Here are words you wouldn’t expect the Prime Minister to utter: ‘migration represents 25% of our per capita GDP, 10% of our social security revenues and only 1% of our public expenditure’.
Extraordinary, right? A full-throated defence of immigration. So different from the denunciations we’re more used to.
Surprised? Doesn’t sound like Keir Starmer? Don’t worry, it isn’t. Those were the words of the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. The words are admirable not just because they show so much more courage than Starmer ever does, but also because they’re right. Immigration isn’t a burden. It’s vital for the survival of Britain and Spain as nations offering their citizens a decent standard of living.
If you’re in your forties in Britain and would like a pension when you reach the appropriate age, stop and think that, according to the Office of National Statistics, by 2047 without immigration, the population will drop by nearly 10 million, and in a swiftly ageing society, the working-age population which pays for pensions, will fall by 6-7 million. You want a pension? Make sure immigrants keep showing up, because most of them are of working age and you need them working for you.
No one in the Labour leadership is saying that.
Instead we get the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, making the regulations governing the treatment of asylum seekers even more severe than they already are.
Let’s not forget that asylum seekers, less than 15% of total immigrants anyway, are mostly people fleeing some of the most awful circumstances on earth, including war, torture and rape. One of the nastier of the new proposals is to extend the time it takes for an asylum seeker to win the right to remain permanently in Britain, from five to twenty years. If at any time the government decides that the country from which the refugees fled is now safe again, they could be forced to return. That’s even if they have kids, who have been educated in Britain, who may speak English better than their parents’ language, who are in effect in all but the technical sense British.
When Mahmood was criticised in the Commons for her proposals, she replied with passion. It’s refreshing to see that kind of intensity, but a shame to see it so badly directed. She pointed out how deeply divisive the problem of immigration has become, and that she, unlike her white fellow MPs, was frequently the target of vicious racial slurs, as were many of her constituents. She shocked the Commons by repeating one of those slurs, and the language was so offensive that the Deputy Speaker called on her to apologise for it.
Well, she’s right. I also agree with Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Opposition – not something I say very often – who supported Mahmood on that point. She has also had to face racist insults.
What I can’t go along with is Mahmood’s conclusion that the answer is to make asylum seekers, some of the world’s most vulnerable people, pay for British divisiveness. Someone flings a racist insult at you, and you respond by adopting their policies? Isn’t that just rewarding their bigotry? Where’s the sense in that?
If you doubt that it’s what she’s doing, just look at who’s welcoming her proposals. Kemi Badenoch, though a victim of racist attack herself, is another hardliner against immigration and has pledged Conservative support for Mahmood’s measures. Nigel Farage, of the far-right Reform UK Party, invited Mahmood to become a member after hearing her proposals. Worse still, Tommy Robinson, a figure from the hardest of the hard right, a man who has served prison terms for his behaviour in support of his policies, a man endorsed by Elon Musk, welcomed Mahmood’s proposals and congratulated ‘patriots’ for having legitimised the views that made them possible.
It happens so frequently. Faced with a surging, loudmouthed far right, the centre left caves and throws them red meat, in the hope of outflanking them and winning back their voters. ‘You want the vicious policies of the far right?’ they seem to be saying. ‘Don’t worry. We can implement them for you. Just keep voting for us.’
This is selling your soul to chase electoral gains. The worst of it? It’s not just immoral, it’s bad politics. It doesn’t work. In France, President Macron has tried to prove that he can be as hard on immigrants as the far-right National Rally led by Marine le Pen. What has the result been? The National Rally is closer to winning the presidency than it has ever been.
I recently heard the former First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, being interviewed by Emily Maitlis. Sturgeon described the position perfectly:
If you basically say Nigel Farage is right then people are likely to vote for Nigel Farage, not you…
Maitlis herself brilliantly summed up the policy that Keir Starmer seems to be pursuing as:
‘Nigel Farage is right. Don’t vote for him.’
 |
| Left: Pedro Sánchez, courageous on immigration Centre: Mette Frederiksen, architect of a failed model Right: Shabana Mahmood, passionate to follow that model |
The irony is that Labour has based Mahmood’s latest ideas on what people call ‘the Danish model’. That’s the equally harsh approach to asylum adopted by the current government in Denmark, run by Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, the equivalent of Britain’s Labour Party. On 18 November, Denmark held local and regional elections. The Social Democrats took a hammering across the country. They even lost the mayoralty of Copenhagen, for the first time since the first elections for the post in 1938.
And this is the model British Labour wants to follow?
Labour became established in Britain as a party of government in the 1920s. Its worst electoral result since then came in 1931, after its leader, Ramsay MacDonald, set up a coalition government with the Conservatives and split the party. At the 1931 election, the Labour Party that broke with MacDonald took 30.6% of the vote.
In more recent years, under the appalling leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour took 32.1% of the vote.
And according to the most recent YouGov poll, Labour today now stands at 19%. Far worse than in either of those two disastrous elections.
I don’t know what it takes to make Labourites who favour the latest proposals understand that they are morally wrong, economically damaging, and even politically counter-productive. Isn’t the evidence clear enough?
Of course, there is a crucial difference between the Danish and British experience. The Social Democrats lost Copenhagen to parties to their left. I wish I could at least be confident of something similar in Britain, where it looks as though Labour is far more likely to lose to the extreme right.
And what about Spain, the country I was talking about at the start? Well, the signs aren’t good. The traditional right is dropping in the polls. Sánchez’s Socialist Party is climbing. But the far right is also gaining ground. Sánchez has proved in the past that it’s unwise to write him off too soon, but it does look as though he’s likely to lose the next election to a coalition of the centre right and the hard right.
Still, if he does lose, at least he’ll go down fighting for a position that’s defensible morally and right in practice.
British Labour looks increasingly likely to lose to its opponents of the far right while defending the very positions they take.
The worst of all possible worlds.
