UK's Keir Starmer is walking a fine line in tackling immigration

Economic Times

4 hours ago

Reuters Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer Do you beat the populists or join them when they whip up public outrage over immigrant numbers? That's the dilemma facing center-left and center-right parties across Europe — and Britain is no exception.
Nigel Farage, leader of the populist Reform UK party, is riding high in the opinion polls this summer while campaigning on the alleged links between crime and high immigration. Labour and the Conservatives struggle to respond: They have to tread a fine line between acknowledging genuine public fears and inflaming rank prejudice.
To start with the statistics: Foreign nationals comprise one-in-eight of the 87,000 prisoners in England and Wales. The numbers of foreign sexual offenders (1,700) and violent criminals (3,250) in British prisons rose by 10% and 9%, respectively, last year. Ignore or deny these figures, and voters will suspect an establishment cover-up. Unfortunately, they have good cause to distrust their political leaders on this score. Labour councils have a woeful record on tackling rape gangs of south Asian origin, and in 14 years in office the Tories made a series of reckless promises to restrict migration that they never came close to keeping and which contributed to their heavy defeat at the last election. Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, has said she will expedite the removal of foreign criminals from prisons. Legislation already due to come into force next month opens up the deportation route to prisoners after serving 30% of their term behind bars (rather than half of the sentence as at present). Now Labour seems to find its own policies too laggardly — Mahmood wants to see rapists, drug dealers and serious burglary convicts removed straight after sentencing to their home countries, announcing on Sunday that the law will change to allow the 'immediate deportation of convicted foreign criminals.'If the traditional parties simply follow Farage's noisy agenda, they risk inflaming racial tensions — a self-fulfilling doom loop. Although legal migration numbers to the UK are declining, in the first six months of 2025 a record number of illegal migrants — around 25,000 — arrived in small boats across the Channel from France, a 50% increase on last year. Politicians can no longer afford to fob off concerns as exaggerated or limited to a few hard-hit areas; the impact of the boats on public opinion is felt as much in Sunderland as Southend. In this charged atmosphere, honest communications are vital. For one thing, many Britons are basing their views on topsy-turvy perception of the figures. A new poll by YouGov found that almost half of Britons (47%) think there are more migrants staying in the UK illegally rather than legally; crucially, this view is held by 72% of those who want to see mass removals. In reality, the majority of immigration is legal.But some Labour ministers have not helped their own reputations by obfuscating on this topic. Speaking to a BBC Question Time audience a month ago, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones caused an uproar when he claimed that the majority of people crossing the Channel in small boats were "children, babies and women." In fact, 81% (5,183) of small-boat arrivals in the first three months of 2025 were men. Other ministers have taken a different tack, contextualizing crimes committed by asylum seekers as being little greater than the local White adult male cohort in Britain's unemployment blackspots. That message hardly reassures voters who live in those neighborhoods.
At a recent press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared he would prove that 'social democracy has the answers' that Farage's 'performative populism' can't give. One such answer is an oversold, time-limited deal on migrants with France, launched last week. 'No gimmicks, just results', promised Starmer, adding "they will be sent back.' In truth, only 6% or about 50 a week are likely to be removed in exchange for accepting a similar number of genuine asylum claimants. Some deterrent. Starmer's message is muddled — he sometimes leans into Farage's inflammatory rhetoric too. The PM was forced to apologize for a speech a few months ago in which he warned that the UK was in danger of becoming 'an island of strangers' as a result of mass migration. His party thought this phrase was racialist dog-whistling. At other times, he's spoken of 'rounding up' migrants. And the PM has rhetorical competition — Robert Jenrick, the ferociously ambitious shadow justice secretary in a Conservative party that is hemorrhaging voters to Reform, believes in matching Farage for outrage. In one of his widely shared videos, Jenrick referred to data on sexual offences that show 'Afghans and Eritreans are more than 20 times more likely to be convicted of sexual offences than British citizens.' In London, he added '40% last year of all of the sexual crimes were committed by foreign nationals, despite the fact that they only make up 25% of the population.'That's one way of looking at the numbers. The BBC's head of statistics, Robert Cuffe, however, advises that the proportion of foreign nationals behind bars is smaller than their population share. Jenrick is an energetic campaigner, but Westminster wisdom says 'you can't out-Reform Reform.' His bet is he can defeat that truism — but it's easier for Farage to push the boundaries than it is for the Tories or Labour, who risk shedding moderate voters.
Farage, the pied piper of populism, can always play a new tune. Reform's leader made headlines when he accused Warwickshire Police of a 'cover-up' for refusing to reveal the nationality and asylum status of two Afghans charged with the alleged rape and kidnap of a 12-year-old girl. This week, Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper were forced to call for more transparency; existing policing guidelines do not include 'sharing ethnicity or immigration status.' The government pledges to 'smash' the trafficking gangs behind illegal migrant arrivals and is spending an extra £100 million ($134 million) to gather better intelligence. Many are skeptical that these efforts will bear much fruit given the financial attractions of the business and the cunning of the operators.Other solutions are available. Starmer could join European nations intent on revising the terms of international conventions on migration drawn up before the days of hyper-mobile globalization. He could also work with European partners on reviving schemes to warehouse asylum applicants in third-party countries, even if it meant accepting that the Tories' plan to do so in Rwanda was right in principle, if wrong in destination. Denmark's Social Democratic government has successfully reduced migration numbers by insisting asylum status is only temporary, restricting family reunification and offering reduced social security benefits to new arrivals. For now, Starmer's migration policy is more performative than real. Talking less and doing more, faster, might provide a better route through the migration maze.
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