It’s not enough just to be against a painfully punitive Rwanda policy. Labour must be ready to change the script on migration
I could have written the speech before I’d even heard it. A party committed to a points-based system. A country too dependent on migrant workers. A promise to be “practical”. It was like the Groundhog Day of British immigration politics. Keir Starmer’s address to the CBI last month told us much of what we already knew: Labour has little interest in positively shifting the dial on immigration.
Small in number but significant in symbolism, the references Starmer made to migration showed the tightrope he is going to walk: signalling Labour will “control” immigration (this is what the “points-based system” and the determination not to reintroduce free movement represent) and promising to make sure the rules work for immigration-reliant businesses. This position is a reformulation of what politicians have been saying for years: that “migration undermines opportunities for people in the UK”, and the country only wants the “best and the brightest”.
