How Labour ended up taking on the Boriswave
Sir Keir Starmer, remarkably, has launched an immigration crackdown. Britain risks becoming an 'island of strangers' after the Tory 'one-nation experiment in open borders', he said on Monday. A Home Office white paper has introduced several measures which will supposedly bring the sky-high numbers down.
Most interestingly, the government will extend the required qualification period for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) – which grants migrants access to the welfare state and the ability to bring dependents – from five years residency in the UK to ten. On Wednesday it confirmed that this would apply retroactively. Which means that should this go through – there will be a public consultation – it can be expected to prevent the post-2021 migration surge known as the 'Boriswave' from automatically being granted permanent settlement in the next few years.
This is a hugely welcome and sensible move: if the Boriswave was a mistake, as it is widely agreed to be, there is no reason we should let it become permanent.
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Telegraph
42 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Defence at 5pc or learn to speak Russian? Spasibo, Mr Rutte
The secretary general of Nato, Mark Rutte, has come to London as the head of the most powerful military alliance on the planet to remind us Brits that unless we re-invest in our military capabilities we had better start learning Russian. Had we not achieved a similar feat after the 'awakening' of 1940, we would now be talking German. The development of Hitler's Nazi Germany in the 1930s is so frighteningly similar to Putin's actions in the 2010s and 2020s as to make you think the same playbook is being followed. Appearing to almost directly address Ms Reeves – ahead of her spending review on Wednesday – Rutte said: 'If you do not go to the 5 per cent, including the 3.5 per cent for defence spending, you could still have the NHS … the pension system, but you better learn to speak Russian. That's the consequence.' Rutte means 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence – as opposed to Keir Starmer's only concrete target of 2.5 per cent – plus another 1.5 per cent on security and infrastructure. In some respects Rutte is wrong. There will be no welfare state and no NHS if Putin takes over. Just look at the fate of ordinary people in Russia who can barely afford to eat, and both inflation and interest rates north of 20 per cent and rising. That shows what life might be like under a modern Warsaw Pact. Mr Rutte realises that we cannot appease tyrants like Putin and the only way to scare them off is to show strength. 'We are deadly serious that if anyone tries to attack us, the consequences of that attack would be devastating – be it Russia or anyone else,' he said. We must not repeat the mistakes of our forebears in the 1930s, who failed to rearm to the level of deterrence. If we had realised that only total domination of Europe would satisfy Hitler, we would have confronted pressing demands at home for more welfare spending and avoided war – not by letting the aggressor have his way, as was famously attempted by Neville Chamberlain, but by being strong enough that Hitler would have avoided a confrontation. As history recalls, when Chamberlain returned from Munich saying he had chosen 'peace in our time', Winston Churchill rebuked him: 'You were given a choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.' If we look realistically at what Putin has been telling us for the last 20 years we will understand that only the re-establishment of the old Soviet Union will satisfy him. The fact that none of those countries want to be part of Putin's Russia, means only one thing, as we are sworn to defend them under Nato Article 5: war. If we abandon them, we will be dishonoured – and we will be next, facing an enlarged empire with even greater resources. The Germans, realising belatedly the threat of another tyrant who wants to subjugate them, have issued a stark warning this week. Herr Bruno Kahl, head of the Federal Intelligence Service, said his agency had clear intelligence indications that Russian officials believed the collective defence obligations enshrined in the Nato treaty no longer had practical force. 'We are quite certain, and we have intelligence showing it, that Ukraine is only a step on the journey westward,' says Kahl. Secretary General Rutte is spot on. This message from a former European liberal politician may get many backs up here, but we cannot ignore it. History tells us he's right. Sadly we do not appear to have a Churchill among our modern day politicians to lead us through the coming confrontation with Putin. I know from comments added to my previous pieces on this subject in this paper that there appear to be some who want us to capitulate and give up without a fight. Most of them are clearly Russian bots, part of the massive Russian propaganda machine who would want us to do exactly that. But if people think life in Britain is bad now, look east and see the misery most Russians live under. Let us heed Rutte's warning, and in the immortal words of Donald Trump 'build baby build' military capability. Quite frankly if we fail to defend ourselves now, everything else vexing people at the moment will become horrifically irrelevant.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Rachel Reeves's economic vision is coming into focus – a year too late
A government this young should not look so old. Keir Starmer has not yet celebrated his first anniversary in Downing Street, but the government already moves with the plodding gait of a caretaker administration. There were painful stumbles at the start. The cut to winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners was announced within a month of the general election. Now, in the face of overwhelming opposition, it has been largely reversed. Meagre savings to the exchequer were procured at an exorbitant price in political capital. The early display of unsentimental cost-cutting by the chancellor was meant to show that Labour was serious about fiscal discipline. The legacy of Tory mismanagement – a £20bn revenue shortfall – could be cited in mitigation. Pensioners were never going to relish the confiscation of their entitlements, just as farmers were sure to complain about the loss of inheritance tax perks and businesses were unlikely to thank the chancellor for hiking their national insurance bills. But maybe some slack would be cut to an incoming government that dared to take tough decisions; maybe the memory of terrible Conservative rule was convertible into credit for their successors. The idea was to advertise Britain, under newly reliable management, as a beacon of orderliness in a chaotic world and a magnet for investment. Prudently rationed public resources would be deployed in ways that stimulate growth – upgrading transport and energy infrastructure; housebuilding. Prosperity would follow, buoying the national mood. This week's spending review is meant to be a pivotal moment in the execution of that plan. There will be increases in capital and day-to-day spending by £113bn and £190bn respectively; well in excess of what the Tories had proposed before the election. The very opposite of austerity, the Treasury insists. Rachel Reeves boasts of 'national renewal' paid as the dividend of fiscal and political stability. But Whitehall departments not chosen for munificence face harsh real-terms spending cuts. And the benefit of investment in new trains, homes and power stations won't be felt for years, decades in some cases. In a more benign climate, a newish government could make a virtue of policy designed for the long term, not bending every announcement for tactical gain. But that amounts to a plea for national forbearance, urging collective sacrifice in anticipation of future reward. After years of stagnant incomes and rising bills, there isn't much receptiveness among British voters for yet more deferral of gratification. Also, the time to get a reliable mandate for that kind of programme was before the election. The fatal flaw in Labour's economic strategy was overestimating how much goodwill would be available to the party once it had fulfilled its electoral utility as a tool for ousting the Tories. Keir Starmer won a huge majority by making himself inoffensive to as many people as possible. The campaign started from the premise that Labour loses whenever voters think it is planning a reckless tax-and-spending spree, or suspect that its leader is a leftwing fanatic. Those threats were neutralised with ferocious discipline, but at a cost in clarity about the post-election agenda. Starmer embodied a contradiction – change without upheaval. That was bound to unravel on first contact with the reality of government. In a bygone era, Reeves's attempt to deflect blame for painful choices on to the Tory legacy might have been more effective. There was obviously a mess to be cleared up and sometimes voters have long memories. The winter of discontent was brandished in evidence to disqualify Labour from office for more than a decade. Endemic sleaze and callous neglect of the public realm in the 90s did the same for the Conservatives. Their recent reign of disrepute should impose another long period of opposition penance. It probably will, but not necessarily to Labour's benefit. The conventional division of allegiance between two main parties is breaking down, perhaps irrevocably. Reform UK regularly leads in opinion polls. In terms of councils controlled, the Liberal Democrats are Great Britain's second-largest party. These might be transient trends. It isn't unprecedented for smaller parties to capitalise on dissatisfaction with the ruling when the main opposition is still discredited and divided after recent ejection from office. In late 1981, the SDP-Liberal Alliance polled at about 50%. In a general election, 18 months later, they won 23 seats. Reform is not the first party to be led by Nigel Farage and his previous vehicles – Ukip; the Brexit party – didn't convert their midterm menace into parliamentary seats. But that was when the Conservatives were competitive. In 2019, Farage didn't even try to rival Boris Johnson, withdrawing more than 300 candidates to make a Tory majority more likely. There are reasons to think the current fragmentation in party support describes a more durable shift in the structure of British politics. Reform's ascent, mostly at the expense of the Tories, conforms to an international pattern of populists and nationalists challenging more established rightwing parties and, in the American case, swallowing the old guard whole. The moribund centre-right tradition of English conservatism doesn't look any closer to resuscitation than the twitching corpse of the pre-Trump Republican party. Powerful social and cultural trends are driving these changes. They express a depth of frustration and disillusionment that is resistant to appeals from candidates who come across as advocates for continuity of the existing system. This helps explain Labour's failure to sustain its status as the nation's preferred alternative to the Tories almost as soon as the election was over. The campaign foregrounded safety and reassurance, defining change primarily as a switch of personnel at the top. In the absence of a clear agenda for the future, Starmer and Reeves ended up owning everything that is desultory about the present. In an age of endemic mistrust in politics, there was precious little benefit of the doubt to be earned. Almost overnight, Labour became just another load of politicians, sounding the same, doing unpopular stuff and making excuses for why things aren't getting any better. That feels unfair to ministers who argue, with justification, that last autumn's budget and Wednesday's spending review set Britain on a path that is very different from anything the Tories had in mind. But precious months were wasted where the gap was too hard to discern, when the only visible agenda was painful tinkering with the status quo. The problem is not the trajectory now, but the shallowness of the angle where the lines diverged last July. It is the hesitancy of the steps, the stiff posture, that makes Labour look less like a fresh team with a purposeful stride, more like the familiar retread of a much longer incumbency. Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist One year of Labour, with Pippa Crerar, Rafael Behr and more On 9 July, join Pippa Crerar, Rafael Behr, Frances O'Grady and Salma Shah as they look back at one year of the Labour government and plans for the next four years Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The National
an hour ago
- The National
A centrist position can only be justified after equality is achieved
Inequality isn't neutral, it's a tilted seesaw. It pushes the poorest further down while boosting the wealth realisation and accumulation of the richest. To stand atop that imbalance and declare yourself 'perfectly balanced' is at best disingenuously counterproductive, and at worst outright delusional. What's needed is not performative equilibrium, but structural redress. Redistribution of wealth, regulation of exploitative advantage, restoration of public infrastructure, and creation of genuine opportunity – these are the conditions that lift people out of inequality. Only then, once the seesaw is levelled, can a centrist stance become viable. Balance must be built, not assumed. The centre can only hold if the extremes are held in fair tension. Labour offer nothing to correct the imbalance. Kemi Badenoch blames those weighing the seesaw down, as though the gravity of individual circumstances were a moral failing. Reform UK want to demolish the entire playground because it's 'too expensive', with no coherent plan to rebuild – just the fantasy that further disruption equals progress. The SNP, in government, have at least tried to steady the seesaw – tried to share the swings, repair the climbing frame, and offer fairer play. But they don't own the playground. They're fenced into Westminster's turf, and Keir Starmer seems determined to keep the gates locked. Ron Lumiere via email THE lesson from the Hamilton by-election result for the SNP is to let Labour and the Tories fight it out with Reform UK to represent the dwindling number of myopically indoctrinated supporters of the Union and focus on the critical argument that only independence can bring about a radical 'change in direction' for the UK through the constitutional change necessary to seriously address the fundamental problems confronting 'broken Brexit Britain'. The lesson for First Minister John Swinney is that it is now urgent that he arouse the passion and vigour for independence quietly dormant within him or step aside, at least from the leadership of the SNP, and support an individual who can inspiringly lead the country to independence before the end of this decade. A majority of MSPs supporting independence in the next Scottish election must represent a mandate for the Scottish Parliament to hold a binding constitutional referendum which, if denied by the UK Government, must legitimately underpin making the next General Election a 'de facto referendum' on independence. A majority of votes at the Scottish election must represent a mandate to commence independence negotiations should the UK Government fail, over a maximum period of one year, to pass legislation enabling the Scottish Parliament to hold constitutional referenda. Manifestos of the SNP and the other independence parties should both state these commitments and state the necessary actions that will follow should a resultant mandate be met with continued undemocratic intransigence by the UK Government. Further procrastination by the UK Government on implementing the democratically expressed wishes of the people of Scotland must not be accepted. To paraphrase the currently popular words of Roman General Vegetius, if you want true democracy, prepare to fight cynical totalitarianism. Stan Grodynski Longniddry, East Lothian AS a 'grassroots' member of the Alba party, let me send a message of solidarity to the erstwhile estranged 'grassroots' SNP people of good will who, for completely understandable reasons, are having a crisis of faith in their leadership. I speak for myself and for the majority of my co-activists in Alba when I say that a reunification process involving at the very least a common electoral strategy is an increasingly urgent necessity not only for an independence super-majority next year but equally in order to restore the 'brotherly love' that will silence the peals of laughter that have been echoing in the the corridors and bars of Westminster for too long. The Alba 'schism', I think most of you recognise now, was based on fundamental concerns relating to the priorities of the SNP leadership at that time in civic, judicial and civic matters. Many supporters no doubt shared some of those concerns but chose to bravely fight on within the ranks, hoping to maintain the post-2014 momentum generated by all of us. Those days, and the resentments and misunderstandings that proceeded from them, are past now and in the 'past they must remain' if we are to deliver a nation fit for our children and grandchildren. This is no time for huffs and hubris. That will require explicit, authentic and visible acts of forgiveness and reconciliation personally and collectively across the entire movement. I have made a start. It is not easy, but it is great to feel renewed camaraderie. We need SNP/Alba events formally and informally across this land, starting now. Alba speakers need to be invited to all SNP events and vice-versa to allow ice to melt sufficiently before next spring, and full participation and collaboration in all the Yes movement events ' under one banner' to reignite unity of purpose is essential. Those of you who agree with these sentiments, please make that abundantly clear to your departing or aspiring leadership, and perhaps through the course of these next 12 months we will once again 'be brithers a' for a' that' Dr Andrew Docherty Selkirk
