Labour’s plan to defeat Farage by becoming him

I can’t believe I’m writing this again, and not just because this piece is, spiritually, the 73rd draft of the same post I’ve written every six months since the ghost of Enoch Powell first slithered back into Westminster in a Nigel Farage mask and Union Jack socks. I am writing this again because here we are, a Labour government - a LABOUR government - has decided that what this country really needs is fewer migrants. Apparently, we’ve just got too many carers. 

Yes, carers. Those shift-working, underpaid saints of the adult social care sector. The ones who keep your nan alive through a combination of Lidl shortbread and sheer moral force. Keir Starmer has looked at them and thought, “Bit much, actually. Let’s trim the fat.”

At last, a bold vision of post-Brexit Britain: a land of proudly neglected pensioners and heroic bed sores. You’ll be wheeled into the great hereafter by a polite note taped to a mobility scooter that says, “Sorry, we couldn’t get the staff.”

Migration is actually good

Why is Starmer doing this? Well, because Farage did well in the local elections. A couple of pensioners in Staines waved their walking sticks at a Reform UK leaflet, and the Labour Party lost its nerve like a fainting goat at a fireworks display. In response, Starmer has bravely announced that he will be ending Britain’s oppressive reign as a tolerant society and joining the global vanguard of countries that mistake being nasty to foreigners for national pride.

Let’s pause, briefly, to remember that migration is actually good. I know it’s gauche to cite facts in British political commentary, but here we are.

Migrants contribute more to the economy than they take out. They support an aging population. They enrich our culture. They serve our food, drive our buses, clean our hospitals, teach our children, build our buildings, perform surgery and vital research. You get the idea.

What happened to Remainer Starmer?

Yet Labour’s big idea seems to be: what if we just stopped all that and instead doubled down on the dream of an all-native workforce of beetroot-faced Abbot Ale drinkers nostalgically reminiscing about the days when they could shout at women in the street without getting their Deliveroo account suspended.

What happened to Starmer the pro-European, pro-fact, pro-sanity politician? The one who thought aligning with liberal values was something other than an electoral death wish? The one who, once upon a Remoaner time, might have said something like “we’re better when we’re open”?

Now he’s one Reform UK polling bump away from rebranding himself as Sir Keir of Kent, Defender of the Border, enemy of the sandwich shop that uses too much coriander.

The battle over the question

Here’s the thing about politics, Keir, if you’re still taking notes: it’s not just about giving the right answers, it’s about the voters choosing the right question. Or more accurately, politics is about what politicians do to make sure voters choose the question that benefits them. Politics is a battle over which question voters ask.

If you let Farage and Reform make the question “how do we stop immigration?” then congratulations, Kier, you’ve already lost. Reform will always answer it with more bile, more conviction, and more Union Jack waistcoats than you ever could. You’re not going to out-patriot a man who could launch a pub chain called “Brexit Bar” (now available in your nightmares and select Essex industrial estates).

Labour used to know this. Or at least they pretended to. Now they’re playing the right’s tune note for note, like a wedding band covering “Angry White Man in D Minor” and wondering why no one’s dancing. It’s the same old song, and it’s got a hell of a chorus: “Cut immigration, flog hope, and blame the Romanians.”

The same old scapegoats

Here’s the kicker. Starmer’s Labour doesn’t have any other ideas. That’s the tragedy. There’s no New Deal. No sweeping plan for public housing. No redistributive economic miracle, just a vague hope that if they hum the same tune as Farage quietly enough, no one will notice that the orchestra’s on fire. The problem with stealing the right’s playlist is that eventually the right headlines Glastonbury, and all Labour gets is a slot at 10am on the Kidz Bop stage. Just look at the French Socialist Party.

So, here we are again, friends. The same old scapegoats, the same old cowardice, and me, your faithful blogger, having to write the same bloody defence of migration like it’s Groundhog Day but with more dog-whistle politics and less Bill Murray.

Welcome to Starmer’s Britain. Bring your own carer. Or don’t. We’re phasing them out.