MThe Labour Party has always been “too scared” to talk about immigration and must show leadership on the issue, warned one party leader, saying the party ignores the underlying anger of some voters “at its own peril”.
Keir Starmer is also being urged to come up with a new strategy to promote multiculturalism following outbreaks of violence over the past week or more. Party figures inside and outside government are considering how to tackle some of the wider issues they say contributed not only to the unrest but also to the low turnout and Reform UK’s strong showing.
Dame Margaret Hodge, a former Labour MP who clashed with the far-right in her Barking constituency after a strong BNP showing in 2006, said the government had responded quickly and well to the violence. She called on the party to show leadership by talking to voters about the reality of immigration, making a positive case for it and being prepared to take tough action to secure the borders.
“We are all to blame for always being too afraid to talk about immigration,” she said. “As a politician, you have a voice. We need to use that voice to develop a new discourse on immigration – we need to lead rather than follow.”
“It’s about why people are here, what they contribute, what wealth they bring to society. We also have to show that we can control our borders. Those who are not legitimate asylum seekers are sent back as quickly as possible. If someone breaks the law here and ends up in prison, they are sent back wherever possible. But then you have to link that to a much more positive and realistic view of immigration. We simply have to tackle the problem.”
She added: “Anyone who wants to keep their seat next time will have to worry that the turnout was low – and worry that there was this protest vote. We ignore it at our peril.”
Hodge said the lesson from the confrontation with the BNP was not just a clear and confident message on immigration, but a change in the way Labour MPs operate – they needed to move to a relentless campaign of engagement that tackled the mundane issues that caused frustration.
The party’s approach to immigration after the Troubles will be a highly sensitive issue for Home Secretary Yvette Cooper within the party, with many politicians on the left of the party wary of taking a position that could toughen their rhetoric. The new Border Force Command, tasked with reducing Channel crossings, is set to be given priority in the upcoming budget.
Since the violence has subsided, Labour politicians have taken an interest in how the far right was defeated in east London. Two senior figures in Starmer’s team – strategist Deborah Mattinson and campaign manager Morgan McSweeney – have both been involved in attempts to understand and counter the BNP’s rise in the region.
Some Labour figures pointed out that Starmer’s agenda on housing and access to GPs would ultimately resolve some of the underlying tensions in some communities, but others involved in Barking’s efforts against the far right said his “incremental approach” was not radical enough.
A senior official said the council had fundamentally overhauled the way it worked, offering residents a one-stop shop for government services and investing heavily in its own social housing stock. “This requires quite bold institutional and structural changes,” they said.
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Labour is also calling for the development of an overarching strategy to build community relations and promote multiculturalism. John Denham, a former minister for communities and municipalities who was also involved in the fight against the BNP after the 2009 European elections, said the concept of multiculturalism had been effectively “abandoned” by the state for over a decade.
“Blair distanced himself from it in 2006,” he said. “David Cameron announced the end of state-sponsored multiculturalism in 2011. So we find ourselves in the extraordinary position that, at a time of historically astonishing migration levels, there was no government philosophy about how a diverse society should function.”
“When the public policy phase is over and the online facilitators of these things are held to account, I think it would be good if the government came up with a new initiative to create a framework. I don’t care if you call it multiculturalism or integration – this is how a diverse society works, so that groups feel that their own identity is respected, but at the same time it makes clear what we have in common.”
