The words were suitably muscular: ‘The Tories lost control of our borders and let net migration soar to record levels, undercutting hardworking Brits,’ the Prime Minister tweeted yesterday morning.
‘I won’t stand for it,’ he continued. ‘I promised to restore control and cut migration, and I’m delivering with tough new measures. British workers – I’ve got your back.’
But they were just that. Words.
Everyone knows the Tories betrayed the British people over their pledge to slash legal migration and ‘stop the boats’. It’s why they were so unceremoniously booted out of office less than 12 months ago.
Yet they know something else, too. Keir Starmer’s own pledge to ‘deliver’ on migration is equally empty.
There is nothing in Labour’s proposed White Paper that is remotely ‘tough’ or has the slightest chance of turning the tide of humanity crossing our borders legally and illegally.
Some tinkering over the time-limit for non-graduate work visas. A small reduction in the number of students staying in the UK after they have finished their courses. More lip-service to the idea of migrants having a better understanding of English. A bit of tweaking of Article B of the Human Rights Act.
After some initial success in targeting the small boats and increasing the number of deportations, normal service under Labour has been resumed. Actually, exceeded.
Sir Keir Starmer tweeted, ‘The Tories lost control of our borders and let net migration soar to record levels, undercutting hardworking Brits’
So far this year, more than 11,000 people have crossed the Channel to Britain’s shores, a 40 per cent increase from the same time last year.
Yet again, the voters are being treated to the spectacle of a Prime Minister promising to ‘take back control’ of the borders. And yet again, those words are destined to die on his lips.
Meanwhile, more and more desperate people will die beneath the cold waters of the Channel. And the social fabric of the nation will continue to be rent asunder as another establishment politician’s promise turns to dust.
If Starmer genuinely ‘had the back’ of Britain’s workers, he would be taking serious, radical action.
An offshoring scheme for processing. Withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights that even ministers privately concede has hamstrung their efforts to get on top of the migration crisis.
An economic strategy that doesn’t rely on the failed model of globalisation that has seen hundreds of thousands of those workers thrown to the wolves. Instead, the people of Britain must brace themselves for another stab in the back.
Within government, there has been an intense debate about how to respond to growing public fury over immigration and the accompanying populist backlash that has seen Nigel Farage surge into a double-digit lead in the polls.
Ministers, including Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, have been pushing for bolder action.
But Keir Starmer has rejected their entreaties. Partly this is because of complacency.
No 10 is expecting a significant fall in the legal migration figures once the measures implemented by outgoing Tory Home Secretary James Cleverly feed through into the system.
‘Downing Street thinks that fall will be enough to diffuse the issue,’ one minister told me. ‘They don’t think they need to go that much further.’
Then, there are the interventions from Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who believes every issue in government should be subordinated to her increasingly desperate attempts to stimulate growth.
‘Rachel is terrified of the impact tougher measures will have on the economy,’ a colleague reported.
Yet there is another reason why Keir Starmer is incapable of getting to grips with immigration – and it is a significant one. He just doesn’t want to. The Prime Minister might appear deaf and blind to the mounting anger of the British people, but he is not completely dumb.
He knows full well the extent to which his failure to exert real control is fuelling the Reform insurgency.
But he simply cannot bring himself to issue the harsh instructions needed to bring order to the migration chaos.
There is no deep mystery to who Keir Starmer is or what he believes. Despite the efforts of his aides to construct another – more electorally viable – persona, he really is just a middle-class, liberal, human-rights lawyer from North London. Stopping the boats requires action that to him is anathema.
Smashing the gangs, even if it were operationally viable, is self-evidently not going to be enough.
What’s needed is someone with the political vision, will and empathy to instinctively grasp the concern of working people over the ongoing migrant influx.
Someone who is prepared to introduce immigration policies that are not liberal, but are – on the contrary – overtly illiberal.
Someone prepared to confront with passion and energy the human-rights industry that is itself profiting from the trafficking in human misery.
Keir Starmer is not that man. And everyone knows it.
By pretending the Government’s new White Paper is the answer to the immigration crisis, the Prime Minister is taking the British people for fools. And in the process, he is trying to fool himself.
