British Jobs For British Workers

Keir Starmer says the days of cheap immigrant labour must end. Nigel Farage agrees

For more on the state we’re in with Brexit - Swiss option, single market, Scotlands route to the EU and much more - hear my latest podcast interview with Brussels expert Kirsty Hughes.

You've got to hand it to Keir Starmer, he's tougher than he looks. They're not mocking him as “Keith” any more on Twitter – a boring suburbanite. The Labour leader has buried all trace of Corbynism, indeed of the left in general. He's just told the CBI that he's turned Labour “inside out” - and he has.

Indeed he is sounding more conservative, at least with a small c, by the day. The days of “cheap [immigrant] labour must end” he told industry bosses and the Confederation of British Industry. No - you heard that right. The Labour leader wants British jobs for British workers.

No solidarity with strikers though, at least as far as allowing ministers on picket lines. No income tax rises either, except maybe on Non Doms. Sir Keir got the Labour Party Conference to sing the national anthem, wraps himself in the flag whenever he can and is now echoing Boris Johnson on migration. Next he'll be saying he knows what a woman is.

Not only has Sir Keir ruled out rejoining the European Union, he says that Labour will not be joining the single market or the customs union or restoring freedom of movement. This, even though public opinion appears to be shifting against Brexit and industry bosses are screaming about lack of workers.

When the former Labour leader and PM, Gordon Brown, talked about “British Jobs for British Workers” back in 2009 he was lambasted by the left for issuing a racist “dog whistle”. Now Starmer appears to be blowing the same device. Indeed, he sounds like he has launched a culture war against his own party activists, many of whom are dedicated europhiles who think Britain should open its doors to anyone who wants to come here.

It is hard to recall that this is the same Keir Starmer who supported all those Peoples Vote marches back in 2018 along with Nicola Sturgeon trying to stop Brexit. The Labour leader is refusing now to consider any kind of electoral agreement with the Scottish Nationalists and has ruled out a referendum on independence even if the Supreme Court agrees to one.

Guardian columnists like Owen Jones are distraught and talking about betrayal and even “lies”. They claim, not only that Keir Starmer campaigned in 2019 to get Jeremy Corbyn elected as prime minister, but that he won the subsequent leadership campaign on false pretences, sounding as if he was still speaking from the same hymn sheet as Jezza. Now he is sounding positively Tory on touchstone issues like immigration.

Twitter is not amused. But Sir Keir has realised what many of us have recently: that Twitter doesn't matter. It is largely left wing people attacking other left wing people for not being left wing enough. The rest of the country seems to have been watching I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here where, incredibly, the former Tory Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, seems to have become a belated national treasure. But I digress.

Starmer of course realises that immigration can't be halted. There aren't enough British workers to fill British jobs, but he understands the passion that this issue arouses amongst many Labour voters. He doesn't seem to care that has echoed what Boris Johnson said in 2021 about not “reaching for the lever of mass immigration”. If that's what he needs to say to reassure working class voters he'll say it. Even if he gets plaudits from Nigel Farage.

Keir Starmer isn't an ideologue, but does believe passionately in one thing: gaining power. He is ruthlessly focussed on winning the next election and he will happily trash the left to do it. Those thousands of eager Momentum activists got a very clear message this week that they are no longer wanted unless they are willing to adopt the kind of language that appeals to the Red Wall: the former Labour seats that went to the Tories in 2019, largely over Brexit.

In this sense, Keir Starmer is a direct descendant of Tony Blair. He doesn't talk about New Labour but his policies increasingly look like what is sometimes called “blue” Labour, a phrase coined by the Labour academic Lord Glasman. It means a party that is both centrist and nationalist - at least to the extent of putting country first and celebrating British values – like the Union with Scotland.

Starmer realises that many Red Wall voters are thinking twice about Brexit, which hasn't exactly been a runaway success, but they aren't thinking twice about sovereignty, about backing Britain and about taking back control of borders. They want the jobs back that they believe have been taken away by globalisation.

Above all, they want migration to be controlled so that capitalists can't simply replace British workers with cheap labour from abroad, as has been happening in Scotland's offshore wind sector recently, according to the Alba MP, Kenny MacAskill.

And what about all those vociferous middle class remainers who think talk of controlling immigration is tantamount to racism? Well, there's always the LibDems.