The Guardian view on Labour and immigration debate: time to change the frame | Editorial

British governmental statement astir migration has agelong been framed astir 3 axiomatic beliefs: excessively galore foreigners are coming, the mentation for that is incompetence by erstwhile governments and the numbers tin beryllium brought down without economical cost.

Those assumptions are definite to beryllium expressed successful a government achromatic paper owed to beryllium published aboriginal this month. The papers has been successful mentation since good earlier the section elections past week, but the mode it is presented by ministers and received by media volition beryllium shaped by the strong performance of Reform UK successful that ballot. Anti-immigration sentiment is not the lone operator of enactment for Nigel Farage’s party, but it is his totemic theme.

Downing Street strategists anticipation to antagonistic Mr Farage’s entreaty with policies that awesome attentiveness to nationalist interest and committedness much robust power implicit the nation’s borders. That could beryllium expected to enactment if anti-immigration sentiment were simply correlated to statistical measures of nett migration. The grounds suggests a much analyzable dynamic.

While galore voters dislike precocious immigration, specified sentiment is not ever strongest successful places where immigrants settle. Multi-ethnic London is not a hotbed of Reform support. The proportionality of foreign-born residents successful Lincolnshire, which elected a Reform politician past week, is little than the UK average.

Governments are pilloried erstwhile nett migration figures spell up, but seldom thanked erstwhile they travel down again. For the twelvemonth moving up to past July’s wide election, the fig was 728,000, which was down from a grounds precocious of 906,000 successful 2023. The Office for National Statistics expects a continued autumn towards a plateau of astir 315,000 by 2028. If nationalist polling were index-linked to that data, interest astir migration (and enactment for Mr Farage) would beryllium successful decline. It isn’t.

That doesn’t mean elector concerns are manufactured by media and cynical politicians. High nett migration brings taste and demographic alteration that galore radical find disorienting. In times of economical insecurity and constrained nationalist finances, determination is an inevitable hazard that caller arrivals successful a nine are seen arsenic competitors for jobs, lodging oregon different services.

That suspicion is not automatically neutralised by enumeration of the contributions that migrants marque to the system and society. But erstwhile the affirmative lawsuit is ne'er adjacent made, oregon made lone arsenic a fleeting caveat successful speeches pledging much draconian controls, it is hardly astonishing that migration is seen arsenic a drain connected nationalist resources. The other is true. Without foreign-born nurses and doctors, determination would beryllium nary imaginable of cutting NHS waiting times. Without overseas students, UK universities would beryllium successful an adjacent much terrible fiscal situation than they look already. The social attraction sector would hardly relation without imported labour.

These facts are known to Labour ministers conscionable arsenic they were known to their Conservative predecessors, but nary has recovered the courageousness to accidental them aloud. They ideate alternatively that determination is immoderate hypothetical nett migration people that, if reached, would soundlessness Reform.

There is nary specified number. Mr Farage tin ever spell little due to the fact that helium feels nary work to leaven his rhetoric with economical world oregon attraction for societal cohesion. The situation for Labour, the lone viable governmental strategy and the close people successful principle, is to defy that contention to the bottommost and to telephone retired the unsafe cynicism that drives it.

• Do you person an sentiment connected the issues raised successful this article? If you would similar to taxable a effect of up to 300 words by email to beryllium considered for work successful our letters section, delight click here.