The Labour government is about to make a historic mistake. Haunted by the shadow of Reform UK and spooked by council by-elections, Keir Starmer’s administration is now marching lockstep with the far right—not out of ideological conviction, but out of electoral panic. And in doing so, it risks confirming one of the most dangerous ideas in British politics: that the only solution to social decline is scapegoating migrants.
There’s nothing principled in Starmer’s new immigration proposals. A ten-year wait for settlement. English tests for care workers’ dependents. A de facto ban on overseas recruitment in the care sector. Deportation expanded to cover minor convictions. It’s a greatest hits of nativist policy dressed up in technocratic language. “Settlement is a privilege, not a right,” Starmer will say, as if speaking over the shoulder of Nigel Farage to the imagined voter in Runcorn who just put their cross in the Reform box.
Labour is not learning from the mistakes of the Tories. It’s copying them. The Conservative Party spent 14 years failing to bring net migration down while making life intolerable for migrants and shredding public services in the process. Now, Labour’s white paper is set to finish the job: outsourcing cruelty in a bid to reclaim the narrative from the far right. But here’s the thing. You can’t outflank the far right by imitating it. You only legitimise its worldview.
You can’t outflank the far right by imitating it. You only legitimise its worldview.
The UK’s care system is in crisis. Not because of migrants, but because of decades of underfunding, privatisation, and low pay. Yet Labour’s response isn’t to raise wages or invest in training, it’s to shut the door. Care England and Unison are already ringing the alarm: recruitment from abroad wasn’t a panacea, but it was a lifeline. Now that lifeline is being severed for the sake of headlines and polling.
The policy is incoherent. One day, Labour claims it wants to train up British workers and tackle exploitation. The next, it tells care homes to find replacements from an exhausted pool of exploited migrants already here—on extended visas, overstretched and underpaid. Talk of deporting foreign offenders faster and barring sex offenders from asylum is little more than punitive theatre. The truth is that none of this will “fix” the immigration system, but it will feed the beast of resentment and suspicion.
Talk of deporting foreign offenders faster and barring sex offenders from asylum is little more than punitive theatre. The truth is that none of this will “fix” the immigration system, but it will feed the beast of resentment and suspicion.
This is how normalisation works. It begins with small concessions to “legitimate concerns”, then escalates. A year ago, Labour said it would end the hostile environment. Now it is extending it to people’s spouses. Yvette Cooper says recruitment should happen from within the UK. Where, exactly? In parts of the country where working-age populations have shrunk, training budgets have been slashed, and pay barely covers rent?
Labour is not obliged to meet Reform UK on the battlefield of anti-migrant hysteria. It is not a law of nature that the Overton window must continue shifting rightward. This is a choice. And it’s one with consequences.
The electoral logic is flawed. Every time the centre-left triangulates to the right on immigration, it strengthens the far right’s hand. The message it sends is simple: the right was right. Reform wins twice, once when it sets the agenda, again when its opponents endorse it. Labour is not haemorrhaging votes because it is too soft on migration. It is haemorrhaging meaning. Reform offers anger. Labour offers compliance.
The electoral logic is flawed. Every time the centre-left triangulates to the right on immigration, it strengthens the far right’s hand.
Labour needs to break the cycle. Not by pretending migration isn’t an issue, but by refusing to treat migrants as the issue. That means investing in services. Building houses. Ending exploitative labour practices. Raising pay in sectors like care and agriculture. And yes, it means making the case for immigration. Not as a necessary evil, but as a moral good and economic reality.
If Starmer’s Labour continues down this road, it will not win back the trust of working-class communities. It will simply burn through whatever remains of its principles in pursuit of voters who will, when the time comes, still prefer the original to the copy. Ask the French Socialist Party. Ask the German SPD. Ask the Democrats in Trump country. The path Labour is on leads only to humiliation and the further collapse of the political centre.
You don’t win against the far right by echoing its language. You beat it by changing the conversation.
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