I’m more than a little shocked by Kier Starmer’s recent speech on immigration. The words in the official transcript were poorly chosen and while it was far from Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech there were certainly strong echoes of it. Bad as all of that was, in comments afterwards he said: "The damage this has done to our country [by immigration] is incalculable" adding "Public services and housing access have been placed under too much pressure." In the speech he also claimed: "Our economy has been distorted by perverse incentives to import workers." He actually talked of tightening the rules and closing the book on a "squalid chapter for our politics, our economy, and our country." What are immigrants supposed to make of that? A squalid chapter. Think about it. If you were a Phillipino nurse or an Iraqi doctor it must have sounded awful.
It’s hard to know if polling showing immigration is the No.1 concern among UK voters, is caused by Labour’s talk on the subject or if Starmer's policy is a response to it:
It’s certainly weird that Farage, the man who sold Brexit as the answer to controlling our borders and cutting immigration, is now riding high in the polls.
Starmer criticised those, Farage included I assume, who went around the country between 2019 and 2023, “telling people, with a straight face, they would get immigration down, [when] net migration quadrupled.”
He described the last government’s policy as a “one-nation experiment in open borders” and pledged to “take back control of our borders.” It was Theresa May all over again. He also denied doing it to pander to Reform. No, he was doing it, “because it is what I believe in.”
If true, we are in real trouble. We have a prime minister who believes in a policy of throttling the economy back while his chancellor has her foot pressed hard on the accelerator. It can’t work. Starmer said he celebrated our diversity but wanted tighter rules to avoid “becoming an island of strangers” which sounds quite the opposite to me.
And this is a complete straw man:
"So when you have an immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse, that encourages some businesses to bring in lower-paid workers rather than invest in our young people, or simply one that is sold by politicians to the British people on an entirely false premise, then you’re not championing growth, you’re not championing justice, or however else people defend the status quo. You’re actually contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart."
I know of companies that deliberately attracted Polish workers in the 2000s after Poland’s accession, not because they were cheaper but because they were hardworking, diligent, and capable and they also turned up on time. I’m not sure I can ever see Starmer again in the same way. He is chasing Reform down a terrible path.
Immigrants are not pulling us apart, Farage and his followers are doing that.
Divergence from the EU
The think tank UK in a Changing Europe has produced a 55-page report setting out how little Britain has actually diverged from EU laws since 2021. This is something that has always fascinated me. Listening to blokes like Gove, Davis, and Johnson and their claims that we were being held back by regulations, was always a delusion.
Johnson, during the referendum campaign, told voters we could save £600 million a week (£33 billion a year) by ditching the 100 costliest EU regulations. The figure came from the now-defunct pro-Brexit think tank Open Europe. I just couldn’t see how EU laws on Climate and Energy or the Working Time Directive could be repealed without consequences. It turns out that neither could Johnson or Gove.
The report attributes this to:
"The main reasons for the lack of divergence are that it makes it harder to trade with the EU (still by far the UK’s largest trading partner); a lack of clear strategy for where and how to diverge; and a lack of capacity in a state overburdened by other post-Brexit responsibilities."
It underplays in my opinion just how much British people like to have proper consumer, employment, and environmental protection. I think also the Tories underestimated how much effort it takes to come up with your own finely-tuned regulations. Listen to this:
"A final challenge is state capacity. Brexit meant the UK had to take responsibility for a wide range of regulatory functions – such as subsidy control, competition and mergers, and environmental protection – which used to sit with the EU. It also made London responsible for implementing a range of new regimes, like a reformed immigration system and border checks on goods. This contributed to the near-doubling of the size of the civil service. Yet, even so, the new responsibilities placed on them left officials with little room to consider more strategic ideas for regulatory reform."
The civil service is twice the size that it was, but we are still locked into the EU regulatory system!
Now, with Labour's Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, which allows ministers to replicate EU product regulations, together with the ongoing talks to 'reset' our relationship with Brussels, there is virtually no chance of any more divergence in the next four years, only an "ever closer union" - to coin a phrase.
If Reform UK ever gets into bed with the Tories, of course, all bets are off.
And on that subject, the Economist has published a report on what Farage's policies might mean for the UK. Their agenda is, according to the highly respected magazine, one of "fiscal recklessness that rivals, and may well exceed, the disastrous 49-day, hair-raising, market-tanking premiership of Liz Truss in 2022."
If Reform show their true colours and total incompetence in controlling ten local authorities up and down the country between now and the next election, we may well be spared a Farage premiership and all the economic chaos that would go with it.
We can only hope.
