The unashamed racism of Labour’s increasingly vicious attacks on migrants and asylum seekers has two purposes: to ensure that future immigration controls meet the workforce needs of British capital and to secure the electoral support of a substantial section of the British electorate who are unapologetically racist. The notion that the government is adapting or conceding to Reform UK entirely misses the point. When, on 12 May 2025, Prime Minister Keir Starmer introduced the White Paper Restoring control over the immigration system, in a statement reminiscent of racist Tory politician Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 ‘rivers of blood speech’, this was not a sudden departure from his previous announcements on immigration since becoming prime minister in July 2024, nor from the promises set out in Labour’s election manifesto.
Certainly, Starmer has been stepping up the rhetoric, but there is no underlying shift in what he says. In a speech at an Organised Immigration Crime summit on 31 March he stated that ‘we all pay the price for insecure borders – from the cost of accommodating migrants to the strain on our public services. It is a basic question of fairness’, boasting that the government had already deported over 24,000 people. A week later, more than 130 migrant and human rights organisations denounced him for demonising migrants. Introducing the White Paper on 12 May, Starmer was unrestrained in his attack on migrants, saying that without strong immigration rules, ‘we risk becoming an island of strangers’, just as Powell had spoken of white people becoming ‘strangers in their own country’.
This was all pre-empted in Labour’s manifesto, which spoke of the need for ‘strong borders’, declared that ‘the small boats crisis, fuelled by dangerous criminal smuggler gangs, is undermining our security’, denounced the ‘tens of thousands of asylum seekers, who are indefinitely staying in hotels costing the taxpayer millions of pounds every week’ and concluded on the need to ‘turn the page and restore order to the asylum system so that it operates swiftly, firmly, and fairly; and the rules are properly enforced’.
A hostile environment
Labour has taken over lock, stock and barrel the ‘hostile environment’ terminology of preceding Tory governments, epitomised by the mendacious distinction between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ asylum seekers in the 2022 Nationality and Borders Act. Yet what is forgotten is that it was Labour who coined the ‘hostile environment’ phrase in the first place. Back in May 2007, then immigration minister Liam Byrne introduced a consultation document proposing fines for businesses employing ‘illegal’ migrants by saying: ‘What we are proposing here will, I think, flush illegal migrants out. We are trying to create a much more hostile environment in this country if you are here illegally’, adding ‘we have to make Britain much less of an attractive place if you are going to come here and break the rules.’
Creating Byrne’s ‘hostile environment’ characterised the objective of the 1997-2010 Labour governments as they introduced a plethora of legislation to control migration and asylum seekers. Its 1999 Asylum and Immigration Act made it more difficult for people to enter the country, restricted their rights of appeal and made deportation easier. The 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act denied benefits to any refugee who didn’t claim asylum immediately on entering the country and introduced a knowledge test and ‘patriotic’ ceremony for those applying for British citizenship. In 2004, another Asylum and Immigration Act weakened still further the right to appeal and reduced asylum seekers’ rights to housing and benefits. These are the racist foundations on which the current Labour government is building.
Now, Starmer has outlined some of the requirements to be placed on future migrants: ‘Skill requirements raised to degree level. English language requirements across all routes – including for dependents. The time it takes to acquire settled status extended from five years to ten. And enforcement tougher than ever because fair rules must be followed.’ In an echo of the Conservative government’s appalling Rwanda policy, Labour is searching for countries prepared to accommodate failed asylum seekers – and unsurprisingly getting only pushback: the apparent first choice, Albania, has made it clear it is not prepared to be Britain’s dumping ground.
Reform UK
According to Socialist Worker, Labour and Starmer are embracing a ‘broader right-wing strategy’ in a ‘dangerous response to the growing popularity of another politician who openly celebrates Enoch Powell –Nigel Farage’. This is both a shallow assessment and a cover-up for the continued insistence by sections of the left that Labour is the ‘lesser evil’. When the Socialist Worker dominated Stand up to Racism urged before the May elections ‘Go door to door where Reform candidates are standing to mobilise the vote against them’ this was effectively a call to anti-racists to ignore the racism of the governing Labour Party and canvass voters to support it.
In reality, Labour is responding to a large, reactionary, often openly racist layer of the electorate which has the numerical strength to determine the outcome of general elections. Labour has openly acknowledged this; in the inquest into its defeat in the 2010 general election, Byrne declared that many had abandoned Labour because they ‘are so frustrated with welfare reform and immigration’. It was a view shared by many leading Labour MPs, including current Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, former Chancellor Ed Balls, and both Miliband brothers – the unspoken implication being Labour was defeated because it was not racist enough.
This section of the electorate has certain characteristics, as we explained following Labour’s 2019 general election defeat, they tend to be elderly, from a working class background and asset-rich in that they own their own homes outright, but a substantial proportion are income-poor. To understand them, we have to go back to the 1979 election:
‘…when a large section of junior administrative and skilled manual workers – the so-called C1 and C2 social classes – defected from Labour to Thatcher’s Tories in the general election. These workers became tied to Thatcherism as they benefited from both Right to Buy and the Tory privatisation programme of the 1980s. Now retired or approaching retirement, they are a relatively privileged layer of the working class which remains a bastion of nationalist and individualist reaction, and which is once again playing a decisive role in electoral politics – three years ago over Brexit and now in the 2019 general election. 30-40 years ago they had not needed a higher education or even A-Levels to get a job with sufficient security to buy a home or make a quick buck from the sell-off of shares in the former nationalised industries such as oil, gas, water and electricity. They happily subscribed to the individualist ethos that Thatcher cultivated and then to the chauvinism following the 1982 Malvinas War that led to the landslide Tory election victory in 1983.’ (see ‘General election 2019: The legacy of Thatcherism’ on our website)
The figures back up this assessment: in 2019, outright homeowners made up 75% of all households where the Household Reference Person was aged 65 or over, even though at the time, 45.6% of all outright homeowners were in the two poorest quintiles of income. This gives them a stake in the system, one that they seek to defend through a much higher level of commitment to the electoral process than younger voters. In the 2024 general election, when overall participation was just 60% compared to 67% in 2019, the turnout among those aged 18-24 fell by 10 percentage points to just 37%; for those between 25 and 34 it fell by no less than 14 percentage points to 41%. Among those aged 55-64, however, the fall was a mere two percentage points to 64%, while for those aged 65 or over the turnout was almost unchanged at 73% (figures from Ipsos). 57% of the over-65s voted Tory or Reform UK in 2024; only 23% for Labour – and there are millions more people aged over 65 than there are aged 18-34.
The ‘Red Wall’
Having loaned Labour its vote in 1997 following years of Tory sleaze, this layer slowly returned to the Conservatives and then began moving towards UKIP/Brexit/Reform. In the 2010 general election it rejected what the press painted as Labour’s policy of uncontrolled immigration and limitless spending on state welfare benefits, even though the realities were quite the opposite. By 2015, a chorus of Labour politicians was arguing that the Party was abandoning its supposed working-class heartlands, for which the so-called Red Wall of northern England became a symbol in 2019. Labour performed disastrously in these seats because population shifts gave even greater electoral weight to this reactionary older stratum.
It is therefore not surprising that a substantial number of Labour MPs are determined that the government remain unrelenting in its hostility to migrants and asylum seekers. Many of these MPs are in the Red Wall constituencies. Writing in The Telegraph following Labour’s May 2025 Runcorn by-election defeat, Jo White, chair of the Red Wall group of Labour MPs, demanded ‘an immediate introduction of digital ID cards, required for employment and accessing public services. This is the only way to stop illegal immigration’. Red Wall group MP Jonathan Hinder was more explicit, stating that ‘too many working class people see Labour as the party of immigrants, minorities, those on benefits’ and insisting therefore that it is necessary ‘to drastically reduce immigration, very quickly, and that might mean sometimes prioritising democratic decisions over international legal constraints’. And if that means ignoring the European Convention on Human Rights, then fine: ‘I think it’s quite clear that it’s not working… as lots of people have said more eloquently than me, the people who signed that originally would be astonished [by its] crazy judgements [and] huge judicial over-reach’.
This reactionary section of the electorate is crucial for the ruling class. Its determination to defend its stake against all comers and its commitment to electoral politics together provide a bulwark for the capitalist system, ensuring a level of political stability. Although it is not the only component of the reactionary support for Reform UK – there are the swathes of the petit bourgeoisie, shopkeepers, small business owners, estate agents and so on – it is the most numerous. And because much of it has a working class background, it is able to draw other backward layers of the working class behind it with the vain hope that they too can join the Thatcherite property-owning democracy. Labour is caught: it needs the political support of this layer if it is to implement its reactionary programme. But part of that programme involves undermining the conditions which the layer is determined to protect – in particular of course the winter fuel payment. Reform UK, in championing its restoration, has stolen a march on Labour, and the electoral calculus is such that the Labour Party will have to make concessions on it. But on the question of asylum seekers and migrants, Labour does not need to make any concessions: it is in lockstep with the most reactionary sections of the working class and petit bourgeoisie.
Robert Clough
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 306 June/July 2025
