Keir
Starmer is caught in yet another trap of his own making
Rafael Behr
The prime
minister’s immigration approach follows a now-familiar pattern: letting fear of
a difficult argument get in the way of policy that might work
Wed 14 May
2025 06.00 BST
Keir Starmer
is embattled but not threatened. It is a strange combination. He is not
challenged by Kemi Badenoch, who is weak in parliament and irrelevant outside
it. Nor is the prime minister in immediate peril from Reform, the Liberal
Democrats or the Greens. They pose electoral challenges in the coming years but
they can’t stop the government passing laws in the meantime. The Labour leader
is not in danger from backbench rebellion. Dissenting MPs grow in number but
not at the rate that presages regicide.
Starmer has
been dealt a tough hand in some ways. He inherited a rotten economy in a
volatile world. But he also has advantages not enjoyed by many of his
predecessors: a vast Commons majority, an obedient cabinet, a splintered
opposition. His greatest problem isn’t a politician or party. It isn’t an
industrial lobby or foreign power. It is a question, small but deeply
penetrating: why?
Labour has
done lots of stuff, often making people cross. Winter fuel payments have been
rationed; businesses have been landed with a higher national insurance bill.
There have been winners, too. Junior doctors and train drivers got a pay rise
to end their strikes, but trouble averted doesn’t win political friends as
efficiently as pain makes enemies.
It is hard
for any government to earn credit for what they do if voters cannot easily
intuit why they are doing it. This is Labour’s big problem.
“Why” is a
deceptively simple question, containing two different concepts. It inquires
into process and motive. It asks “from what cause?” and “to what purpose?” One
is an explanation about the past, the other is a story about the future.
For example,
one answer to the question of why cut benefits is that the Tories left a £22bn
budget black hole. But that doesn’t explain why it has to be winter fuel or
personal independence payments. The Conservative legacy is a cause of budget
choices, not a moral compass pointing to the better path.
Another
answer might be that the benefits bill is a poor use of public money, going to
people who don’t need it or could replace it with wages if only they would work
harder. But if that is the argument, the Conservative legacy loses its potency.
If there are savings to be made anyway, and that’s the right thing to do, why
blame it on the black hole?
It should be
possible to recognise that there are perverse incentives that need ironing out
of the benefits system, while also striving not to drive vulnerable people into
destitution. But that is an agenda to reform the state, not shrink it under
fiscal duress. So which is it? It is hard to sound authentic in defence of a
policy when your party’s core economic argument and its collective body
language all scream reluctance and queasy compulsion.
The same
problem now arises with Labour’s immigration policy. Starmer has declared that
he wants to bring net migration down. Why?
One answer
is that voters say they want it and will back Nigel Farage if they don’t get
it. The prime minister insists that isn’t the reason. In a speech launching an
immigration white paper on Monday, he rejected any suggestion that government
policy was about “this or that strategy, targeting these voters, responding to
that party”.
That
wouldn’t need saying if his audience found it easy to imagine less cynical
motives. But if we take Starmer at his word, what does he say is the reason for
this particular set of policies?
The argument
is that the Tories ran an open-door policy, importing workers to do jobs that
might otherwise have been done by British citizens. That the domestic workforce
lacked the skills to do those jobs was also a symptom of Conservative neglect.
The influx of foreigners undermined social cohesion. Without reversing these
trends, Britain risks becoming “an island of strangers”, the prime minister
said. The damage already done is “incalculable”.
The proposed
remedy is to stem the flow of migrants. The shortfall in workers will be
supplied from a glut of millions who are classified as “economically inactive”
in labour market data, but capable of work (or will soon be deemed as such by
the Department for Work and Pensions).
The gap in
skills will be mended with funding from higher levies charged on businesses
that request visas for migrant workers. Employers that want to bring in
foreigners must also have an approved plan to boost the capabilities of
domestic workers.
There is a
dubious simplicity in a labour market equation that neatly cancels out net
migration with re-activated benefits claimants.
Assuming the
switch is even possible it is gargantuan in scope – a fundamental
reconfiguration of the way Britain works. The white paper concedes, with
unintentional bathos, that the process “will take time to establish”.
It doesn’t
acknowledge the cost. The Home Office could turn off the visa taps and hope for
a miracle in the domestic jobs market before the NHS, social care and other
services are crippled by staff shortages. More likely, the Treasury will
intervene, insisting that the transition be incremental enough to keep the
economic wheels turning. Net migration will come down – it is falling already –
but not with such tangible demographic effect that voters will notice a change
in the national complexion and thank Starmer for it.
If the harm
done by the Tories was “incalculable”, how will Labour calculate the reduction
in harm after just a few years of running its own marginally less permissive
regime? The lurid rhetoric that was chosen to define the motive behind the
white paper – answering the question of why Starmer is doing this – guarantees
that it will be judged a failure by the very people to whom that language is
addressed.
And yet most
of the actual policy could have been presented with the opposite inflection.
The emphasis could have been on Britain’s historical record of successfully
integrating migrant communities and the vast economic and cultural contribution
they have made. The argument that unmanaged borders undermine confidence in
government and put community cohesion at risk could still be made. So might the
case for rebalancing the labour market.
But there is
a way to narrate those issues as a confrontation with cynical opportunists who
revel in division and foment mutual suspicion. Immigration reform could be sold
in terms that demolish the economic illiteracy of parties whose business model
is burning bridges and turning neighbours into strangers. Labour could still
talk about rules, fairness and border control, but make it a challenge to
Farage instead of a tribute to him.
But that
would be out of character for a prime minister who has reached the top by
swerving hard choices, flinching from difficult debates. His method has worked.
It is why he is prime minister, but only in one sense of the word. It is the
reason for his victory, not the purpose.
The lack of
that second part, a better answer to the question why Starmer is prime
minister, explains how he has come to look so constrained, even with parliament
at his command; beleaguered when his enemies are divided. It defines the
strange spectacle of the unchallenged leader who besieged himself.
Rafael Behr
is a Guardian columnist
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