NOBODY believes a word of what Sir Keir Starmer said in his speech on uncontrollable migration. So Labour MP Nadia Whittome and the rest of the outraged progressive left needn’t worry about his new-found populist approach to politics they so abhor.
Nobody believes that Starmer is Nigel Farage reincarnated, let alone Enoch Powell. As Nigel Farage himself noted, it was not so long ago that Starmer was making the case for freedom of movement.
Our PM changes his principles as fast as he changes his clothes. Look at his about turn views on what’s a woman and what he thinks about Donald Trump. Today it all ‘likes and respects’ Donald Trump, again to the fury of his party. Five years ago he was horrified at the idea of his becoming President again. That was more believable.
So what’s made Starmer ‘channel’ Nigel Farage and risk the righteous indignation it’s provoked across party lines? Labour’s ever declining popularity in the polls is of course a factor. But the catalyst for Starmer’s ‘playing catch-up with Farage’ was Labour’s long-awaited and underwhelming immigration White Paper. This was the reason for his speech – to jazz it up and make it sound stronger than it is. The White Paper vows to bring down the numbers ‘significantly’, but read the small print and you’ll find it conveniently fails to tell us much on the ‘how’.
So Starmer’s speech was just another exercise in duplicity – disguising a useless White Paper which still sets no cap on net migration – figures that a couple of days ago were once again revised upwards by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
As the ever vigilant Alp Mehmet Migration Watch has pointed out, the White Paper is no more than an admission of failure. It is ‘based on nonsense premises and a data desert’ that still ‘offers no concrete plans to fix it or a target figure’. Titled ‘Restoring control over the immigration system’, Mehmet points out that though the White Paper acknowledges that ‘data gathered on migration flows has historically been inadequate’, it offers only vague promises to ‘work with the Migration Advisory Committee, the ONS and the Office for Budget Responsibility’ to overhaul the data-gathering system.
Furthermore, any ‘overhaul’ which does take place will inevitably only tinker with the system, ‘rather than offering the wide-ranging change that the British people need and want’.
Though admitting that integration has failed, it focuses on English language as the main factor, rather than the type and background of immigrants themselves. A significant factor that the Conservative MP Nick Timothy spelt out in Parliament on Monday.
In plain language, the White Paper sidesteps the more significant ‘integration’ factor of the complementarity of religious beliefs and culture.
Not only this, as Migration Watch’s press release also points out, the government has buried its admission that only 44 per cent of those on family visas are employed, that last year, 86,049 family visas were issued and 128,020 were extended. This means 119,879 immigrants will be net dependants. The White Paper lays out no plans to fix this.
The White Paper offers little on how a ‘significant reduction’ in migration is going to be achieved, Alp Mehmet, Chairman of Migration Watch observes. Meanwhile ‘net migration, now the only driver of population growth’ he says, ‘will continue into the foreseeable future, as we increasingly become an island populated by strangers, and poorer to boot. What a missed opportunity this is proving to be’.
Indeed.
