{"id":283336,"date":"2025-11-25T23:25:41","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T23:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/283336\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T23:25:41","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T23:25:41","slug":"keir-starmers-hardline-approach-to-immigration-tears-apart-the-british-left-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/283336\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer\u2019s hardline approach to immigration tears apart the British left | International"},"content":{"rendered":"

On September 30, Keir Starmer addressed Labour Party members at the Liverpool conference, calling them to a fight \u201cfor the soul of the country\u201d against the enemy represented by the right-wing populist party Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage<\/a>. He announced decisions \u201cthat members might not always be comfortable with,\u201d referring to the issue currently tearing the British left apart: the control of irregular immigration. On that day alone, 531 more people arrived on English shores after crossing the Channel. <\/p>\n

The new set of measures announced last week by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has caused considerable discomfort among many Labour MPs. Among other things, it proposes increasing the waiting period for permanent residency in the United Kingdom from five to 20 years; a review every 30 months of the status of all asylum seekers, with the possibility of sending them back to their country of origin if the government believes the risk has disappeared; and the option of deporting children born in the U.K. along with their parents.<\/p>\n

Up to 20 members of parliament have rebelled, voicing extremely strong criticism, using terms such as \u201ccruelty\u201d or \u201crepugnance,\u201d and accusing the government of imitating the fascist rhetoric of the far right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find it disappointing and depressing that the government is taking such a hard line, especially when children could be among its victims. And I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessary. We\u2019re not going to defeat Reform by trying to be as tough as they are. They\u2019ll always outdo us. What we must do is remain true to certain basic principles like the Geneva Convention or the European Convention on Human Rights,\u201d laments Alf Dubs (Baron Dubs), the Labour politician who now sits in the House of Lords, in a conversation with EL PA\u00cdS. He was one of the many Jewish children who arrived in the United Kingdom from what was then Czechoslovakia in the operation known as the Kindertransport, which saved them from the Nazi threat. Dubs has dedicated much of his life to the defense and support of refugees.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpain has shown that there is a way to move forward on this issue without resorting to all these hysterical policies,\u201d says Dubs. “Far-right parties across Europe<\/a> are exploiting the refugee issue to gain votes. We see it in Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, Germany, and France. And now it has reached the United Kingdom. Of course, we have to be tough when it comes to fighting the mafias that traffic in migrants<\/a>, but we must adhere to basic legal principles. The idea that people who have been in this country for almost 20 years can be deported belongs to another era. How do you achieve community integration that way? What do we do with the children who were born here? Do we deport them along with their parents? All these dilemmas are unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minister Mahmood is of Pakistani origin and a practicing Muslim. Her parents were also undocumented immigrants when they arrived in the U.K. and settled in Birmingham. Starmer\u2019s government believes that her background and her firm, powerful oratory can serve as a shield against internal criticism of the crackdown on irregular immigration. Mahmood herself, who has been the target of numerous racist insults throughout her life, has presented the new measures as a \u201cmoral mission\u201d for herself and the Labour Party to stem the current divisions in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this an issue that is dividing the country? If you look at all the polls, the answer has to be yes. Immigration is the issue that raises the most concern, and opinions on it are quite polarized. And it\u2019s something that isn\u2019t going to disappear from the public debate overnight, so in that sense, it was inevitable that the Labour government would try to formulate a response,\u201d explains Mihnea Cuibus, an analyst and researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, one of the most reliable and rigorous sources for analyzing and providing statistics on the phenomenon in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we look at the restrictions imposed on asylum seekers or their families, some of them are certainly severe. They could be described as far-right. But other aspects are more progressive, such as developing safer rules to facilitate legal entry into the country. The Labour government is trying to show that there is a middle ground when it comes to this issue, a way to combat uncontrolled immigration while also welcoming those who enter the country through formal channels. Will this approach work? I\u2019m not sure,\u201d he admits.<\/p>\n

There is evident internal unease within the Labour Party. The tightening of immigration policies comes on top of the social spending cuts proposed by the Starmer government, which had to backtrack to quell a rebellion within the parliamentary group. No one disputes the need to control irregular immigration. What unsettles many on the British left is the populist rhetoric used to frame it, and the excessive severity of some of the proposed measures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Labour Party is currently terrified by Reform\u2019s lead in all the polls. As things stand today, the left would be completely swept away in a general election. And the Starmer government is convinced that issues like immigration concern all those voters in the so-called \u2018red wall\u2019 [in the Midlands and the North of England], who are socially conservative but have traditionally supported Labour, and who are now attracted to Nigel Farage,\u201d explains Rohan McWilliam, a professor of history at Anglia Ruskin University who specializes in the history of the U.K. left and the Labour Party.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a truly extraordinary moment, a unique crossroads in the history of this very young government. It is comparable to the internal rebellion within the parliamentary group that it already suffered when it tried to impose social cuts to disability benefits. The proposals on immigration have provoked widespread rejection, not only among the more left-leaning wing of the Labour Party, but also among moderate MPs in the mainstream,\u201d says McWilliam, who does not rule out the possibility that internal pressure will once again lead the Starmer government to backtrack.<\/p>\n

In the first half of the 1990s, when the first Gulf War, the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia<\/a>, and the civil war in Somalia erupted, the United Kingdom granted 40,000 asylum applications over a five-year period. In 2023 alone, 50,000 people were granted asylum. More than 100,000 are currently in the middle of the asylum process, awaiting a response. Many live in hotels that have now become frequent targets of attacks by the far right.<\/p>\n

Of all the sources consulted by EL PA\u00cdS, it is striking that it was Michael Heseltine \u2014 the historic conservative politician who was an ally and rival of Margaret Thatcher<\/a> \u2014 who at 92 years old has dared more than anyone else to put his finger on the sore spot and call things by their name.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you see this?\u201d he says, holding up his cell phone. \u201cThey\u2019re affordable in any corner of the world, and anyone can see through them the standard of living in countries like France, Spain, Italy, or the U.K. If you\u2019re a young person seeing all that from the other side of the world, you\u2019re going to say to yourself, \u2018I want to be a part of that, I want my family to share in it too, and I\u2019m going to take whatever risks are necessary to get there.\u2019 These are the people who are coming to our countries, and who today play an essential role in our economies and our well-being,\u201d Heseltine explains.<\/p>\n

It turns out that, of all British voices, his is the only one who remembers that there was a time when the United Kingdom understood that it could not respond alone to global challenges, an idea that the current Labour Party in government has relegated to the background.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re too young to remember how the Americans launched the Marshall Plan at the end of World War II<\/a> to rebuild a devastated Europe. I think we should do the same today, combining all European aid programs into one and designing policies aimed at supporting the economies of the countries from which immigrants come. To offer them hope and opportunity, and convince them to stay there and not undertake such a risky journey,\u201d suggests the veteran British politician.<\/p>\n

Heseltine is one of the few who today has no problem calling Farage a fascist and comparing his xenophobic message to that of historical figures his generation suffered under, such as Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists, or Enoch Powell<\/a>, the politician who poisoned public debate in the United Kingdom with his infamous 1968 \u201cRivers of Blood\u201d speech.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On September 30, Keir Starmer addressed Labour Party members at the Liverpool conference, calling them to a fight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,420,115559,50,633,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-283336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-keir-starmer","tag-michael-heseltine","tag-news","tag-nigel-farage","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}