What a difference the prospect of a new year containing a general election makes. Labour’s asylum and immigration proposal is a prime example of a plan in a rapid phase of mutation, as Sir Keir Starmer prepares to outline his thinking on this thorny issue.
Policy cogs have been turning on what alternative to propose to the Tories’ never-ending Rwanda policy and the many obstacles, legal and practical, to its delivery.
Starmer’s original riposte was to claim that the notion of dealing with small-boat arrivals on the south coast circumventing stringent asylum laws were merely a daft Tory “gimmick”. That did not age well.
Now, senior frontbenchers including the shadow home and immigration ministers – as well as Lord Blunkett, a former home secretary to the right of the Labour spectrum – have been sounding out alternatives that would allow British officials to process claims in places closer to the point of origin than the electorally inconvenient destinations of Dover or Calais.
Tacitly, this is a recognition that the Opposition’s response, which has focused on a deal to boost Calais security in return for the UK agreeing to taking an unspecified number of asylum seekers, is a busted flush.
For one thing, it collapsed swiftly under scrutiny, as soon as the question turned to whether the EU was keen to do any such deal. According to one senior Brussels-based official with knowledge of the matter, it got “zero pick-up in Paris or Brussels”, because the EU is preoccupied with trying to deliver a deal of its own to tackle southern Europe’s objections to bearing the brunt of waves of incomers.
There is an EU balancing attempt (forged in late December) to get northern member states to pay out more to support them, or to aid returns. Deals with Britain are small beer in comparison. That urgency was brought home by news that boats have saved hundreds of migrants off the southern Italian coast over the Christmas period alone, with a three-year-old boy the youngest to be rescued.
The second shortcoming has been that the party has failed to take account of the public mood on small boats. National opinion can be ambiguous on the pros and cos of legal migration – it is certainly not as unremittingly hostile as the Farage-isation of the Tory right projects. But it is perturbed by the loss of border control and a sense that present systems are unable to cope.
A period of denial, in which centrist Labour MPs argued that this was simply a panic whipped up by the Daily Mail, has given way to concern among Team Keir that this matters to voters across the country – not just in the Tory coastal heartlands of Kent and Essex.
The outlined solution has one sensible point of difference with the Rwanda project, namely that British officials need to be in charge of the process, not a foreign government (let alone one whose human rights record is so concerning).
There will always be fierce arguments about the scope and limits of the asylum offer any country makes: Britain is generous on Ukraine and Hong Kong, but was notably stingy in the crisis of 2016 in the wake of Syria’s civil war.
Either way, it is preferable to have such decisions made by those within the UK government system than a third country. It is also a clearer answer to the question of how to grant asylum to those who pass the tests, without the trauma of being turned back at the point of entry.
Starmer will need to hammer home that point when he presents his thinking in a speech next week, to assuage inevitable worries that he is embracing a copycat response to right-wingery.
Another key question, that has long dogged previous leaders who sought to move asylum processing further away from the UK, is: where to?
When William Hague was Tory leader he suggested a variant on what Starmer is now considering, only for it to be derided as the “fantasy island” plan. And in the early 2000s, Lord Blunkett assembled plans to send asylum seekers abroad for processing. Tanzania was a favoured option then; other candidates come and go on the tailwinds of trade agreements by richer countries with poorer ones.
Germany has just signed an agreement with Morocco to expedite repatriation of asylum seekers who are rejected, in exchange for facilitating legal migration to Germany.
It’s easier to come up with possibilities than to do deals that prove politically and practically durational. Variants presently range from Moldova and Georgia to Ghana.
In truth, Labour has itself migrated to a different policy approach, because it can no longer ignore the tougher realities of this issue at home and in Europe.
An honest reckoning would say that the centre-left has often failed to think carefully enough about how asylum processing can work to admit those in greatest need, while keeping public confidence.
The answer, it turns out, does not look like the Rwanda plan. But it doesn’t look much like what Starmer previously argued for either.
Anne McElvoy hosts the Politico interview podcast Power Play
Labour knows it made a big mistake on immigration
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27.12.2023
What a difference the prospect of a new year containing a general election makes. Labour’s asylum and immigration proposal is a prime example of a plan in a rapid phase of mutation, as Sir Keir Starmer prepares to outline his thinking on this thorny issue.
Policy cogs have been turning on what alternative to propose to the Tories’ never-ending Rwanda policy and the many obstacles, legal and practical, to its delivery.
Starmer’s original riposte was to claim that the notion of dealing with small-boat arrivals on the south coast circumventing stringent asylum laws were merely a daft Tory “gimmick”. That did not age well.
Now, senior frontbenchers including the shadow home and immigration ministers – as well as Lord Blunkett, a former home secretary to the right of the Labour spectrum – have been sounding out alternatives that would allow British officials to process claims in places closer to the point of origin than the electorally inconvenient destinations of Dover or Calais.
Tacitly, this is a recognition that the Opposition’s response, which has focused on a deal to boost Calais security in return for the UK agreeing to taking an unspecified number of asylum seekers, is a busted flush.
For one thing,........
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