Good morning. Parliament’s corridors are quiet at the moment. Staffers have been packed off to campaign in the local and mayoral elections, which are taking place on Thursday. We’ll have all the analysis you need tomorrow and on Friday.
But today: the government’s story on immigration is improving.
To read Andrew Marr’s column on Labour in full, sign up here:
Few voters trust the government on immigration. The right sees the large numbers of migrants entering the UK each year as proof that the Tories’ promise to cut immigration was a lie. The left reviles the government’s uncompassionate approach. At the same time, people are more concerned about the cost-of-living crisis and unresponsive public services. This is why the government’s strategy to expend so much political capital on the scheme to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda was, politically, ill-advised.
Nonetheless, the government is poised to spend the summer cheering each departing flight. A marker, of sorts, was reached yesterday: the first asylum seeker went to Rwanda. The catch is that they travelled voluntarily after being paid £3,000. This won’t work for most asylum seekers because few want to go to Rwanda. Hence the planned coercion. That £3,000 figure probably looks expensive to voters, too. And yet, it is better than nothing in the government’s fight to regain a modicum of credibility on this issue.
There’s tepidly positive news on the legal migration front as well. The Times reports this morning that numbers are falling after the government made it harder for care workers and foreign students to bring their dependents. Is the government on course to cut net immigration to around 100k? No, of course not. And the public has stopped listening, anyway. But some Tory MPs might now pause before knifing their boss. At least until the local election results start to come in on Friday.
The Rwanda scheme’s success is a distant prospect. But if it did start to work, as I’ve written in Morning Call before, then Keir Starmer would be forced to choose between scrapping a scheme that speaks to some voters’ genuine concerns, or backtracking on his promise to drop a Tory policy that he and his team have blasted as morally bankrupt and unworkable. You shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the latter is an option. As Andrew reports in his piece below (which paid-tier subscribers can read in full):
Some [senior Labour figures] go so far as to speculate that Labour might have to retain the Rwanda scheme until a returns policy with the EU has been agreed and signed. “We can’t just come in, tear it up, and have nothing to put in its place,” one senior adviser told me.
The boats will not stop because Keir Starmer enters No 10. Voters will not stop caring, either. A Tory party in the throes of a brutal civil war will relish attacking Labour over immigration. As will sections of the press. In that context, Starmer might be forced to accommodate the Rwanda scheme – or at least a comparable replacement.
Follow the New Statesman Podcast on Apple Podcasts for all the latest politics news:
Freddie’s picks
George has written a brilliant cover story on: what is Starmerism? It’s a rejoinder to those who claim Starmer’s project is either wholly vacuous or New Labour cosplay.
Why are young people feeling so isolated? Sophie investigates smartphones, lockdown and whether it’s too late to turn the situation around.
Chris Deerin reports on the latest intrigues inside the SNP. Has John Swinney seen off all opposition in his bid to become leader?
Looking to fast-track your business? Our Accelerator programme offers 1-to-1 coaching, mentoring & networking opportunities. Search NatWest Accelerator to find out more.
Inside Labour’s immigration dilemma
On illegal migration, Labour has a problem. It is that the government’s Rwanda scheme, however limited in numbers, expensive, damaging to Britain’s international reputation and plagued by chaos (most recently, the Home Office appears to have mislaid several thousand migrants it intended to deport), may indeed have some of the deterrent effect Rishi Sunak said it would.
Speaking to journalists last week as the bill became an act, the Home Secretary, James Cleverly, sounded ready for battle on the “humanitarian” case for the deportation flights: stopping more people from dying in the Channel. Meanwhile, interviews with would-be migrants on the French coast are starting to pick up worries about the UK’s “Africa” policy. The threat of Rwanda, according to Ireland’s tánaiste, or deputy prime minister, Micheál Martin, is causing an influx of migrants from the UK into Ireland, because people are “fearful”.
Claims by Dublin that four in five recent asylum seekers into Ireland have come via Northern Ireland may well be overstated but the political atmosphere south of the Irish border has changed as people flee the UK. “Maybe that is the impact it was designed to have,” Mr Martin said. And this is before a single plane has taken off. In narrow terms – stopping former 2019 Tory voters from defecting to Reform UK – might the policy work?
Click through to the NS to read the rest, or MC subscribers can read in full in-email.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Morning Call to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.