Keir Starmer is caught in yet another trap of his own making | Rafael Behr

Keir Starmer is embattled but not threatened. It is simply a unusual combination. He is not challenged by Kemi Badenoch, who is anemic successful parliament and irrelevant extracurricular it. Nor is the premier curate successful contiguous peril from Reform, the Liberal Democrats oregon the Greens. They airs electoral challenges successful the coming years but they can’t halt the authorities passing laws successful the meantime. The Labour person is not successful information from backbench rebellion. Dissenting MPs turn successful fig but not astatine the complaint that presages regicide.

Starmer has been dealt a pugnacious manus successful immoderate ways. He inherited a rotten system successful a volatile world. But helium besides has advantages not enjoyed by galore of his predecessors: a immense Commons majority, an obedient cabinet, a splintered opposition. His top occupation isn’t a person oregon party. It isn’t an concern lobby oregon overseas power. It is simply a question, tiny but profoundly penetrating: why?

Labour has done tons of stuff, often making radical cross. Winter substance payments person been rationed; businesses person been landed with a higher nationalist security bill. There person been winners, too. Junior doctors and bid drivers got a wage emergence to extremity their strikes, but occupation averted doesn’t triumph governmental friends arsenic efficiently arsenic symptom makes enemies.

It is hard for immoderate authorities to gain recognition for what they bash if voters cannot easy intuit why they are doing it. This is Labour’s large problem.

“Why” is simply a deceptively elemental question, containing 2 antithetic concepts. It inquires into process and motive. It asks “from what cause?” and “to what purpose?” One is an mentation astir the past, the different is simply a communicative astir the future.

For example, 1 reply to the question of wherefore chopped benefits is that the Tories near a £22bn fund achromatic hole. But that doesn’t explicate wherefore it has to beryllium wintertime substance oregon idiosyncratic independency payments. The Conservative bequest is simply a origin of fund choices, not a motivation compass pointing to the amended path.

Another reply mightiness beryllium that the benefits measure is simply a mediocre usage of nationalist money, going to radical who don’t request it oregon could regenerate it with wages if lone they would enactment harder. But if that is the argument, the Conservative bequest loses its potency. If determination are savings to beryllium made anyway, and that’s the close happening to do, wherefore blasted it connected the achromatic hole?

It should beryllium imaginable to recognise that determination are perverse incentives that request ironing retired of the benefits system, portion besides striving not to thrust susceptible radical into destitution. But that is an docket of reforming the state, not shrinking it nether fiscal duress. So which is it? It is hard to dependable authentic successful defence of a argumentation erstwhile your party’s halfway economical statement and its corporate assemblage connection each shriek reluctance and queasy compulsion.

The aforesaid occupation present arises with Labour’s migration policy. Starmer has declared that helium wants to bring nett migration down. Why?

One reply is that voters accidental they privation it and volition backmost Nigel Farage if they don’t get it. The premier curate insists that isn’t the reason. In a code launching an immigration achromatic paper connected Monday, helium rejected immoderate proposition that authorities argumentation was astir “this oregon that strategy, targeting these voters, responding to that party”.

That wouldn’t request saying if his assemblage recovered it casual to ideate little cynical motives. But if we instrumentality Starmer astatine his word, what does helium accidental is the crushed for this peculiar acceptable of policies?

The statement is that the Tories ran an open-door policy, importing workers to bash jobs that mightiness different person been done by British citizens. That the home workforce lacked the skills to bash those jobs was besides a grounds of Conservative neglect. The influx of foreigners undermined societal cohesion. Without reversing these trends, Britain risks becoming “an land of strangers”, the premier curate said. The harm already done is “incalculable”.

The projected remedy is to stem the travel of migrants. The shortfall successful workers volition beryllium supplied from a glut of millions who are classified arsenic “economically inactive” successful labour marketplace data, but susceptible of enactment (or volition soon beryllium deemed arsenic specified by the Department for Work and Pensions).

The spread successful skills volition beryllium mended with backing from higher levies charged connected businesses that petition visas for migrant workers. Employers that privation to bring successful foreigners indispensable besides person an approved program to boost the capabilities of home workers.

There is simply a dubious simplicity successful a labour marketplace equation that neatly cancels retired nett migration with re-activated benefits claimants.

Assuming the power is adjacent imaginable it is gargantuan successful scope – a cardinal reconfiguration of the mode Britain works. The achromatic insubstantial concedes, with unintentional bathos, that the process “will instrumentality clip to establish”.

It doesn’t admit the cost. The Home Office could crook disconnected the visa taps and anticipation for a occurrence successful the home jobs marketplace earlier the NHS, societal attraction and different services are crippled by unit shortages. More likely, the Treasury volition intervene, insisting that the modulation beryllium incremental capable to support the economical wheels turning. Net migration volition travel down – it is falling already – but not with specified tangible demographic effect that voters volition announcement a alteration successful the nationalist complexion and convey Starmer for it.

If the harm done by the Tories was “incalculable”, however volition Labour cipher the simplification successful harm aft conscionable a fewer years of moving its ain marginally little permissive regime? The lurid rhetoric that was chosen to specify the motive down the achromatic insubstantial – answering the question of why Starmer is doing this – guarantees that it volition beryllium judged a nonaccomplishment by the precise radical to whom that connection is addressed.

And yet astir of the existent argumentation could person been presented with the other inflection. The accent could person been connected Britain’s humanities grounds of successfully integrating migrant communities and the immense economical and taste publication they person made. The statement that unmanaged borders undermine assurance successful authorities and enactment assemblage cohesion astatine hazard could inactive beryllium made. So mightiness the lawsuit for rebalancing the labour market.

But determination is simply a mode to narrate those issues arsenic a confrontation with cynical opportunists who revel successful part and foment communal suspicion. Immigration betterment could beryllium sold successful presumption that demolish the economical illiteracy of parties whose concern exemplary is burning bridges and turning neighbours into strangers. Labour could inactive speech astir rules, fairness and borderline control, but marque it a situation to Farage alternatively of a tribute to him.

But that would beryllium retired of quality for a premier curate who has reached the apical by swerving hard choices, flinching from hard debates. His method has worked. It is why helium is premier minister, but lone successful 1 consciousness of the word. It is the crushed for his victory, not the purpose.

The deficiency of that 2nd part, a amended reply to the question why Starmer is premier minister, explains however helium has travel to look truthful constrained, adjacent with parliament astatine his command; beleaguered erstwhile his enemies are divided. It defines the unusual spectacle of the unchallenged person who besieged himself.

• Rafael Behr is simply a Guardian columnist