Four things we’ve learnt from the leaked Labour/Ukip paper

How will Labour respond to the threat from Ukip? Thanks to today’s scoop by the Telegraph’s Ben Riley-Smith, we now know. A leaked internal memo (pdf here) singles out immigration as the biggest issue to tackle and advises activists ‘moving the conversation on’ to another topic — something that has annoyed many in and outside of the party.

With Ed Miliband outlining Labour’s immigration plan for the general election today, the timing and contents of this document couldn’t be any worse for the leader. Here are four things you need to know about the paper, entitled ‘Campaigning against Ukip’:

1.) Labour realises that it can never beat Ukip on immigration

The headline news from the paper is that Labour has decided not to out-Ukip Ukip on immigration. Instead of trying to look tougher, the authors suggest campaigners ‘must instead be moving the conversation on to issues where we have clear policy which tackles the problems people are worried about’:

‘Following from this, when we embark on policy messaging around immigration, which is not an area where Labour has the strongest lead over other parties, we should ensure that this messaging is always done in conjunction with other policy areas.