By Ian Wood
I was never worried about UKIP. I was never worried about the Brexit Party. I was never worried about Reform UK.
As for Nigel Farage, he makes me laugh. He is a rich charlatan. His MPs are a rabble. His policy programme folded like a cardboard wardrobe.
I have never been worried about Nigel Farage either. He has no answers. He has plenty of questions, and an inexhaustible wellspring of hatred. But he is ludicrous.
I am rather worried about Sir Keir Starmer though. We all know he is a dyed-in-the-wool European, and was a doughty and skilful operator as Brexit spokesman for Jeremy Corbyn.
But he is not a leader, and may not be a politician at all. It’s easy to be anti-Brexit when it looked like Remain was going to win the referendum. He is like a child who won’t dive headlong into the sea until everyone else has done it.
He has finally been dragged into speaking out against Farage and Reform. Labour was offending its natural supporters and putting off moderate tactical voters from other parties. So now he has nailed his colours, correctly, to the anti-hatred mast, but still has a suite of policies that are daunting and look terrible for migrants. That is incoherent.
But finally he has set his face against Farage’s bonkers idea of deporting immigrants who are legally working here, just because they’re foreign. We should applaud this modest step. It should not have taken the Labour leader weeks to declare that he rejects a racist policy.
Much more quietly, and at the same time, he is finessing agreements with the European Union that will help with the processing of asylum applications, and perhaps slow or stop small boat crossings. It won’t be as good as the deal we had as members of the EU, but many will feel it is a step in the right direction. My own view is that people are people, and humans are humans, and national borders are in many cases artificial constructs. But I think most people would disagree with me. So if it’s important to most people to stop other people making dangerous journeys to come and live and work in this country, perhaps because they have relatives here, or perhaps because they can speak English, then I suppose we must count it a good thing that Starmer is doing something about it.
So he is talking about stopping small boat crossings, but also saying deporting foreigners who work here would tear our country apart. It’s impossible to know where he really stands. Because to my mind the really big issue is the EU. And he is just as inconsistent about that. Because he is saying the UK will never rejoin the EU in his lifetime, and we are not going to rejoin the single market or customs union, Rachel Reeves is now publicly saying that youth mobility deals with the EU and closer cooperation in the European jobs market would keep taxes down. If we don’t get growth from Europe, she seems to be saying, we will have to put taxes up. But her boss is saying, and has never stopped saying, we will never rejoin the single market, which would be a simple continuation of the logic of greater youth mobility.
The joke of course is that this is exactly what happened in the 1950s and 1960s. Europe had kicked things off with the Council of Europe in 1949, and then followed it up with the European Coal and Steel Community two years later. The United Kingdom didn’t join in for another twenty years. In all that time we messed about, saying one thing and patently doing another. Harold Wilson didn’t want to join the European Economic Community because he didn’t want an argument with his own party, but inevitably when the moment came to nail his colours to the mast he finagled a modest renegotiation with the EEC which the public approved, by a comfortable margin. In this regard, Ted Heath was a lot braver than Wilson, because his party was full of xenophobes.
And now, once again, we have a knee-buckling flibbertigibbet as Labour prime minister. Rachel Reeves said what she said because she knows Starmer agrees with her. Indeed, pretty much the whole world, privately or not, agrees with her. And yet Starmer and his new Home Secretary are saying unnecessary and bilious things about the need to stop immigration, even as Rachel Reeves is talking about the need for greater youth mobility.
The truth is that we need immigrants in this country, and we need bigger markets to sell our goods and buy products inexpensively. It makes no sense to have a free market in people, which we apparently want to be in, sort of, but not to have a free market in goods and services. We need both. As everyone knows.
We are on a hamster wheel of hatred, and it is not only damaging our prosperity, but also harming our discourse.
Starmer’s equivocation is not only ruining his administration, it’s killing his party.
