Will Burnham break with the past and actually listen to voters?
Daily Telegraph 10/08/26
It has been a long time since polls expressing increased hostility by British voters towards immigration were a surprise to anyone.
Over the weekend a new survey found that the proportion of voters who now believe that immigration has been “mostly bad” for Britain has leaped 10 points in the last decade, from 33 to 43 per cent. The change among those who voted Remain in 2016 has been the most dramatic: among this group, the number who said migration had been bad had risen from 12 to 22 per cent.
None of this is surprising, and is in line with other surveys that have found immigration and asylum creeping towards the top of voters’ political priorities..
Today a record 230 people arrived by a single “mega-dinghy” on Britain’s southern coast, having managed to escape the hellscape of northern France, making a mockery of Britain’s claim to secure borders.
All of this is a threat to whichever party happens to be in office. The difference between immigration policies of Labour and the Conservatives can be explained in relation to their own memberships and party cultures: while the Conservatives welcomed record numbers of immigrants in defiance of the largely sceptical views of their members, Labour is operating in an environment where its own MPs as well as its members and affiliated trade unions are far more sympathetic to the notion of open-door immigration and asylum.
This is why the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, was obliged to sweeten her hard line on immigration and asylum by offering new “safe and legal” routes into the UK for asylum seekers.
One could do worse than turn to Scripture in these difficult times, namely Tony Blair’s autobiography, A Journey, where he writes of the country when he came to office in 1997: “Britain. . . had inherited the post-war, post-Holocaust system and sentiment on asylum. The presumption was that someone who claimed asylum was persecuted and should be taken in, not cast out.”
Blair adds, however, that this attitude was “completely unrealistic in the late twentieth century. The presumption was plainly false: most asylum claims were not genuine. Disproving them, however, was almost impossible.”
Labour, whether in office or in opposition, has veered between supporting mass immigration, as it did before the Second World War, to imposing restrictions under Harold Wilson’s 1960s governments (and in echoes of Mahmood’s delicate compromises today, Labour in the 1960s sought to balance restrictions on immigration with anti-racism legislation domestically).
Blair’s role in increasing immigration was more about recognising the obligations and consequences of globalisation than about bleeding heart liberalism, but the consequences were the same: communities transformed without consultation with, or democratic mandate from, those most affected.
Senior figures in Blair’s government found themselves constantly under attack from the Left. Former home secretary David Blunkett was criticised by many in his own party for tightening up the asylum process, forcibly removing entire families who were here illegally, and suggesting that British Muslim and other members of the South Asian community seek spouses here in Britain rather than in their families’ homelands.
Labour’s centre of gravity will always pull the party towards large-scale immigration, for electoral as well as humanitarian reasons. Can Andy Burnham stand against such demands, or will he listen instead to voters?
A Conservative-supporting friend asked me recently what I thought would happen at the next general election, specifically with regard to Nigel Farage and Reform UK. I replied that the British public had already decided that the next government will radically reform our immigration and asylum system to reduce the numbers arriving here to a fraction of what they have been in recent years, and to dispense with the absurd “right to a family life” loophole that has allowed so many illegal immigrants to remain in Britain.
The only question was whether these new policies would be carried out by a Labour, Conservative or Reform government.
It’s up to the parties to decide whether they will pursue policies that will reassure nervous Britons that our country is not being treated like an international mug, which is the impression given today with every news headline about illegal immigration or sexual assault committed by asylum seekers being housed at public expense.
Ignoring the settled will of an electorate demanding radical change – not incremental or subtle reform – will doom any mainstream party to opposition. And so the choice becomes one of pure pragmatism: do you want to remain in/win office next time around?
Over to you, Mr Burnham and Mrs Badenoch.
Comments
Post a Comment