Labour will double down on its plans to “smash the gangs” and stop small boats crossing the Channel in order to curb immigration to avoid the kind of wipeout seen by its transatlantic allies in the US Presidential elections.
Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’s election loss to Donald Trump is a reminder to the Labour government it must not be sidetracked from its pledge to end illegal migration, insiders have said.
Senior Government sources said the election result – in which immigration was a central factor in seeing Republican Donald Trump sweep to victory – reinforced the importance of delivering on the promise to tackle small boat crossings.
One source said Labour won the UK election in July because it was disciplined and focused on issues that matter to people – suggesting the Democratic campaign was distracted by political and cultural rows.
“The feeling is thank goodness we ran the campaign we did and we did not listen to those people who were saying we should be focusing on other stuff,” the source said. “The £28bn green investment, for example, is very similar to the Biden stuff. People were pushing for that but we didn’t do it and instead ran a very disciplined campaign.
“The second thing is, if we are saying, ‘Do you feel better off than you did?’ we do not want to only do that for the election just gone but the next one – it is a reminder to everyone to stay focused and not get pulled into cul-de-sacs.”
The source said immigration in particular was already a government priority – as reflected in this week’s announcements about new agreements with Western Balkans countries to increase intelligence-sharing about people traffickers.
“Everyone has been very aware this is something we need to be very careful about it is something people are concerned about. The (US) election result is another reminder that this is important to voters.”
Another government source said: “We’ve known for a long time that border security was an important issue for voters, which is why it was one of our ‘first steps’ pledges. This just reinforces that.”
The think tank Labour Together, which supported Starmer’s leadership and worked closely with him on the campaign, published a report in this year warning that liberal and left-wing political parties have often tried to avoid the issue of immigration rather than tackle it head on.
The Government must double down on its plan to demonstrate tangible change to avoid falling into the same trap as the Democrats, they said.
Immigration is emerging as one of the defining issues that will mark this Parliament. More than 1,300 migrants arrived on small boats this month alone, with more than 31,000 crossing so far this year to November – more than in the whole of last year.
In scrapping the last government’s Rwanda scheme, Labour are insisting their policy to disrupt criminal smuggling gangs will work, but this could take some time.
Additionally the rise of Reform UK – which gained five MPs at the general election and came second to Labour in nearly 90 other seats – underpins the importance for Labour of bringing illegal migration numbers down.
Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper have promised to tackle small boat crossings and irregular migration at source, with a pledge to “smash” the people-trafficking gangs they say are responsible.
But the Conservative Party has accused ministers of having no plan for doing so, and has said the deterrent has been removed by the decision to scrap the Rwanda deportation scheme, which was never up and running.
Newly appointed shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said this week: “Had the deterrent effect commenced in July as planned, we would not have seen over 17,000 illegal small boat crossings since Keir Starmer became Prime Minister.”
Scarlett Maguire, Director at JL Partners polling company, said that Labour had very little time to deliver the real change they promised, and that much of this “change” was, in the minds of voters, linked to immigration.
“In the UK immigration is absolutely neck and neck with the economy and health service in terms of voters’ concerns as a whole. And, yes, people are particularly upset about the illegal migration. But that is representative of a whole migration system that people feel is not working for them,” she said.
“Voters around the world have had a desire for change and have been desperate to drive out incumbents [in government], and I think that’s the danger for Keir Starmer now. He won on this mandate of change for action on immigration and the economy and the health service, but voters are actually going to give him a very short window for that change.”
Maguire said six in ten Labour voters expect a real change within just one year of the new government taking office.
And she said this was particularly challenging on immigration because many of the target voters the party had to win over were those in areas where Reform performed particularly well.
“It is not something they are going to be able to ignore. The problem that Labour have is a lot of voters, especially the voters they especially need to keep, so those Brexit-voting so-called ‘hero voters’ already tie together what they see to be a broken immigration system with a failing health service and with an economy that’s not working for them.
“I would think there are a lot of Labour MPs that are very worried.”
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