Can Labour Find an Immigration Narrative that Works?

Image - Simon Dawson

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This summer, immigration has become the dominant issue. A season of boat crossings and smart media tactics from Reform has driven their poll ratings high, and has driven the issue of immigration to the top of the nations’ list of concerns, trumping the issues of the economy and the NHS for the first time since Brexit.

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After years of promises to control immigration from successive governments, public frustration among many has come to a head, and a significant number of voters feel that this Labour government lacks control over the issue and represents just the latest in a long line of governments who have promised on immigration and asylum but failed to deliver.

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The appointment of Shabana Mahmood as home secretary is proof of the government’s recognition of this, and their desire to prove to the electorate that they can control the issue of asylum and can show voters that this Labour government is the government that can deliver an immigration system that feels fairer to them.

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There is no doubt that Mahmood and the government’s job won’t be easy, with an urgent need to deal with unpopular asylum hotels and small boat crossings. The complex details of this, the EHCR, international conventions and returns agreements are all sticking points that the government will need to find a way to manage if it can be seen by the electorate to solve the issue.

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While this has been going on, though, it is Nigel Farage and Reform who have dominated the airwaves, offering an explanation for voters’ concerns with asylum and the wider issue of immigration and positing their solutions as fixes to them. This, undeniably, constitutes part of why Reform’s poll ratings have overtaken Labour’s. They can narrate the small boats crisis and immigration concerns to voters and articulate their diagnosis of the issue as well as their prescriptions, and it is the most coherent message out there right now.

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This raises a serious question for Starmer and the government: even if they can make progress on small boat crossings, is there any guarantee that it will bring with it the electoral spoils that they hope it will? Without a clear and coherent narration that can bring together voters’ feelings and connect them with the government’s actions, the political ground will be ceded to Reform and their hard line, populist framing. It is imperative that the government can effectively explain why voters feel that we are facing issues in immigration and why the government’s actions are the right course to take, relating it to feelings that most voters have. This requires a clear stance on immigration that voters can understand as authentic and appeals to the concerns of many whilst explaining why it is that current concerns about immigration are strong.

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We’ve seen the effect of Reform’s framing in policy terms. Their recently announced plan to scrap indefinite leave to remain raises serious questions over what the effects of such a policy would be. If the income threshold increases beyond that which many currently who hold indefinite leave to remain earn, what will happen? The possibility of immigration teams tearing down doors of neighbours and family members who have been here for years, contributing to the country, and who believed they were here for good, as we have seen in Trump’s America, is the result of harmful framings of migration as an existential threat to the country.

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Starmer has begun to set out his own vision of patriotism in recent weeks, attempting to paint the flag and other symbols of the United Kingdom as being hijacked by populist and divisive actors, who don’t stand for the patriotism that most in this country do. This is positive and recognises the need to define this government as in step with the patriotism of those who oppose the division of hard right actors. As Labour Party Conference runs, it seems Starmer will seek to frame this government’s position on migration in a way that does attempt to counter Reform’s hard line narration.

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The release of the government’s immigration white paper in May was a real opportunity to do this, and its policy details were fruitful. In committing to targeting small boat crossings through border security measures, faster processing for arrivals and bilateral returns deals, and separating this from economic migration, which brings positives but must remain in line with the country’s needs, the content was absolutely sufficient to constitute a means by which to explain to voters what the future of migration looks like under a Labour government. The policy measures on migration surrounded the use of basic-skilled visas as matching domestic need and filling gaps, while also committing to investments in training for local workers to take up opportunities in sectors where there has been a historic reliance on overseas workers. This all forms a perfect package for framing this government’s stance on migration against Farage’s.

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This opportunity fell in on itself, though, when Starmer’s speech at the white paper’s launch talked of Britain risking becoming an “island of strangers” if social integration failed. The phrase, once used by Enoch Powell, overshadowed the whole policy and framing, providing a source of anger for those to Starmer’s left, to whom the echoes of Powell’s words brought great discomfort. To those on the right – Farage and the right-wing press – it served as perfect vindication of the idea that migration has eroded British culture, and it was seized as an admission that migration is bringing chaos to Britain, Reform’s diagnosis.

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Despite Starmer’s remorse for the phrase’s use, the damage had already been done and the moment served as the starting point of the solidification of Reform’s rise in the polls that has seen them grow to where they are now.

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The opportunity is not dead, though. There still exists a solid foundation of policy on migration and asylum to constitute a framing of the government’s stance on migration that can counter Reform’s hard line narrative. To this, we can look abroad. Voters feeling a lack of control over migration is not confined to the UK. By its nature, the ease of the ability of people to move freely is something that has affected almost every country which can offer economic opportunity, and with it are plenty of centre-left leaders who have managed to successfully frame their stance on migration in opposition to right wing populist forces.

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In Australia, the Labour Party leader Anthony Albanese, first elected in 2022, won a second term this year and saw off threats from the right in part thanks to a successful explanation of migration. He managed to own the topic of voter frustration without the scapegoating tactics of the right. In contrast to populist explanations, Albanese reframed migration as a tool for economic growth and as essential, but requiring better management of numbers, with failure on migration hailing from previous policymaking’s poor management of the issue, not the fault of individual migrants themselves. This helped win the Australian Labour Party their first consecutive term in over two decades.

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In Denmark, the Social Democrats’ Mette Frederiksen’s framing of asylum as a matter of democratic control and of a government’s ability to decide who it gives refuge to, in contrast to the ceding of control to people smugglers, has resonated with Danish voters. The explanation that Denmark faces these issues due to a changed global landscape - with easier global travel for refugees and a legal system written for a time - contains lessons for the UK government, and a potential explanation for why voters feel that the government lacks control over this.

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In Canada, Mark Carney has brought these two together, building on Trudeau’s outlining of irregular asylum as unfair and needing control, from skilled migration which is necessary and tied to the needs of the Canadian economy. Carney has criticised past over-reliance of government on migration flows as a ‘quick fix’ that should have instead been filled by investment in local skills and infrastructure. He frames migration as a net positive, but only when aligning with domestic capacity, and frames asylum flows as unfair and requiring control to maintain fairness in the migration system, but caused by global factors. This too has seen off the right and helps invoke a sense of an existential threat caused by migration.

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In these three examples of left-of-centre governments who have managed to frame their action on migration and asylum in a way that has seen off the populist right, there are clear lessons. There is space for voters to appreciate that the era that western countries find themselves in is markedly different from circumstances that the same countries were in a in the decades previous. It is true that globalisation has made it easier for asylum seekers to make their way to Britain, and that there are novel factors of climate and conflict that mean that this happens.

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As can be learnt from the Danish Social Democrats, government tackling migration is an issue of democratic control acting against criminal forces and outdated laws, something that this Labour government has embarked upon itself in policy, with more to come as Mahmood attempts to go further in managing channel crossings, but voters don’t have enough of a perception of it. From Canada and Australia, it is true that a progressive government can successfully act against populist forces through honesty about the shortcomings of migration policy in the past and expressing that government needs to do a better job of providing opportunity for local communities, all while maintaining that necessary migration does have a positive effect.

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This is a direct counter to right-wing sentiment. By framing the need for action on migration in the same terms as why voters feel left behind, and the solution being that the state can play a positive role in people’s lives, this actively links migration policy and left-of-centre ideas about the state and the changes that it can make to communities, particularly potent when it is those communities that are more likely to be attracted to Reform.

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There are tangible lessons to learn from observations of other governments for Starmer’s government, who can provide evidence that there is space for an explanation of migration that is stronger than that of the populist right, neglecting the role of the state and instead directly draws on the fears of individuals. There is also the potential to use themes surrounding the effects of Brexit to emphasise why the government has lost control, something unique to the UK. The leaving of the Dublin Agreement, and its returns deals – Farage’s life mission – has led to an inability of government to return asylum seekers to European countries, ammunition for the government in any potential framing.

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If the Labour government can manage to frame the current situation on migration through a lens that brings together the fact that a globalised world has changed the nature of migration flows, that we will always have a need for economic migration, but that there has been an overreliance on it in the past instead of government programmes to upskill workers to fill gaps, then there is more than enough content to effectively counter Reform’s framing.

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Couple this with tangible action on small boats, emphasising it as an issue of government control, in part lost because of the effects of Brexit, then there does exist the makings of such a framing on asylum too.

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The situation we are in on immigration is fraught, and the government must find an explanation of migration and asylum that can successfully counter Farage’s. There are plenty of lessons that can be taken from abroad, with evidential success alongside it. If Starmer can use elements of Carney’s, Albanese’s and Frederiksen’s immigration narratives, then there are the real makings of a successful immigration framing that can give the government space to deliver policy.