To turn Keir Starmer, of all people, into someone who can credibly promise to bring immigration down is an act of perverse genius by the Tory party that is unparalleled in the modern political era. Presented with an open goal, the Labour leader has today stuck the ball in the net by telling readers of the Sun that his changed party will prove it is back in the service of working people by ‘not just talking about sky-high migration but acting on it’.
A pledge by Starmer to cut the immigration levels seen under the Tories has got past Labour’s activist base on the grounds of being pitched as a policy to protect British workers from being undercut by unscrupulous bosses. A party that increased net migration five-fold when it last got into power by ‘sending out search parties’ for immigrants (in the words of Peter Mandelson) and is now led by a man who once declared that all immigration laws have a ‘racist undercurrent’, has just outflanked the Conservative party to the right.
Playing with fire doesn’t even begin to describe the social recklessness and electoral stupidity of what the Tories have done
This is not down to any great skill on behalf of Starmer but because the Tories have made it so incredibly easy for him.
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