Starmer Admits Mass Immigration Risks Making Britain an “Island of Strangers” as He Announces Latest Crackdown – But Refuses to Cap Numbers

Keir Starmer admitted mass immigration risks making Britain an “island of strangers” today as he announced the latest crackdown – but still refused to put a cap on numbers amid a Reform electoral surge hitting Labour hard. The Mail has more.

The PM deployed the “take back control” Brexit slogan at a press conference in Downing Street as he pledged to end the “betrayal” of reliance on cheap foreign labour.

Sir Keir accused the Tories of overseeing an explosion in numbers while in power, saying the system seemed “designed to permit abuse” and was “contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart”.

He said he would give Brits what they had “asked for time and time again” and “significantly” reduce legal inflows.

In a pivotal moment, he also rejected the Treasury orthodoxy that high immigration drives growth – pointing out the economy has stagnated in recent years. 

Under the blueprint, skills thresholds will be hiked and rules on fluency in English toughened. 

Migrants will also be required to wait 10 years for citizenship rather than the current five, and face deportation for even lower-level crimes.

However, doubts have been raised about whether the White Paper proposals will have a big enough impact – as it does not include any targets or the hard annual cap being demanded by critics. 

Sir Keir underlined his determination that the changes will mean “migration numbers fall” but added: “If we do need to take further steps… then mark my words we will.”

He refused to guarantee that net migration will fall every year from now, saying: “I do want to get it down by the end of this Parliament significantly.”

The premier said: “Let me put it this way, nations depend on rules, fair rules.

“Sometimes they’re written down, often they’re not, but either way, they give shape to our values, guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to each other.

“Now in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important.

“Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.”

The announcement comes less than a fortnight after Reform UK rode a wave of rising public anger on immigration to triumph in the local elections, delivering a string of damaging defeats to Labour.

Home Office aides are said to fear that without deep-rooted reforms, annual net migration will settle even higher than the 340,000 level projected by the Office for National Statistics.

There are concerns it will end up closer to 525,000 by 2028 – when the country will be preparing for a General Election – because migrants are staying for longer than previously thought. The rate stood at 728,000 in the year to June last year.

However, the Treasury has been resisting the most dramatic steps for fear of further damaging the ailing economy.

Worth reading in full.

In the Telegraph, Kamal Ahmed – whose father came over from Sudan in the 1960s – says that “immigration should be treated with the same seriousness as economic policy, with an annual ‘Immigration Budget’ laying out levels of immigration by country, emigration data, asylum claims, case backlogs, deportations and small boat crossings”.

As the Institute for Government argues, there should also be an annual “Migration Plan, setting out [the Government’s] objectives for the immigration system and how it aims to achieve them”.

“Governments around the world already pursue similar models,” the IFG said. “The Canadian and Australian governments each carry out annual processes to broker between different immigration policy priorities and articulate a multi-year strategy for migration. New Zealand’s Residence Programme, too, offers ideas for how policies can be enacted.”

Kemi Badenoch has said Labour “doesn’t believe in secure borders” and questioned Starmer’s commitment to reducing immigration numbers. The Conservative leader said Starmer “once called all immigration laws racist” (a reference, according to the Telegraph, to a book review Starmer wrote when he was a lawyer in the late 1980s, where he said there is a “racist undercurrent which permeates all immigration law”). Badenoch tweeted:

Keir Starmer once called all immigration laws racist.

So why would anyone believe he actually wants to bring immigration down?

When I proposed ending the automatic route to British citizenship and introducing a legally binding cap, the government laughed it off.

Now—nine months into office and after voting against every serious attempt we’ve put forward to cut numbers—Starmer suddenly wants you to think he cares.

Labour doesn’t believe in secure borders. You can’t trust them to protect ours.

The Telegraph summarises the key measures in Labour’s immigration white paper:

• Citizenship: Migrants will have to wait up to 10 years before they can apply for citizenship, ending the automatic right to apply for indefinite leave to remain and citizenship after five years. Only people who can demonstrate having made a “real and lasting contribution” to the economy and society will be able to apply for permanent residency before the 10-year period.
• Language: Skilled foreign workers will face tougher English language tests to get visas to come to the UK.
• Foreign care workers: Care homes will be barred from recruiting foreign staff from overseas from later this year and will instead be required to hire foreign workers who are already in the UK or British staff.
• Crime: Any offence committed by a foreign national in the UK will be reported to the Home Office rather than only those crimes where they have been jailed, as is presently the rule. This raises the prospect that migrants could be removed from the UK for lower-level offences.
• Skilled workers: Re-introduce a threshold for skilled foreign workers to graduate level after it was scrapped by Boris Johnson. Employers will still be allowed to recruit lower skilled workers using the points-based system but only if they are in critical sectors.
• Students: The white paper is also expected to force foreign graduates to leave the UK unless they get a graduate-level job, based on skill levels rather than salary.