What can be expected in terms of migration policies from Keir Starmer's government? (Open Migration)
The Tories are gone and so is the Rwanda deportation plan, but the prospects for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Britain remain bleak.
The outcome of the General Elections of the 4th of July in the United Kingdom turned out to be a majority of 411 seats for Keir Starmer's Labor Party, a true supermajority, considering the 650 total seats in the House of Commons.
On the front of hostile policies to migration, the Conservatives' deportation plan to Rwanda has not seen the light of day, thanks to the role of the Courts and the legal challenges, alongside the roles of NGOs and activists. It has mainly represented an expense (over £400,000 as of March 2024) to fund the numerous trips of Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, James Cleverly, and other ministers to Kigali. Keir Starmer officially announced the end of the plan in one of his first acts as the new PM.
However, what does the new governing party intend to do on the migration front and what political ideas can we form on the approach to the topic, by looking at the programs that Labour and other parties have presented during the electoral campaign?
The views on migration in the British parties’ manifestos
“The electoral programs of the British parties, on the migration front, have focused on two main aspects: the first is economic migration for work, or what type of post-Brexit entries the government wants to encourage (whether skills-based and which ones, but also the entries that a future government would like to limit) and the second concerns asylum policies, and particularly crossings of the Channel on small boats". As Daniel Trilling, freelance journalist and author of Lights in the Distance, explains to Open Migration: “The Conservatives have promised for many years to reduce net migration, Sunak’s slogan was “Stop the boats” promising various things to achieve the latter, from raising the salary cap to being able to stay in the UK or preventing family reunification based on visas. Their program included all this, including the plan for Rwanda."
According to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) at the end of 2023, net migration stood at 722,000, excluding British citizens; the ONS then underlines how the increase in flows from outside the European Union towards the United Kingdom after the pandemic in 2020 was caused by work, study, family, humanitarian corridors and asylum. In 2022 these arrivals amounted to 235,000, 361,000, 50,000, 172,000, and 76,000 respectively, for a total, including other factors of 925,000.
“As for Labour, they also talk about reducing net migration, without however going into detail on how they intend to do this, but what is most notable is that they have not said they will lift restrictions from the Conservatives to limit economic migration to the United Kingdom. On the front of asylum and arrivals by sea in the English Channel, they have specified that they will not continue the plan for Rwanda, but their approach beyond this, on security and repression regarding human traffickers in Northern France, it's similar to what the Conservatives have said on this front,” continues Trilling.
Another point noted by Trilling is “that both major parties have generally (not just on migration policies) avoided specifying exactly how they intend to achieve what they promise, particularly given the dire economic state of the country.”
Fizza Qureshi, CEO of the Migrants Rights Network, also makes the point that Labour's and Conservative programs on migration are worrying. “We knew the Conservatives would continue with their current mandate, stopping boats using inflammatory language, through policies of dehumanisation and denying people the right to protection. The Tories have followed the instincts of the right-wing electorate and are competing with Farage's Reform Party. There is this idea that there is mass migration to the UK it needs to be countered by reducing visa sponsorships for working men and women, or the number of family members that can join international students.”
“Then there is Labour, which equally wants to appear tough on migration policies to compete with the (previous) government and Reform narratives. Labor will not continue the Rwanda plan, but did not shy away from the idea of developing something similar. This idea of deportations to a third country is not outside the Labor Party's thoughts."
Qureshi continues: “The other parties, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the SNP (Scottish National Party) have shown themselves to be more open about immigration policies to migration policies. However, there have been talks in the programs of squeezing the right to protection, even if there is concern about a racist and unjust system for different groups of migrants. This system is racist because the people of the global majority (African and Asian) suffer disproportionately from these migration policies, while for others, like the Ukrainians as the main example, the system works in their favor."
Trilling then underlines how Labor has declared its intention to use, as part of the discussion and the security tone on migration policies, anti-terrorism powers against human traffickers with regard to landings in England, while Farage's Reform party “has an even tougher policy than the Conservatives, with the aim of reducing net migration to zero”.
Looking back to previous Labour governments, Trilling highlights how the large network of migrant detention centres has been almost entirely built by governments led by Tony Blair.
Brexit’s long wave on migration
The 4th of July elections were the first post-Brexit ones for the United Kingdom, as the 2016 referendum and the implementation of the British exit from the EU had been at the center of the 2015, 2017 , and 2019 elections.
Is there an anti-migration wave in the political debate? “Electorally, the UK is going against the trend of the rest of Europe, with a return of the centre-left at the expense of the Right, but at the same time the excellent results for Reform UK demonstrate that support for right-wing populism continues to remain substantial in the UK, following similar patterns that we have seen elsewhere.”
“The relationship between Reform and the Conservatives and how the latter have changed since Brexit is indicative of the erosion of the distinction between the far right and the centre-right, a process sometimes called convergence. The growth of right-wing populism has undermined the order of things in the British political scene and as in other liberal democracies in the world it is something destined to stay", concludes Trilling.
For Qureshi “Brexit has changed the structure of public discourse by using migrants as a scapegoat. The trend that followed is that of a constant representation of migration and migrants as a threat, from EU citizens to people from Turkey (when it was presented as a potential new member of the EU) up to those seeking asylum. All this has produced the scenario in which migration is a political football. It is treated as a threat to security, a threat to public services, an ongoing problem."
Starmer's comments singling out Bangladeshi migrants in the UK represent a further alarm bell for how racist and Islamophobic narratives are launched into the political discussion even by non-far-right parties in the political British discourse.
It should also be considered that asylum applications from Bangladeshi citizens for 2023, according to Home Office data, stood fifth, after those of citizens from Eritrea, and Starmer made this speech at an event by The Sun.
Two connected elements emerge from these elements: the Labour leadership's idea of wanting to caress the most anti-migration and racist instincts in the British population, like their Tories predecessors, and the fact that, with the exception of the official cancellation of the deportations for Rwanda, the outlook for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees remains bleak in the UK.
The arrival of the Border Security Bill, the Home Office plan, now directed by Yvette Cooper in the King's Speech (the King's speech, in which the Prime Minister's priorities for the following year are presented) today promises to be on target of anti-terrorism and security policies, applied to migration and border control policies, highlighted by Trilling and Qureshi.
The original article, published in Open Migration in Italian can be found here.
The newsletter will be back in the next few days, with the next two editions before the August break. Also, I have some good reads and podcasts suggestions here.
First-time Muslim candidates make up most diverse parliament in history, by Aisha Rimi, Hyphen
The Show Trial of Arundhati Roy, by Shashi Tharoor, The New Arab
From Sherlock Holmes to Line of Duty, Britain loves Copaganda, by Leah Cowan, The Lead
A Starmer Situationship, Over the Top and Under the Radar (podcast) by Gary Younge and Carys Afoko