Keir Starmer Sprints to the New Centre on Immigration
After hemorrhaging councils to Reform UK in May’s local elections, Labour has embraced immigration policies they called “Far Right” just months ago
After Reform’s local election surge, Labour adopts border policies it only recently condemned as “Far Right.”
Still reeling from losing 187 seats and its sole council in May’s local elections, Britain’s Labour government has released a new immigration white paper, to purportedly make good on the previous Conservative government’s promise to “Take back control”. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced today that his government will take the following measures to reduce net migration:
Skilled workers must now provide proof of university-degree-level (RQF 6) qualifications, and the salary threshold will be raised to an unspecified amount — with the Immigration Salary List, exempting some from thresholds, to be abolished.
The Health and Adult Social Care visa route will be eliminated; after the previous government issued 269,999 visas between 2021 – 2024, but failed to fill thousands of vacancies, and saw workers outnumbered by 377,135 of their dependents, all of whom were net costs to the taxpayer.
Those who arrived legally on work, study, or visitor visas from countries including Pakistan, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka will no longer be able to apply for asylum while in Britain — as 40,000 did in 2024 alone. 47% of asylum claims from visa holders are from students nearing the end of their expiry date.
The ability for foreign students to remain in Britain after their graduation will be reduced.
The number of occupations on the Temporary Shortage List will be reduced, and ability to bring dependents restricted.
Extending the standard qualifying period for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) settlement grants to ten years, instead of five. Exemptions will be made “to reduce the qualifying period based on Points-Based contributions to the UK economy and society” — with a consultation planned on these changes for later in 2025.
Fluency in English will be a requirement of all visa holders and dependents.
Ministers will also bring forward legislation to amend the Immigration Acts 2002 and 2014 to redefine the “exceptional circumstances” under which asylum applicants can appeal to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and frustrate their Home Office deportation orders.
This article was first published on Courage.Media. You can read it on Ayaan’s new platform below, in addition to discovering other new content.
Starmer posted on X shortly before his press conference that “The Tories ran an immigration system that relied on cheap foreign labor instead of investing in British workers. That betrayal ends now.” He refers to the three-fold rise in net migration which followed Brexit, after Boris Johnson’s government liberalized immigration laws against the advice of quango the Migration Advisory Council. After setting the Skilled Worker visa salary threshold to less than the national median wage (£31,461) and lower than the minimum wage (£17,920) for new entrants, allowing primary recipients to bring limitless dependents, removing the requirement for foreign students to return home after completing their degree, and removing the requirement for British businesses to advertise jobs to British worker first, immigration soared to net 906,000 (gross 1.2 million) by 2023.
Source: Oxford Migration Observatory (22 April 2025)
Starmer condemned how “Brexit was used for that purpose… To turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders” in a speech last November. With new net-migration figures due to be released on 22 May, everyone is bracing ourselves for news that he donned his lab-coat and continued that experiment, until today. In this morning’s speech, Starmer told the press:
“Until in 2023, it reached nearly 1 million, which is about the population of Birmingham, our second largest city. That’s not control – it’s chaos.
And look, they must answer for themselves, but I don’t think you can do something like that by accident. It was a choice. A choice made even as they told you, told the country, they were doing the opposite. A one-nation experiment in open borders conducted on a country that voted for control. Well, no more. Today, this [political content redacted] Government is shutting down the lab. The experiment is over. We will deliver what you have asked for – time and again – and we will take back control of our borders.”
Starmer insisted during his speech that, “I am doing this because it is right, because it is fair, and because it is what I believe in”, but sceptics point to his record unpopularity as the reason.
There is, of course, a strain of anti-migration protectionism in the socialist left, who oppose open borders for their diluting the price of labor, and placing downward pressure on the cost of housing and public services for the working class. But despite paying lipservice to it today, Keir Starmer has never been a part of it. In “Immigration Law and Practice” in 1988, Starmer wrote that a “racist undercurrent … permeates all immigration law”. Last week, he brokered a contentious new trade deal with India, which exempts Indian migrants from paying the same National insurance (healthcare and pensions) tax contributions that his government just raised for British workers; and which creates new visa routes for Indian chefs, musicians, and yoga instructors. Given Wetherspoons is Britain’s most popular curry vendor, we are not in dire shortage of New Delhi’s cooks.
Even in today’s announcement, Starmer couldn’t help but peddle the fiction that mass immigration is an inextricable part of British history:
“Migration is part of Britain’s national story. We talked last week about the great rebuilding of this country after the war; migrants were part of that, and they make a massive contribution today. You will never hear me denigrate that.”
Note the sole example that Keir Starmer can give is the HMT Windrush, which docked unexpectedly at Tilbury on 22 June, 1948. In the introduction to the white paper, it says:
“Immigration is important for Britain. For centuries people have come to this country to build a better life, contributing economically and culturally to our society and helping to rebuild our country after major shocks such as the Second World War.”
Our post-Macpherson Report antiracist mythology treats Windrush as the British equivalent of Plymouth Rock pilgrims, building settlements on a country reduced to rubble by the Blitz. But they were economic migrants, enticed to windswept England from the Caribbean by the promise of well-paying jobs as bus conductors; not self-sacrificing benefactors who wanted to rebuild Britain out of the good of their hearts. This history has since been rewritten to manufacture consent for unprecedented levels of migration, and the accommodation of foreign peoples and cultures as penance for the sins of racism, slavery, and empire.
If Starmer were to argue the anachronism that, before Windrush, Britain’s history was one of unbroken waves of migration, then he would have a hard time explaining how we have received more immigrants since the election of his mentor, Tony Blair, in 1997 than between the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the end of the Second World War. He would find himself in the absurd position of arguing, as critics of Renaud Camus did recently, that invading armies like the Norman conquest and Viking invasions are indistinguishable from the Windrush or Boriswave as “immigrants”. Those opposed to rapid demographic change, with no democratic mandate, may see it that way, but it isn’t the best sales pitch for its advocates to push.
Even so, Labour’s progressive window-dressing provides cover for their race to catch up to a new centre-ground on immigration. In the last month, Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives committed to passing legislation to disbar the Human Rights Act (1998) and ECHR from all immigration cases — though not to repealing the Act, or leaving the ECHR. They also pledged to extend the qualifying period for ILR to 10 years, rather than the 15 recommended to them; and refused to restrict eligibility for ILR to persons of countries most likely to be net-tax contributors and culturally proximate to Britain. They did, however, restrict ILR to those who had been net-contributors during their stay, and who committed no crimes. Any migrants who arrive illegally, either by small boats across the Channel or overstaying a visa, would be automatically disqualified from claiming ILR even if their asylum claim was granted — leaving them open to the possibility of deportation. However, now that Labour have promised to do most of this, they have rendered the Tories’ offering obsolete. Perhaps this is a lesson in not playing things safe when politics now moves so fast.
Labour’s new English language requirement for visa recipients and dependents follows a long campaign by former-Reform, now independent MP, Rupert Lowe procuring the cost of public sector translation services through Parliamentary questions. In 2023, the NHS spent £100 million on translation services; Jobcentres spent £3,420,480; and the Department for Work and Pensions spent £7.2 million explaining in 115 languages how Britain’s half-a-million foreign-born social housing and benefits claimants can gain more money from the taxpayer. Over £7.5 billion a year is spent on benefits paid to those born outside Britain. When he first told “literally a communist” Ash Sarkar on BBC Politics Live, “I don’t care, they should speak English”, and that all translation services should be scrapped, Lowe was met with screeching derision. Now, it’s Labour government policy. Not bad for the “Very Online Right”, eh?
A fortnight ago, Lowe partnered with think-tank the Centre for Migration Control to cost how much mass deportations of the estimated-minimum 1.2 million illegal immigrants residing in Britain as of 2017, plus 220,000 illegal entrants since 2018, would save the taxpayer. They claim that deporting 400,000 migrants would save us £10 billion per year. This is almost certainly a conservative under-estimate, as illegal migration cost the taxpayer £14.4 billion in 2023, and Channel crossings have increased by at least 86% since. Conservative ministers warn that Labour’s proposed changes to the Illegal Migration Bill (2023) will add an additional £17.8 billion to that annual bill, by allowing “Any asylum seekers who are granted asylum [to] have full access to…the welfare system.” Nevertheless, the benefits of enforcing immigration laws already on the books by deporting foreign criminals, illegal entrants, and visa overstayers are inarguable. Hence why nine MPs (six Conservative, two Northern Irish, and an independent) have signed Lowe’s motion in Parliament for a national strategy to conduct mass deportations. The emerging consensus is that they have to go.
All of these arguments had their origin in the Online Right. The Adam Smith Institute’s Sam Bidwell has long campaigned on reforming ILR rules, and helped the term “Boriswave” enter public consciousness. I called for “Mass deportations” at Reform UK’s annual conference, and was met with applause by members mere days after Nigel Farage had denounced them as a “political impossibility”. In the midst of vociferous backlash among Reform’s supporters to Farage calling mass deportations “a very grave, dark and dangerous use of language” in March, Adam Wren commissioned polling which found that 99% of Reform voters support the removal of every single illegal immigrant in Britain.
When Reform saw that even 65% of Green voters support the deportation of foreign sex offenders, they changed their tune, and announced a week out from the local elections that a Reform government would appoint a Minister for Deportations, with the mandate to remove every illegal immigrant in Britain. Reform became the largest party at the local level in England, with two-thirds of voters’ chief concern being immigration. Now, Deputy Leader Richard Tice has suggested they might take their lead from governors Greg Abott and Ron DeSantis, and redistribute asylum seekers evicted from hotels and accommodation in Reform’s council districts within a 100 days to Green and Liberal Democrat-controlled areas.
It is undeniable that a clean distinction between “Online” and “Real life” no longer exists, and that discourse on X ineluctably shapes politics. One need only look at the output by the Conservatives’ social media account in recent weeks to gauge the direction of political travel: with CCHQ ignoring strategists screeching about “the danger of chasing populist parties like Reform to the right”, and insisting they, not Farage, are the ones who can credibly conduct mass deportations. Even Labour are fudging the numbers to boast about how, between 5 July 2024 and 22 March 2025, both enforced and voluntary returns were up by 11% (24,103, up from 21,807). Far from a liability, immigration restrictionism is now a vote-winning position.
This is what made the questions from the press after the announcement so garishly out of touch. ITV’s Robert Peston asked the Prime Minister whether he had “shot himself in the foot” by extending the threshold for ILR by five years. Clearly, Peston hasn’t bothered to read any of the research on the cost of the Boriswave receiving ILR by 2026: a projected £234 billion, or £8,000 per taxpaying household. Suspending the entitlement of millions of unproductive migrants to use of the NHS, social housing, benefits, and a state pension spares taxpayers a bill in the hundreds-of-billions. Hardly blowing one’s toes off with a proverbial shotgun. Even Starmer challenged him, saying “the theory that higher migration numbers necessarily leads to higher growth has been tested in the last four years … and so that link doesn’t hold”. Only Britain’s lazy and ideologically captured access media still cling to the fiction that mass migration is an unalloyed economic good.
Are these measures likely to make a dent in Britain’s despised record-high levels of net-dependent immigration? There’s cause to be cynical. After 136,000 student dependent visas were issued in 2022, the Sunak government banned it. The following year, the 80% fall in student dependent visas was nullified by a 50% rise in skilled worker dependent visas the following year, resulting in a total year-on-year reduction of only 20% (net 906,000 to net 728,000). Tinkering around the margins will not deter the immigration industrial complex both at home and abroad from playing the system. Overseas visa application farms, especially in India, have been given more license to operate by Starmer’s treacherous trade deal; and the university degrees issued in the countries of origin will be treated as equivalents to their British counterparts, despite being of inferior quality or even fraudulent.
Immigration lawyers will still be granted a wide berth in the interpretation of “exceptional circumstances” by activist judges, to keep foreign criminals in the country because of their preference for British chicken nuggets. After all, Starmer himself wrote the textbook on applying Tony Blair’s Human Rights Act, which subordinated Parliamentary sovereignty to Article 46 rulings by the European Court of Human Rights. Leaving the jurisdiction of his treasured “International Law” is never an option, so when reconfiguring guidance doesn’t work, he’ll have nowhere else left to turn.
Also, hidden away in the White Paper is the plan to “explore reforms to allow a limited pool of UNHCR recognized refugees and displaced people living overseas to apply for employment through our existing sponsored worker routes where they have the skills to do so.” In short, they plan to change the law to allow asylum seekers the legal right to work. The prospect of employment while awaiting their asylum decision will act as a further draw for illegal immigrants to pay people smugglers to ferry them across the English Channel.
But none of these measures tackle the problem at the heart of immigration: that the host majority feel dispossessed in their own home. Starmer made the contradictory statement in today’s speech that:
“Nations depend on rules – fair rules. Sometimes they’re written down, often they’re not, but either way, they give shape to our values. They guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to one another. Now, in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.”
He conceives of the British state as a manager which sits atop the population, forcing fractured ethno-cultural groups to play nice. But, as academic Eric Kaufmann documented in Whiteshift (2018), the anxieties animating Brexit, and the subsequent votes for Boris Johnson and Reform UK, were more about rapid demographic and cultural change than they were about economics or the sustainability of public services. Robert Putnam wrote two decades ago in Bowling Alone that the inevitable consequence of increasing diversity is weakening social trust, increasing isolation, and eventually the sort of civil unrest that David Betz has recently warned about.
Britons do not want an arbitrator from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure uninvited guests in their home abide by a “Community Cohesion strategy” which put them on an equal footing to the homeowners. They want the squatters evicted, and no more guests to be allowed in. Despite saying he “gets it”, it’s clear that Starmer still sees Britain as an airport or retail park rather than a place belonging to British people.
 | A guest post by
|