Immigration; Labour’s Lost

Image - Global Residence Index

In May of last year, British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer stood in front of a horde of members of the press at the Briefing Room in 9 Downing Street and delivered a speech in which he introduced a government white paper aimed at tackling the comparatively high levels of inward migration (both legal and illegal) to the UK that has been observed in recent years, promising to “take back control” of Britain’s borders.  

The speech was roundly criticised by those on the left, including many from within the prime minister’s own party, for its harsh tone against immigration and its quasi-nativist rhetoric that represented a remarkable departure from Labour’s approach towards immigration of years previous. As such, the speech has come to be known as ‘Island of Strangers’, lifting from a phrase the PM used within it to describe what Britain would risk becoming should immigration continue at said high levels.  

Further indicative of this government’s rightward shift on the matter was Starmer’s promoting immigration hawk Shabana Mahmood to the post of home secretary, the portfolio responsible for overseeing the UK’s immigration and asylum systems, last September.  

This stance mirrors that of other similar governing social democrat parties in Western democracies, in their attempts to fend off insurgent right-wing populist political parties that regularly weaponize immigration in order to present themselves on a different political field than that of the mainstream traditional parties.

Denmark is perhaps the clearest example of a leftist government favouring the strict immigration policies historically pertinent to the other side of the political aisle, with the ruling Social Democrats party attempting to introduce practices such as selling off state-owned social housing in neighbourhoods where over 50% of residents have a ‘non-Western’ background, for which it has received both criticism and praise, inside as well as outside of Denmark.  

But does pandering to the radical right on the issue of immigration help or hinder the electability of social democratic parties? In a thus far unreleased and methodologically innovative article overseen by Prof. Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte from the University of Southampton, researchers analysed British Election Study data from both before and after Sir Keir Starmer delivered ‘Island of Strangers’. They found that, instead of increasing support for Labour and reducing that of Reform UK—likely the PM’s intention in light of the then-recent negative polling trends for his party—it did nothing of the sort; instead, the speech, which drew comparisons to Enoch Powell’s racist 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ address, saw no subsequent drop in support for Reform and in fact saw a small yet noticeable shift in voters moving away from Labour.

And it is this key finding that loyally reflects what political scientists have been observing both in the UK and across Western democracies for a while now: namely, how the rise in small party popularity and the growing prominence of voter dealignment has caused British politics to split itself into distinct camps based on different reasons than those of bygone eras.

A brief history

Before the 1990s, one’s economic status was far and away the single most accurate bellwether in determining how a person would vote in the UK. Overwhelmingly, those who earned less would side with Labour, and those with more for the Conservatives.

However, a rapid reduction in poverty levels, which originally began in the immediate post-war era and which continued heading into the 21^st century, meant that, regarding voter behaviour, social issues began to take predominance over economic issues.  

This is most evident in how the lowest earners in society (C2, D, or E on the NRS Social Grade scale) were either nearly as likely or slightly more likely to vote for right-wing parties than they were left-wing parties at the 2024 general election, despite this demographic being unapologetically socialist just 40 years ago.  

And this idea of ‘value politics’—voting not based on economic preoccupations but instead based on social matters such as cultural values, immigration, or the rights of women or of LGBTQ+ people—means that British politics has come to divide itself along new ideological grounds in a very stark manner.  

On one side, you have the pro-globalisation, pro-immigration, liberal, generally younger and generally better-educated voters, who tend to give their support to the left-of-centre parties (Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens); on the other, there’s those more sceptical of globalisation and of immigration, more authoritarian, generally older and generally less-educated citizens who tend to support the right-of-centre parties (the Conservatives and Reform UK).  

An upshot of this well-defined split, combined with the rise in the prominence of the smaller third parties increasing party competition, is that, where historically there were many ‘swing voters’ who would switch between Labour and the Conservatives, those who are switching from one party to another nowadays rarely do so between the left- and right-wing camps. Much more commonly, people are switching between parties within their side of the political spectrum, i.e., Tories prodigiously switch to Reform (and vice versa), and similarly Labour voters to either the Lib Dems or the Greens (and vice versa). Last year, the Economist reported that for every five people who have abandoned Labour since the previous general election, four of them have jumped ship to a party within the same camp.

Modern implications

Returning to Prof. Turnbull Dugarte’s article, it therefore makes a lot of sense that Labour weren’t able to stem the rising tide of Reform through their shift in rhetoric. This near-exclusively intra-sectional vote switching is why Labour seem to have lost the immigration debate; in trying to prise voters from Reform, they were fighting a futile battle, since, whilst these voters are largely preoccupied by immigration above most issues, they were also scarcely going to traverse the ‘new’ divide and join Labour upon hearing the speech.

Essentially, Starmer needs to win the immigration debate within his side of the new political divide in order to be successful, i.e., among pro-globalisation, typically younger liberals. Being in the left-wing camp whilst attempting to implement decidedly un-liberal and unprogressive immigration policies never seemed a likely tactic.  

An example of an incumbent leftist government heeding this call is in Spain. The cabinet of warhorse prime minister Pedro Sánchez has gained attention in Europe for its laissez-faire approach to immigration, with figures such as “500,000 undocumented migrants to be granted citizenship this year” grabbing headlines and reflecting on his much softer and more welcoming stance towards immigration and particularly towards asylum seekers, many of whom cross Spain’s Atlantic maritime border with Africa into the Canary Islands on small boats.

In a premiership marred recently by scandals and tragedies, and with an election next year looming over his head, at least Sánchez will be able to take a rebounding economy to the electorate as an indicator of successful immigration policy, irrespective of any real causal link. Accordingly, no other left-wing party in Spain has managed to poll consistently above 7% since 2024, including his hard-left coalition partners, Sumar. By contrast, both the Lib Dems and the Greens have polled around or above 15% in 2026 in the UK.

The speech in question occurred not even a year into this five-year Labour government, yet, boxed in by updated voter patterns, they already seem to have lost the immigration debate—not to Reform UK—but to their fellow left-of-centre parties. I described these social democrat parties as wanting to “fend off” the extreme right upstarts. In reality, it’s their own side of the argument that they need to be fearful of.

Starmer himself has since said that he regrets using such language in his speech, but the bottom line is that, surrounding immigration, Labour will have to toe a very thin and seemingly counterintuitive line which, thus far, they’ve overstepped by a whole foot.