Starmer’s immigration speech fits with Labour tradition, but so does losing

Good morning. There are a number of rows roiling the Parliamentary Labour party — the most significant is that over the government’s planned cuts to welfare spending, where a growing rebellion could yet put the government’s spending plans in real trouble.

But the most revealing dispute is over the language in Keir Starmer’s immigration speech: some Labour MPs are comparing it to former right-wing Tory politician Enoch Powell. But the Labour leadership claims a different, and I think intensely revealing, influence. Some thoughts on that below.

Echoes of the past

Who was Keir Starmer channelling in his speech this week? Something that Starmer loyalists at Westminster — those who remain — are very keen to tell you is that there are plenty of historical Labour precedents for his proposals to reduce immigration.

Sky’s Beth Rigby reports that the politician in Downing Street minds was Roy Jenkins, who said this in the autumn of 1966:

Let there be no suggestion that immigration, in reasonable numbers, is a cross that we have to bear, and no pretence that if only those who have come could find jobs back at home our problems would be at an end.

But it does not follow that we can absorb them without limit. We have to strike a balance. That is what we are trying to do and I feel that we have been reasonably successful in recent months. We cannot lay down absolute numerical quantities, but I think that we have struck a reasonable balance and also that in the past year we have made substantial progress towards producing a healthier atmosphere, in terms of integration, on both sides — amongst both the indigenous and the immigrant community.

While over at the New Statesman, my old colleague George Eaton draws historical comparisons to that government’s reductions in visas for people elsewhere in the Commonwealth. As George reports, Downing Street aides “believe that border control isn’t an optional extra for a social-democratic party but fundamental to it”. These historical arguments, as Patrick Maguire writes in his Times column today, are ones that Starmer’s allies like to reach for to argue there is nothing “un-Labour” about his plans.

And this is true. There is nothing “un-Labour” about these proposals. Indeed, there is another echo: in 1968, facing electoral pressure from the right, the Harold Wilson government passed the Commonwealth Immigrants Act into law — a measure that several cabinet ministers believed to be socially and economically harmful. And here again we have a series of measures that several cabinet ministers believe to be socially and economically harmful.

Do you know what is also not “un-Labour”? Mismanaging the economy and losing elections. The really important thing to remember about Roy Jenkins’ speech in November 1966 is that Labour lost a lot of elections after it. It lost the next set of local elections in 1967, when the Conservatives won control of the Greater London Council, the first Tory victory for a London-wide authority since 1931.

(A full repeat of this in the next round seems unlikely, but everyone expects that Labour councillors will lose their seats at a clip in the capital, with the Starmer government’s plans to extend the period before people can secure indefinite leave to remain in the UK a particular subject of anger in MPs’ mailboxes in London.)

The next year Labour suffered heavy losses at the local elections in Glasgow and Edinburgh with the SNP finishing top of the poll in terms of votes cast in both. (A rather better chance of a strict repeat there.) It lost by-elections. It lost local elections in 1969 and in 1970 it lost the general election, which was considered a shock given Labour’s opinion poll lead, but given its performance in off-year elections beforehand probably shouldn’t have been. It took Labour 31 years after 1966 to win power with a decent majority again.

It’s true that this Labour government currently bears a striking resemblance to those particular one-and-done 20th century Labour administrations, I’m just perplexed as to why the Starmer operation is pleased with that. The first Wilson government was not particularly successful: its economic policies did not work, it achieved very little and it presaged decades of Labour division and defeat.

People at the heart of the Labour government seem to be more preoccupied about whether or not it is governing within the Labour tradition than whether it is governing well. Because frankly, the only time that Labour has been able to secure two consecutive full terms in power is when, under Tony Blair, it had a clear theory of economic growth: that of economic liberalism, openness to the world and to the EU in particular.

I don’t think it is going to come as a galloping shock to readers to learn that I think Labour should give that approach another go. But even if you disagree, Labour surely needs to commit to something — whether it is properly funding Ed Miliband’s plans for the green transition, or something else entirely. But the one place it surely should not be looking at are failed approaches from its own history, which did not work at the time and are not going to work any better now, with a less loyal electorate far less inclined to let Labour work through its midlife crisis in public.

If Labour ministers stagger on as they are, with no economic project, no overarching plan for the public services, twisting and turning in the direction of public opinion, they will, like the Wilson government did, spend all their time losing and drifting before they lose the next election.

So much of the government’s private justification for its immigration policy is about the polls, public opinion and Labour’s history. Essentially none of it is about the needs of businesses, about Labour’s own ambitions for the public realm, for construction and for actually building new housing. Unless or until that changes, this government will resemble Harold Wilson’s and it will share its trajectory, too.

Students aged 16-19 are invited to enter FT Schools’ blog competition in partnership with the Political Studies Association and ShoutOut UK by May 25. The winner and two runners up, if UK based, get to go along to a “Have I got fake news for you” parliament event in which I am a panellist. Details here.

Now try this

I have just started watching The Line (otherwise known as A French Village), which has just landed on ITVX. It tells the story of, well, a French village during the occupation and thus far is absolutely terrific, albeit in a harrowing way.

However you spend it, have a wonderful weekend!

Top stories today

• Stock up | UK ministers are considering cutting the £20,000 tax-free cash Isa allowance but debating with City of London figures the level at which it should be capped, according to two people familiar with the situation.

• Touchdown in Tirana | Keir Starmer will be urged by European leaders to raise Britain’s offer on youth mobility and fisheries to unlock a deal with the EU at a historic summit between the two sides on Monday. Starmer, speaking in Tirana in Albania yesterday, said he would not negotiate with Brussels via “megaphone diplomacy” but insisted: “We’ve made good progress”.

• Where Reform captures support | “Left behind” areas of England with poor rates of social mobility offer Reform UK the greatest electoral promise, according to a Financial Times analysis of research that exposes huge regional disparities.

• ‘It will be horrendous’ | Care providers now face a brutal adjustment, following this week’s announcement that overseas recruitment in care will end within months, as part of a broader immigration crackdown. Delphine Strauss speaks to care providers about staffing strains and the complexity of finding jobs for displaced workers.