Can't we talk about something else?
The dangers of both ignoring — and obsessing over — immigration
British elections tend to hinge on which issue voters care about most. When the primary concern has been the economy, the Conservative Party often prevails. When the state of public services is front of mind, Labour has stood a better chance.
This trend partly reflects enduring public perceptions: the Conservatives are viewed — rightly or wrongly — as the party of economic competence, low taxation and fiscal restraint. In short, mean but reliable. Labour, by contrast, defines itself through a commitment to the NHS, education and vague notions of equality. Kind-hearted, but also a bit useless.
This is, of course, not a hard and fast rule. No such things exist in politics. For instance, by the eve of the 2005 election, such was Labour’s confidence in its economic record that Tony Blair was warning a vote for the Conservatives meant, “Economic stability is at risk, your job is at risk, your mortgage is at risk, the economy is at risk.”
With that disclaimer out of the way, here’s a quick and dirty summary of elections since 1945:
The one that sticks out in my mind is 2017. It is difficult to imagine it now, but for a time, Theresa May bestrode British politics. Her first PMQs performance was considered a triumph. Her joint chiefs of staff, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, struck fear into junior ministers and senior civil servants alike. “Brexit means Brexit” was treated by some commentators as if it carried the strategic weight of George Kennan’s Long Telegram. As we know, that all changed following the snap election, in which the Tories lost their majority.
May had intended for the 2017 election to be a Brexit election. Unfortunately for her, the British public decided otherwise. Disenchantment with austerity and the state of public services dominated the campaign. So much so that the Manchester Arena bombing — in which 22 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured — became less a debate about Jeremy Corbyn’s perceived weakness on national security, and more about cuts to police numbers.
Don’t talk about immigration
There is a third issue that tends to befuddle both Labour and the Tories: immigration. Keir Starmer would prefer if it simply went away as an issue. He would much rather take on Reform UK in areas where his party is stronger, ideally the NHS. Many on the liberal Left feel the same way. They point out — not without reason — that it is impossible to outflank the populist/far/hard [delete as applicable] Right on immigration. And that doing so only makes it a bigger issue.
I should know because, back in May, I suggested that Starmer risked turning voters on and sending them off to Farage. Specifically, that the prime minister had “chosen to raise the salience of immigration” without reducing it to “the sort of numbers that might satisfy its loudest opponents.” I don’t resile from that view. But the trouble with completely ignoring immigration as an issue is that it doesn’t work either.
For the first time since the referendum, immigration and asylum is the top issue of public concern, according to a recent YouGov survey for Sky News. I simply do not think that leaving the field open to Nigel Farage and Reform UK will end well either for the government or many hundreds of thousands of people living legally in Britain. In fact, we have a pretty decent case study to suggest doing so is a losing bet.
During the 2016 EU referendum, immigration was a central theme of the Leave campaign, perhaps most famously distilled by the so-called ‘Breaking Point’ poster released during the final week by Nigel Farage, which depicted a photograph of Syrian refugees at the Croatia-Slovenia border. I also hold a special torch for Penny Mordaunt, who suggested — falsely — that Turkey was poised to join the EU and that as a member state at the time, the UK would not have been able to block it.
But the Remain campaign, led in large part by David Cameron and George Osborne, calculated that focusing on immigration would only draw more attention to an issue on which they were politically vulnerable. So they focused instead on economic risks of leaving the EU. This had a ring of cold political logic to it.
Since the free movement of people is a core EU principle, the Remain side couldn’t credibly promise to reduce immigration. But nor did they do much to defend immigration, or explain its benefits in terms of the economy and public services. Consequently, Leave owned the narrative — and in particular — that tantalising and emotive message: “Take Back Control”.
In recent days, the new Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has attempted something of a third way on immigration. She told staff:
“We can only be a tolerant, open, generous country when we are able to determine who can enter and who must leave. And I know that a country that can control its own borders is a far safer country for someone who looks like me.”
If it weren’t already obvious, I have no answers. But this much seems clear: governments that ignore high-salience issues lose. Governments that raise their salience but fail to act also lose. The only path left is the hardest one — to govern well, and to be seen to govern well. Everything else is noise.