Starmer’s immigration policy is immoral – and stupid

This is why Labour’s new immigration policy is so stupid. Even if Yvette Cooper arranged to be filmed machine-gunning small boats in the Channel, Reform would just scoff and say that if elected, they would use a bigger gun. 

But worse than the idiocy is the fact that not only will this policy not win Labour a single right wing bigot’s vote, nor the vote of anyone who no longer “trusts” the major parties, it is also economically damaging. Immigration is good for the British economy – no ifs, no buts – and therefore reducing it will make us worse off.

The British economy suffers from huge skills shortages. Manufacturing, hospitality, construction, farming and food production, health and the care sector are all begging for staff and need immigrants to fill those gaps. 

In the long term, it would be easiest if British workers did some of those jobs. That requires changes in training and in the education sector needs massive reforms that will take 15 to 20 years to bear fruit. Apprenticeships also help, but they have been devastated by Tory incompetence.

More from this author: The unwanted return of Nick Clegg

Yet education and training are not all of the answer. The better educated a workforce is, the less likely it is that people are going to want to work for minimum wage at wiping the bottoms of OAPs, or picking cabbages, or waiting tables. They want to be IT experts, accountants, lawyers and entrepreneurs. 

The government wants to make care, farming, hospitality and other so-called ‘low-skilled’ jobs pay more, but this comes with a risk. The inflationary pressures will be huge, and employers moan about rising minimum wages and national insurance contributions at a time when the economy is on a knife-edge. 

In the care sector, paying staff more will translate into higher fees; who will end up paying for that? Local government is already bankrupt and the life savings of elderly people that might have helped their descendants on the property ladder are being hoovered up.

Last year, the Office for Budget Responsibility looked at the issue and found that higher immigration meant a larger economy. The OBR even took into account the extra government spending those immigrants would need, on health, education and so on. It still found a huge net contribution to the government. 

This makes sense, because though the Tories and Reform lie blatantly about immigrants causing NHS queues or crowding out school places, the truth is that immigrants tend to arrive after someone else has paid for their early healthcare and education; that they come to work and therefore to pay taxes; that many retire to their country of origin and therefore place few burdens on the NHS or the pension system. 

Those pesky immigrants coming over here and putting in more than they take out also have a decisive influence on the government’s borrowing. The OBR produced a handy chart taking  all the different scenarios into account, which showed that higher immigration would reduce borrowing by £150bn by the end of the forecast period.

Yet on Monday, Sir Keir Starmer had the cheek to say: “The theory that higher migration numbers necessarily lead to higher growth has been tested in the last four years. We’ve had the highest net migration when the last government lost control, to nearly 1 million, and stagnant growth. And so that link doesn’t hold on that evidence.” 

This is economic idiocy on a level that might even shame Donald Trump. The question to ask is how much worse would the economy have been without immigration. There is no logic or even truth in the PM’s claim.

As Professor Jonathan Portes from King’s College, the acknowledged expert on the subject pointed out in his analysis of the OBR’s work, if the government succeeds “in reducing migration very substantially below projected levels, it will have a large fiscal cost, with consequent impacts for tax and spending.” 

I wonder what Rachel Reeves makes of the latest announcement – after all, she’s going to have to find the money to cover another act of immense self-harm. 

Meanwhile, universities which have been encouraged for years to subsidise themselves by attracting foreign students now find they are facing a “levy” on foreign students, when many of them can’t find enough to make ends meet

As Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, puts it: “Following years of frozen fees, inadequate research funding and a rapid downturn in international students, the current operating environment is very challenging. We would urge government to think carefully about the impact that a levy on international student fees will have on universities and the attractiveness of the UK as a study destination.” 

Doubtless the chancellor has also set a few billion aside to bail out the higher education sector, or is she planning to massively increase student fees and debts? No? Oh!

The PM finished his attack on the country’s prospects by claiming that soaring immigration has done “incalculable” damage to the UK, economically and politically, and that we are in danger of becoming “an island of strangers”. The people I regard as strangers are the racist far right.

The government has chosen to spend the next four years fighting on the chosen ground of these people. It could have held its nerve, watched net migration steadily fall after the big jumps of admitting refugees from Ukraine and Hong Kong and simply the Tories and Farage tear each other apart while it got on with the job of improving growth, wealth, public services, education and training. 

Then it could have run for re-election in four years on a platform of sustained apolitical pro-growth policies and improving public services. Instead, it has panicked and conceded the next four years of agenda-setting to Nigel Farage while bringing in policy that will damage the country’s prospects.

Britain’s liberal majority are now left with only the Greens, the Lib Dems and regional independents to vote for, I predict Labour will now lose far more votes and seats to them than it ever does to Reform. 

This is not just economic self-harm, this is not just immoral, this is not just stupid, this is not just pandering for no gain. It is political suicide.