Labour can't out-Reform Reform – it needs to change tact

They say a week is a long time in politics. A year… well.

Far from the buoyancy 12 months ago after Labour’s landslide election victory, the sense of fear and panic at this government’s party conference was undeniable. 

Over the last three days, our government confirmed that the political agenda continues to be set by the far right. Last week, Reform announced they would scrap the indefinite leave to remain migration status – including retrospectively – revoking the right of settled non-EU migrants to live, work and study in the UK and forcing them to reapply. If their demonisation of people seeking asylum wasn’t abhorrent enough, this represents a significant escalation, confirming that belonging for people of colour in the UK remains conditional. 

Keir Starmer has described the policy as “racist” and “immoral” – and it was good to see our government finally calling racism where it lies. But this is utterly disingenuous, given what followed.

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Shabana Mahmood, in her first conference speech as our new home secretary, has doubled down on ‘hostile’ immigration policies, persisting in calls to “stop the boats” and policies that make the lives of people who have been here legally for years even more precarious.

As announced by Mahmood on Tuesday (30 September), far from rejecting the Reform agenda, they have capitulated to it; her proposed reforms to indefinite leave to remain will now mean a person’s right to stay in the UK will be dependent on criminal records, their level of English language competency, whether they ‘volunteer’ in their community and whether they are a net contributor to the economy.

This is not a condemnation of Reform’s position, but a soft surrender which continues to stereotype migrants as inherently unworthy and criminal. It requires that migrants must always prove their worth, value and belonging through higher and ever expanding thresholds of contribution. Being slightly less racist and immoral, is still racist and immoral. 

The prime minister’s speech yesterday, and indeed the whole Labour Party Conference, was supposed to be centred around ‘renewing Britain’. But there is nothing new about regurgitating tired tropes of migrants as a burden. It simply legitimises a false narrative. A renewed Britain would have an honest conversation about migration, but one that recognises how migrants built our public services and continue to keep them afloat, pay more into our welfare state than they take out, and how migration is increasingly important to sustain our aging population. 

Our government can’t out-Reform Reform, and if it genuinely wants to choose ‘decency’ over ‘division’, it needs to change tact. It needs to set a bold agenda that makes a tangible difference to people’s lives, is honest about where the real problems lie, and gives people a vision they can believe in. It’s not people seeking asylum, it’s not migrants, it’s not Muslims. It’s policies that have inflicted austerity while protecting the wealthiest. Why else would billionaires be backing Reform? 

We’re fast-tracking ourselves to a far-right government who couldn’t care less about the working class. Now is the time to refocus our attention to our real problems. We need to tax the rich, redistribute those billions to the poorest communities, into our public services and social security systems, and teach a curriculum that recognises our shared migration stories, one that teaches empathy, belonging and bridges the hatred and division currently being sown between UK communities. That’s the only hope and antidote to far right politics.

Attempts to solve a manufactured problem are always doomed to fail – history is clear: legitimising moral panics only leads us to the darkest of places.

Stephen Walcott is head of policy at the Runnymede Trust, a leading racial justice charity.

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