The Futility of Chasing the Right

In another disaster class at Prime Minister's Questions, Kemi Badenoch attacked Keir Starmer for not prioritising immigration as one of his pledges unveiled at the government's relaunch last week. Talk about stepping on a rake. The Prime Minister relished the chance to attack the Tories "open borders experiment", following the revision of 2023's immigration figures up to 906,000. As far as Labour strategists are concerned, every time Badenoch mentions the I-word it's gifting Starmer opportunities to own an issue that is traditionally the preserve of the right. The more she bangs on about it, the more Labour will remind voters of "porous borders", record number of arrivals, and promises that the Conservatives failed time and again.

This is not smart politics.

In Anushka Asthana's book about Morgan McSweeney, Labour's chief strategist, she sketches out the thinking behind the strategy. First is the assumption, ironically shared with the Leader of the Opposition, that the Tories lost because they didn't keep their promises about immigration. McSweeney also blames this for the retreat of the centre left cross Europe and why the extreme right are on the march. Where the centre left does well, with Denmark's Social Democrats as his poster child, it's where there are tough entry requirements on the borders and immigration is falling. Reducing the numbers and delivering on the rest of Starmer's modernisation effort will win the re-election, so it goes.

This is the path to disaster. While it is understandable that the Tories should shift right to consolidate their vote after a severe trauma, it makes no sense whatsoever for Labour to do so. They have Reform to thank for disproportionately stealing votes from the Tories and letting dozens of Labour and Liberal Democrat challenges come through the middle, but McSweeney's job now should be about keeping hold of the coalition the party assembled and deepening it. For instance, as this polling by Focaldata demonstrates, there is a big overlap between Conservative and Reform support. Labour and Reform support? It's marginal. To put that in numbers' terms, polling by Compass found that 48% of Labour's voters in July would consider supporting the Greens or Lib Dems next time. The figure for Reform or the Tories was just 23%. Before the election YouGov polling found immigration was the top issue for Reform and Tory voters, but was joint seventh - with education - for Labour voters. And, there are big age gradients when it comes to who finds immigration troubling. No prizes for guessing who the most concerned are.

It doesn't matter how much Labour bangs on about immigration. They can form their anti-immigration caucuses, mock the Tories for being "too liberal", boast about suspending asylum claims from Syria now that Assad has fallen, and put up billboards around the Midlands and the north about how deportations have increased and migrant flows have come down, it won't make a blind bit of difference in winning over reactionary right wing voters. For one, lots are not Labour people in the demographic, sociological sense. And second, it would do Labour well to remember it never had a political monopoly on the working class. Ever since the advent of mass suffrage, it has been entirely normal for significant layers of the working class to support the Tories. Never a majority and perhaps not even a plurality - despite the smoke and mirrors surrounding Boris Johnson's victory - but proletarian conservatism has always existed, has always been hostile to Labourism, and will never support the party that was set up to represent their collective interests. Fast forward to 2024 and these layers still exist. They tend to be older, maler and whiter than average, and they are more likely to be attracted to Reform than the Tories. But that, ultimately, is a problem for Badenoch and her hapless shadow cabinet - not Labour.

There is nothing wrong with trying to win over voters who support right wing parties, but there are ways of doing it. I would suggest banging on about immigration and scapegoating the right's latest folk devils is unwise because it demobilises and disperses Labour's existing coalition. Stopping winter fuel payments is not the only reason why Starmer's ratings have tanked and Labour have plunged to polling scores not seen since the divisions over Brexit in the summer of 2019. Again, consolidating Labour's vote now is the path to victory in 2028-29. The thin election result was a consequence of not doing this from opposition. Refusing to in government is suicidal.

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