage, Badenoch, and Truss (as well as by Trump and Musk) lauded Javier Milei’s catastrophic economic policies in Argentina is an equally clear warning of what a Reform or Reform-Conservative government would do to the economy.

More than anything, the deep connections between Russia and Farage can only grow in salience as Putin’s aggressive incursions into European air space and cyber-space continue to intensify, leading the former head of MI5 to posit this week that, in a sense, Britain and Russia are already at war. Those connections, and with them Russia’s persistent attempts to interfere in British politics, have been freshly illustrated by the conviction of Reform’s former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, who has pleaded guilty to eight charges of taking bribes to make pro-Russia statements when he was an MEP.

It's clear that Farage and his allies have been rattled by these developments, making persistent, but flawed, attempts to disown or deny his connections with Gill. But it is Starmer’s accusation of racism which has really hit home, leading to utterly absurd claims that, in making it, he was “inciting violence” against Farage, exposing him to the risk of a ‘Charlie Kirk’ attack. Richard Tice even repeatedly cited a fabricated quote from Starmer's conference speech to suggest, ludicrously as well as mendaciously, that it was an invitation to "Antifa" (the non-existent US 'terrorist organization') to "come at Nigel Farage". It is a reminder of the backwash from the US to the UK of the Kirk killing, and, as I discussed last week, of the utterly hypocritical attempt by the far right to allow itself to use the most violent rhetoric imaginable against its opponents, in the name of ‘free speech’, whilst squealing that literally anything said of it (and, in this case, not said) by those opponents is dangerously inflammatory.

Clearly ambiguous

So, even in the space of a fortnight, something significant has happened, although the extent of that significance remains an open question. On the one hand, the battle lines are clearer, and the government has made them so. On other hand, whilst that has been widely acknowledged in most recent political commentary, that commentary also reveals the continuing ambiguity of Labour’s position.

At one level, that is an ambiguity about its position with respect to voters. Thus in the Economist, Bagehot (Duncan Robinson) argues (£) that Labour has stopped “punching its own voters”, meaning that it has moved to cement its socially-liberal, middle-class, educated flank. But in the Financial Times (£) it is suggested that Starmer has sought to secure “the party’s working-class base” and offered a “defiantly ‘Blue Labour’” message. It can’t be both of these things and, to the extent it is ambiguous, it might well end up being neither. Much will depend on whether recent messaging is followed-up, or whether it will prove to be just another temporary tactic which never develops into a fully-fledged strategy.

At a deeper level, the ambiguity is about Labour’s position about Brexitism, and that ambiguity carries the same dangers. If Starmer is now persuaded that the “soul of Britain” is at stake he will need to remove all ambiguity.

 

Notes

[1] Miliband’s basic point was correct, although it is worth recalling that Musk has pointedly criticized Farage whilst openly giving support to Tommy Robinson.

[2] It's worth saying, given the present atmosphere of premature speculation, that we are a long way from the next election, and current opinion polls may not be very relevant to it, especially as tactical voting (in particular against Reform) makes the link between national polls and constituency outcomes more uncertain. There is a fascinating discussion of the current political situation, digging deep into an issue I’ve touched in the past, the relationship between changing social class patterns and political parties, in Professor Ben Ansell’s latest Political Calculus Substack.

[3] It remains the case that nothing concrete has actually been ‘reset’ as yet. So there seems little basis for Rachel Reeves’ suggestion that the OBR should factor it into its growth forecasts (and, if and when the reset occurs then, on the current best estimate, provided by John Springford of CER, the impact would be small, perhaps, at most, 0.7% of GDP over ten years).