These are Guardian headlines, published late this morning:
I find these words exceptionally difficult to note when said by someone who claims to have the moral authority that comes from being the prime minister of the UK.
Starmer's speech today was very obviously based on the argument “I'm not a racist, but…", but failed as miserably as anything caveated in that way always does, because the comments that Starmer made can only, as far as I am concerned, be interpreted as profoundly racist.
My Irish grandfather came to this country as an economic migrant.
Others from his family, including his sister, went to the USA in the same capacity.
On my wife's side of my extended family, pretty much everyone is in this country as an economic migrant. Many are second generation, at most. Many maintain strong links with Ireland.
What right does Keir Starmer have to say that my family and I are "causing incalculable damage to the UK"?
What right does he have to claim that we are strangers in this island? Are we back there now, less welcome in pubs than dogs?
What right does he have to suggest that we are, somehow, not British enough because we maintain our links with Ireland, are proud to be Irish passport holders, enjoy Irish culture, and do, as is most definitely my habit on occasion, support Ireland in international sporting competitions and in things like Eurovision (and yes, it matters) if only because in the last case that gives us a sporting chance of backing a winning team?
Is he saying that we are not welcome here as a result?
Is he saying that what we have added to this country as accountants, doctors, teachers, other medical professionals, builders, other construction industry specialists, and more, should be ignored?
Is he saying that our children should not have their entitlement to Irish passports, which legally are theirs to enjoy, and that if they do make that claim, then they should be subject to prejudice?
My stomach churns at his hostility.
I can feel him stoking the flames of hatred.
I sense the spirit of the late Rev Ian Paisley within him, or that of Enoch Powell in his Ulster Unionist days.
I am certain millions of others, born in this country, but with parents or grandparents born elsewhere, and who are proud of those countries from which their forebears came, and all the traditions and cultures that came with them, will share my anger at Starmer's comments that are so intensely insensitive, provocative, dog-whistling, and deliberately racist.
How dare this little man (because he indicates himself to be of such stature by the comments that he has made) question who I, my extended family, and millions of others in this country are, all to satisfy his desire to pander to the racists in the Conservative and Reform parties?
And how dare he sacrifice us to his already slight hopes of re-election when immigration is not in any way, even remotely, a part of the problems that this country faces, almost all of which problems are entirely related to the failure of successive neoliberal governments, of which his failed effort is just the latest in a long line of miserable examples?
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A sentiment shared. As a white northerner with a broad northern accent but Polish grandparents, I unfortunately find certain people will espouse prejudices willingly, until they hear my Polish surname. So very depressing.
Staggering, isn’t it?
I have ovarian cancer for which I have had chemo at The Christie hospital. I have seen several consultants at the Royal Bolton Hospital and at the Christie. Not one of them was a white Anglo Saxon. My husband recently died in the Royal Bolton Hospital. His consultant was of Indian extraction and at least half of the nursing and ancillary staff were of Afro Carribean extraction, and judging from their accent were recent immigrants. Where would we be without them!
Lost, in a word.
Good luck with your recovery.
You mentioned Eurovision any thoughts on why Israel is allowed to continue competing despite quite clearly not being part of Europe. Whilst Russia was banned from all cultural and sporting events. Surely hypocrisy of the highest order
I would ban Israel
I am also of Polish descent, wouldn’t know from my surname. It’s not the first time the Labour party have attacked migrants. In modern times, for both of my marriages I ended up marrying a non-brit, and have suffered from the hostile environment policies of the last 10 years. To see Starmer and Labour making things worse in the name of trying to win over a few racists and doing anything other than taxing the rich makes me sick to my stomach. I am braced for the Labour party making my current wifes visa renewal even more difficult!
You have my sympathy.
So far we do not have that problem.
I know those who do.
I’ve not had the stomach to read all he’s said but as you alluded to it seems to be a modern day “rivers of blood.”
I don’t see how he can continue to have the confidence of his party.
Most of them are spineless.
Selected because either they have no spine, or they agree with the Sturmer’s espousal of nationalism.
Starmer and his *consistently* racist, right wing party utterly disgust me. How dare he use *state* failure in this way, to cast off the true area of responsibility, to distract people from the reality and promote hatred and division among the people of this country? He won’t win a single vote with this strategy, he’ll just drive more former labour voters to ‘reform’.
I have a very dull, English sounding name but can’t find any England in my family tree. There’s Irish, a dab of Scottish, Swedish, Danish, East European, Jewish, Indian, Caribbean and more. My siblings, son and cousins have added others.
If he wasn’t already, I’d say Stuff Starmer.
I’m at a loss to understand why it’s thought that people who previously voted for Labour would switch to Reform due to Starmer’s tack to the (far) right on immigration. Labour will indeed lose votes due to the disgusting speech made today, but surely, most likely to a party that has a more appreciative attitude to the multicultural country we’ve become?
It has become increasingly clear that the Starmer government has capitulated to the far-right agenda and rhetoric. This reveals a weak and cowardly administration—one that lacks vision and any real sense of direction. If they believe that shifting to the right will win over Reform voters, they are seriously mistaken. They can even move to the extreme right in a hope to attract Reform voters but in vain.
Labour’s agenda will not only fail to win over Reform voters, but it’s also alienating its own base—especially by firmly shutting the door on any prospect of re-joining the EU or even the EEA. “Britain will not rejoin EU in my lifetime”, says Starmer. Shocking!
I’ve not only lost hope in this government, but in all of them.
Hello- I’m new here, but this resonated as a 3rd generation Irish immigrant to Yorkshire, part of a large, active Catholic community of Irish, Polish and Ukrainian people. My grandparents were very, very poor economic migrants- my parents got to Leeds Uni through night school and went on to be life long teachers and educators. And all the above nationalities are white!- so where does that leave everyone else? The most valuable thing my parents taught me was that racism of any kind is poison. I despair of this dreadful Government- it simply refuses to adhere to the basic principles it was elected on. Who owns it? Who is pulling the strings? I am also extremely angry and cannot see what on earth we do now. I admire and rely on your posts, Richard- if this Government had any sense, it would hire you. Clare Higgins.
Thanks, Clare.
Go well.
Agreed. I’m not sure what incredible damage I have done by coming here as a child, nor my wife when coming here as a young teenager. I was tempted to list all of our credentials of being ‘good immigrants’ but frankly it’s pointless to justify my citizenship and contributions. I’m just disappointed and empty; it seems that no matter how low my opinion of Starmer was it was never low enough to match reality.
Thanks, and go well.
Surely it’s bigotry rather than racism here, but deplorable none the less.
We can take issue with how Starmer frames things at times, but we have to deal with reality.
How can a country function as a high trust, stable society with such unprecedented levels of immigration and foreign national population growth (not to mention from many parts of the world, thanks to Johnson and Sunak, that are culturally quite different)?
Calling people “racist” isn’t going to blind people to the upheaval the previous 15-20 years of immigration has brought to their communities. Immigration has brought many benefits to Britain in the past, but the levels were manageable and didn’t cause so much fragmentation. Millions of people are feeling the negatives of such an extreme (neo)liberal policy. It shows a lack of empathy to just label them “racist”.
The issue is scale, not immigration itself.
What, precisely, are the problems you think migration is causing?
How will you deal with the failings in health and social care, agriculture and much else that will follow from curtia9ling migration? Precisely?
How will we manage the dependency ratio without migrants?
Explain. Or shut up, because if you can’t you’re a racist.
Mike Worthington – surely the ‘upheaval’ you mention as related to immigration over the past 15-20 years—if it exists at all—is caused by successive governments blaming immigrants for all sorts of problems NOT caused by immigration. These governments intentionally inflame bigotry, paranoia, and create divisions that are artificially construed.
This, of course, diverts attention from the real problems CAUSED by these governments. Instead, good people are now forced into defensive mode…either to defend themselves if they don’t have white skin, or happen to be immigrants to this country, or to protect those who are.
Makes me furious, to be honest. What a waste of our humanity and time.
I don’t think you can blame, for example, the downward pressure on wages (of the least paid) the radical increase in supply causes (one of the many problems related to uncontrolled mass immigration which I did not include in my reply to Richard, a reply he decided not to post – rather convenient given how he ended his initial reply…) on fearmongering.
This is absurd
The downward pressure has nothing to do with market disruption, recession, a neoliberal bias to companies, the destruction of trade unions, the rise of casual labour, the de-skilli9ng o0f work and zero-hour working and other such factors? It has all to do with Brexit deliver migration? How do you prove that?
And where are you in Brexit by the way? How well did that work out?
Sounds like a Speech that Nigel Farage [German descent] would be proud of.
Agreed
I’m of Irish extraction; all of my ancestors were Irish who came to Scotland during the Irish famine. I’m not ashamed of that – those in charge of the UK at the time should have been.
The little Englanders really need to take a look at their history. There’ll many people who, on digging deep into their ancestry, will find that they’re actually descendants of immigrants.
It’s quite a melting pot. Some will be of Roman descent and those who refer to those quintessential English – the Angles and Saxons – they were Germanic tribes. Others could be descendants of the Vikings – in the old Danelaw area there’s lots of English place names that come from the Norse – and of the Normans as well as from many of the countries the British subsequently invaded – a lot of countries.
Immigrants helped build the infrastructure of these countries – with picks and shovels – or spent their lives underground mining coal and minerals required for industrialisation.
I’m proud to be descended from such people.
Immigrants are paying their way often in jobs British people don’t want to do. The ignorant detractors can take a flying leap; they really are pricks.
Thanks
What is truly, truly shocking is that it is Starmer and his rich funders and backers who are ‘the other’ that our society should be afraid of – not immigrants who have always made a huge contribution.
So, what will happen to all these pure English cracker Reform voting honkies when the job centre sends them to work in old people’s homes to wipe bottoms and such like? On what – minimum wage?
Yeah right.
I mean it should be at least £15 an hour if not more but then our cowardly politicians will need help with their own arse-parts if they knew it was going to cost that much. Which it should. And that’s the bit no one wants to talk about!!
It’s picking vegetables the english won’t do. Enoch powell used ‘we are at risk of becoming an island of strangers, in his rivers of blood speech.
My cousin’s eldest who is mixed race was wanted by Oxford university and UCL and he was offered a full scholarship to go to Oxford to do his masters on the marxist revolutionary who was bumped off in south america in the 1970’s, called Walter Rodney. So universities need immigrants and wanted a lot, which given it is known for its racism, clearly didn’t mind him being Tanzanian and english.
I am confused as to what you are trying to say.
All I know of my ancestors were that on my Dad’s side they were pretty English, that my Mum was half Welsh, and one of my mother’s great grandmothers was Irish. My Mum’s father’s surname was Larchet, a Huguenot name. So although I am geographically, financially and culturally virtually 100% middle class English, even I have some immigrants in my background.
I subscribe to the New European, which does podcasts by Matt D’Ancona and Matt Kelly. aka ‘the two Matts’. I listened to one this morning where they had James Ball, the TNE’s political editor, explaining this government’s way of working. He stressed Morgan McSweeney’s influence as Chief of Staff, amongst other things, and explained that McSweeney was very much influenced by the failure of labour to win the 2023 Uxbridge by-election.
I’ve always thought that by election explained a great deal about this government’s behaviour; parachuting in a Starmerite over the heads of the local party, who then promptly turned on Sadiq Khan of all people for extending ULEZ, instead of attacking the tory and anti ULEZ idiots lies about it… and lost the by-election by 500 votes as disgusted voters went to the greens.
Apparently McSweeny concluded this proved that green policies were a vote loser, and by implication, shouty right wingers have to be pandered to. And on this basis, this is why labour is pandering to the far right agenda with this utterly appalling and damaging policy. And then trying to bully voters into voting labour as Nasrine Malik pointed out in the Guardian article Mike P posted here. “If you vote green, you’ll let in Reform lefty….”
No thanks. While Reform are moronic racists they don’t pretend to be progressive. While labour is now apeing their policies and backing away from real progressive policies or refusing to do them at all (e.g. PR) which if it really cared about labour values it would seek to do urgently, they are still trying to tell us they are progressive. No, you are not. You are betraying progressive values and voters and ultimately, everybody in the country except right wing billionaires and the far right.
Reform or labour in 2029? Vote fascist or vote traitor. Neither thanks. Richard, you’ve frequently said Starmer is not a politician or has any convictions or strategy other than a desire to win elections by saying anything McSweeny thinks will win them.
Too true. This disgusting speech proves this over and over again. Perhaps he should watch ‘Who do you Think you are’ tonight which has Leyton Williams examining his own family history…which includes ancestors who were slaves. Britian would not exist without immigration.
Thanks.
My brother was born in Hong Kong, spent some time in a Chinese port, was in Australia during the war , arriving as a refugee, him, Mum and one suitcase. His teens were spent in Jersey, where my family has roots and then did 12 years in the Royal Navy. Ships’s companies were very mixed. If I remember your grandfather served in HMS Sheffield, and he severed in a sister Town class cruiser. Leaving the navy he married in Edinburgh and joined the local police.
There he experienced racism from a number of Scots. He was accused of being ‘English’.
His comment was the ‘racists’ had two things in common, had never been out of Scotland and didn’t know their own country’s history very well. One of his abusers would insist Bonnie Prince Charlie was ‘nae a Catholic!”
Over the years I have found that to be true of a number of racists.
A good memory: he did indeed serve on the ‘Shiny Sheff’ as it was called, and died as a result of that service on the Russian convoys.
Thanks, Ian.
If I look in the mirror I see someone who would be the archetype of what the racists would call English. Yet I know that I carry English, Welsh, German and south Asian blood, some of it from slaves. I am immensely proud of my heritage and also of that of my two adopted black African grandchildren. Although they have dual nationality when they visit from their home country they neither sound nor look English. I have no doubt they will have a great deal to contribute to the world when they grow up. But it would seem that Starmer cannot see this. He, and the UK will be the poorer. Like Richard, it makes me very sad and more than a little angry. I am ashamed.
Thanks for sharing.
I wonder how far back he intends to go. I’m descended from the Hugeonots
Who needs
“How dare Keir Starmer tell my family that we have caused incalculable damage to the UK?”
Plenty to object to in the speech, not least the economics, but he didn’t say that.
You can look at the foreword yourself. What he’s saying caused the incalculable damage wasn’t immigration. It was the previous government policy to be talking like it was cutting immigration while raising it considerably. That did a lot of damage to trust, I think it’s very hard to deny, that’s one thing Farage alighted upon when he made his comeback.
I’m amazed how many people who will routinely point out media misrepresentation or sloppinesss lap it up when it confirms something bad about someone they don’t like.
Stop being an apologist for a fascist.
I checked.
Read this https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/05/12/was-starmers-speech-this-morning-racist/
Now apologise.
Dear Sir Keir,
Um, have I missed something? Isn’t Morgan McSweeney an immigrant?
🙂
If Starmer can’t say what the ‘damage’ is and he can’t quantify what he believes the damage to our society is then the most likely explanations for his position are racism, xenophobia, political cowardice or a mixture of these things.
Starmer wants us to believe that he wants NHS waiting lists to diminish and then tells us he is cutting care worker visas. And as we know bed blocking caused by inadequate social care is a major contributor to waiting lists.
Starmer has revealed himself to be incoherent as well as shallow and cowardly.
Agreed
I object to lots in the speech and in the policy.
But it’s important to criticize what was actually said, surely? The foreword says exactly what I said it did, doesn’t it? And nothing, even implicitly, about your Irish grandfather?
You can answer this simple question, without me needing to read anything else.
You are being literal to defend abuse. That makes you a charlatan.
As a fellow descendant of Ireland, I think you might be being a bit disingenuous. Though he could not say it out loud, his remarks were almost certainly aimed at people of colour and, perhaps, Eastern Europeans, because they are not in Farage’s view, like us. Farage, of course is of French descent so Western Europeans OK, others not.
Then you are just saying he’s being a racist on the grounds of colour.
Do you think that helps?
He did not make the distinction. Why are you?
I still remember attending a conference at St Alban’s Church, Holborn, put on by the Bishop of Edmonton for parishes in his diocesan region of London, entitled “Who is my Neighbour”.
It was a very good event, not least for the contribution of Rev’d Professor Tim Gorringe on the Jewish concept of “ger”, or stranger, often translated alien, of course, which is the Hebrew behind the famous quote in Levitt Leviticus 19, vv33-34
“When an alien resides with you in your land, do not mistreat such a one. You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt. I, the LORD, am your God
And then chair of the session that included Prof Gorringe’s startling presentation quietly summed it all up by saying:
“I’m an economic migrant – I come from a poor Welsh background, and migrated to London to improve my life chances.”
Is vile Starmer going to persecute such economic migrants too? Such economic migration is extremely common. He really is appalling – the worst disaster to happen to this country in at least a generation.
Many thanks, Andrew.
I appreciated that.
Richard,
I realised afterwards (writing these posts on a small mobile has its drawbacks) that I omitted the really stunning aspect of Professor Gorringe’s presentation, which was that he said “ger” should be translated “economic migrant”.
Now read the Leviticus quote so translated:
“When an economic migrant resides with you in your land, do not mistreat such a one. You shall treat the economic migrant who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; you shall love the economic migrant as yourself; for you too were once economic migrants in the land of Egypt. I, the LORD, am your God.”
That’s why the Chair of the session made the comment she made.
Thank you
He did not because it would be politically unacceptable to distinguish. And, no, of course it is not acceptable but he was still not aiming at us
You are fooling yourself
There is a lot of huffing and puffing going on here about nowt’ and it just seems like point scoring.
Plainly and simply, Starmer’s words are very ill advised and should not have been said in a climate where division rules and we’ve had immigrants attacked in hotels and where we have a political party (is it?) stirring things up about immigration when the real problem is austerity and Government withdrawal from financing its commitments that is the problem.
Starmer should also know that the word ‘immigration’ means different things to different people and he has totally ignored that, opting I think anyway to appealing to a certain mindset on purpose – Reform voters.
He’s digging his own political grave but do you know what? He was always just passing through onto a life of riley anyway Knight of the Realm that he is.
Did Kier Starmer really say that your family and others like them are “causing incalculable damage to the UK”? If so, that’s an extraordinary and terrible thing for him to say – almost unbelievable coming from a Labour Prime Minister. However, I can’t find the actual quote anywhere. All the media I’ve seen use the “incalculable damage” quote in their headline, but then don’t quote the full text. What did Kier Starmer actually say?
The quote has been on television
I guess it was in the answer to a question.
No, he didn’t say that.
Here is the statement;
“in 2023, under the previous government, inward migration exploded to over a million people a year – four times the level compared with 2019. This was a political choice that was never put before the British people. In fact, quite the opposite – the previous government repeatedly promised inward migration would be brought under control. Instead, Britain became a one-nation experiment in open borders.
The damage this has done to our country is incalculable. Public services and housing access have been placed under too much pressure […]”
Writing an article based on a quote without knowing any of the context is unfair.
It’s very odd that so many, like you, turn up here for the first time to make such a claim.
The suggestion is that allowing immigration caused incalculable damage. The blame is technically put on the Tories, and somehow you think that means immigration was not the problem, but Tory migration policy was.
These are the words and actions of a charlatan. That describes Starmer. It also describes you. It is the “I’m not a racist, but the Tories allowing all these migrants in caused incalculable damage” excuse for your prejudice. You cannot, as you claim, differentiate the supposed damage from migration policy from migration itself. The policy did not create the problems Starmer highlighted. It is apparent he thinks actual migration by real people did that.
You are seeking to excuse racism.
You are supporting a fascist.
How do you live with being a racist? Does it make you feel good? Why?
Starmer needs to answer the same question.
What kind of logic is this?
How can you not make a distinction between the concept of immigration and the effects of different scales of immigration?
If tomorrow, the entirety of the USA entered Britain, you would think this is fine because immigration is immigration is immigration?
You sound like an open borders Tory, a tool of big business.
I turn up because I don’t want Labour to end up back in the wilderness.
If you want to ask stupid questions you won’t last here for long.
My father’s parents were French immigrants, picking fruit and vegetables. There was a need for workers from outside the country in the early 1900s and there still is now.
I had hoped that Starmer’s victory in the General Election last year would be the start of a new, kinder Britain. My hope was misplaced.
I fear so
My ancestors came here 300 years ago fleeing religious persecution. My husband came here 60 years ago as a 14 year old. (He has recently had to go through a process to prove his right to go on living here with no indication of how often this will have to be reviewed). We’ve pay taxes, willingly, to contribute to the community of this country and in my husband’s case employed and trained young people.
Scratch the ancestry of many, many Brits and you find immigrants. Immigrants built our roads and railways, worked in our factories, drove our buses, run many of our essential corner shops, are keeping the NHS from collapsing, fought for the country. I can’t remember when I last had a dentist who wasn’t of Asian descent. Our elderly are cared for by many immigrants who are often being painfully exploited. This is a government that keeps on about growing the economy – well, you ain’t going to do that without immigrants.
And let’s face it, immigrants weren’t responsible for selling off council owned housing, or pushing wages down in a gig economy (where it’s a race to the bottom in an Amazon warehouse), or providing inadequate training and apprenticeships, or the economic and financial systems of neo-liberalism, or Brexit, or austerity. People are far more than commodities but way Starmer talks of immigrants he patently thinks they are, just like water in a tap. It shows no respect for the enormous benefits immigrants have brought to the country, not just in the past, but in recent years.
I feel really ashamed of Starmer, for showing such scant regard for the benefits of immigration and for fuelling an underbelly of prejudice that bubbles below the surface among those who don’t take the time to understand what immigration has given to this country.
It’s institutional racism.
Agreed
My grasp of the law is shaky but I think that the Home Secretary can deprive people of their British citizenship for a number of reasons as long as it does not leave them stateless. I guess that means people of Irish extraction (and many others of course) are actually second class citizens. Once we go down the dodgy rhetoric rabbit hole how many of us are actually safe? Longing for a country where we can all feel safe and secure.
You are right
I’ve just read this blog and your previous one (was Starmer’s speech racist – a question to Chat GPT) to my wife as they strongly resonate with her. Like you – and quite a few of the commenters – she’s of Irish decent. Speaking as someone whose as Anglo Saxon as it’s possible to know (going back as far as it’s possible to go using heritage sites – though quite a few people over the years have assumed I must be of Russian heritage given my first name) I’m shocked but not, sadly, surprised by Starmer’s speech. But what I find of particular interest is this.
The speech and its content was trailed as being all about the recent “explosion” in immigration. I assume this means since the UK’s exit from the EU, as for the latter part of the transition period it had been falling and was a 35,000 overall net migration by late 2020, and then “exploded” to over 900,000 in mid 2023 (now somewhere around 700,000), most of which is made up of non EU persons.
In short, we’ve substituted many (primarily) white people from the EU (300,000 in the peak year of 2016), with people who come from countries where the population is most likely not white. So, perhaps it’s no accident – but is most shocking – that Starmer’s ‘island of strangers’ remark is so similar to Enoch Powell’s ‘strangers in their own country’ remark. I cannot believe that was accidental.
Me, neither.
Apologies for messing you about, but there was meant to be a second conclusion to my earlier comment.
That is, isn’t it despicable that pretty much exactly the same people – Farage and Co – who campaigned for Brexit (and eventually got their wish, to the cost of everyone in the UK) primarily on the basis that there were “too many” people from the EU – and particularly from Eastern Europe – in the UK, and “we” just had to stop that, are now campaigning for exactly the same treatment of non EU people. And, entirely hypocritically, ignoring the fact that many of those people have come to the UK precisely because we need to fill the labour shortages created by our exit from the EU – i.e. an outcome of the Brexit that those very same people put so much effort into forcing upon the UK. I suppose it says something about racism and the willingness of certain people to exploit it for political purposes, regardless of who they target.
Agreed
I have been outraged by many of this Government’s actions and rhetoric over the last 10 months. The recent revelations over cuts to the NHS in England to deregulation of mortgage lending off the back of cuts to social security (PIP in particular) and international aid have been particularly shocking but I’m seriously alarmed by what the government has had to say about migration – especially with regards to sectors such as care.
From what I’ve seen visiting my grandmother in her care home and from what I’ve heard from my mother who works in care (previously in a care home) is a sector that is struggling with a staffing crisis which would struggle to function without the care provided by the many overseas people who are employed in the sector. While some may put forward a moral case for not taking people with valuable skills away from the global south the reality is that reducing overseas recruitment is likely to have not only a deleterious effect on care but also knock on effects elsewhere.
Care May become more expensive, some may have to close down or cut corners to stay afloat and the sector will likely be overwhelmed by the demand from a society that is ageing and ailing. The consequences:
Reduced spending in the economy as families struggle to afford care.
Reducing number of economically active people as a result of families having to provide care themselves or people not well enough to participate in the labour market because the NHS is overwhelmed due to delayed transfer of care or more vulnerable people admitted because of deficiencies in the quality of care provided.
Others will also argue that reducing dependency on overseas workers would result in higher wages. Whilst this is not a bad thing it’s likely that any benefits would be reduced by higher rate of inflation followed by the inevitable increase of interest rates set by the Bank of England.
What I find shocking is the rhetoric of ‘incalculable damage damage to UK economically and politically’ and ‘island of strangers’. As far as I’m concerned, when I think of what’s caused incalculable damage to UK politics and economy I think of:
Thatcher, neoliberalism, inequality, austerity, deindustrialisation, deregulation, trickle-down economics, 2008 banking crisis, Brexit, rentierism, Liz Truss, fiscal rules, privatisation, high energy prices, pandemic, dishonest and incompetent politicians, biased media, shady think tanks, lobbying, FPTP, centralised top-down governance, foreign policy in Middle East. I could go on.
Migrants have absolutely not caused incalculable damage to our economy. If anything we have caused incalculable damage to many of their countries of origin as a result of colonialism and foreign policy and will continue to do so with climate change and cuts to aid. And from a Scottish perspective, emigration has caused incalculable damage to our economy.
Given how much the government and in particular the Chancellor seems to worship GDP growth, if it were not for immigration our economy would have barely grown over the past 15 years as a growing population naturally increases the size of the economic pie. Their contribution is more than just increasing the population size. From setting up business to providing highly skilled labour where there is a shortage (and without the need for increased government spending to fund it) to filling jobs in care and agriculture which the native population are unwilling to do.
Just as it is better to have a diverse gene pool, the same goes for society where diversity brings dynamism which benefits the economy. I’m not saying there are no problems or limits to immigration. People should be cognisant of the concerns some people may have about migration (a single mother in a working class community conceded about the class size at their child’s skill or a pensioner who finds the rate of change discombobulating) shouldn’t call everyone who raises migration as an issue of concern as a racist. However we shouldn’t be afraid to call a spade a spade when racist and xenophobic dog whistling is uttered by politicians or in the press. And we shouldn’t be afraid to speak of the benefits of migration – economically and culturally.
There is an irrational fear peddled by the right that migration and multi-culturalism degrades the fabric of a nation and its culture. This is nonsense. The way the reactionary right talk about national identity and culture you’d think they were created fully intact in the book of Genesis and have since existed in isolated silos. The reality is that pretty much all nations and culture evolve overtime through largely external (or foreign influences). And that has been very much the case for the British Isles and its constituent nations over thousands of years (from language to place names to royalty to surnames and so on). Migration adds to the stock of a nation’s culture – not detracts from it.
It has been noted many times in the past 10 years or so of how the England national football team is comprised of many footballers who are descendants of migrants (particularly the Caribbean and Ireland). Another of the UK’s strongest cultural exports of the past 70 years is popular music. A large number of musicians, songwriters and performers are also descendants of migrants including most notably the Beatles (Lennon’s paternal grandparents, and Paul McCartney’s and George Harrison’s maternal grandmothers were from Ireland) and Freddie Mercury (who fled Zanzibar as a refugee when he was 17).
Finally, when Starmer talks of ‘island of strangers’ and I think of the Gaelic word for the Hebridean Islands – Innse Gall – which translates as Islands of the Strangers. Gall means stranger and is reflected in place names like Donegal in Ireland and Galloway in Scotland and surnames such as Gallagher. This goes to show how fluid and dynamic the movement of people across these Islands has been for centuries.
Many thanks.
Stuart, it’s easy to ignore the negative impacts of multiculturalism when you live in Scotland rather than in many part of England.
In recent years more people have come to this country than in the previous 1000 years.
Point out other issues, by all means, but ignoring one particular issue won’t make it go away.
Have you ever been to Scotland?
Or are you just an English exceptionalist?
What I do know is you are now banned.
I am so boiling mad about this.
My mother and her sister arrived in the UK from Sri Lanka in the 1960s. Mum studied midwifery in Scotland and started our family with my Scottish father. She worked at the NHS for decades, nothing but a credit to the job and our community.
Similarly, her sister became a GP and worked at the NHS for 40 years, an incredibly dedicated person.
Keir Starmer’s comments about high immigration causing damage to the UK are ignorant and likely to cause more division. A Tory would have been ashamed to behave this way.
Agreed
My parents might not have been allowed to settle in this country under the current rules, as my British dad, a skilled blue- collar engineer likely would not have met the income requirement. I certainly don’t earn enough. My mother gained British citizenship so she could vote, she worked and paid her taxes. I work in care, which relies heavily on migrant Labour. This utterly stinks, particularly from a party calling itself Labour.
What the White Paper actually says was the Tories allowing immigration to rise by 4x between 2019 and 2023 was what had caused incalculable damage. Not that immigration in general had done so.
It’s very odd that so many, like you, turn up here for the first time to make such a claim.
The suggestion is that allowing immigration caused incalculable damage. The blame is technically put on the Tories, and somehow you think that means immigration was not the problem, but Tory migration policy was.
These are the words and actions of a charlatan. That describes Starmer. It also describes you. It is the “I’m not a racist, but the Tories allowing all these migrants in caused incalculable damage” excuse for your prejudice. You cannot, as you claim, differentiate the supposed damage from migration policy from migration.
How do you live with being a racist? Does it make you feel good? Why?
Starmer needs to answer the same question.
Your post brings up an important tension — how do we reconcile pride in our heritage with a political climate that increasingly demands a singular, often narrow, national identity? It’s a question that deserves much more honest discussion, especially when so many families have built their lives across borders and cultures.
The problem of neoliberalism and its associated politics is that it requires that we hold a single idea in our minds and believe it to be true to the exclusion of all else. That is total nonsense.
I never hold a single idea in my mind.
I always seek out the counter narratives, the alternatives and what simply be described as ‘the other’, which is the fact that the idea is not even the right one to consider.
Maybe that is unusual. I don’t care. I would suggest it is what is necessary in life.
By a strange coincidence, the very week I emigrated from the UK to France, a family member sent me the family tree they had been researching – which revealed that my mother’s family had emigrated from France to the UK over 300 years earlier. Mind you, we came to Brittany, so all my neighbours now are Britons really anyway. Glad they’re not those fierce Scandinavians next door in Normandy, or those invasive Germans up there in England.
🙂
[…] I made the same link yesterday. […]
Dismay at Starmer’s speech and comments only reinforces the sense of dread at what could happen post-Starmer. For sure he is unelectable in 4 years time. If still Labour leader, where will Labour votes go? But the bigger question is what happens to the body politic when both Conservatives and Labour are so discredited that the last man standing is Farage and whatever party vehicle he leads in 4 years time.
The future for the UK is bleak unless more good people on the left stand up and call out Starmer and his team. Keep it up Richard.
We are all immigrants, if you go back far enough. At the end of the last Ice Age Britain was uninhabited, and uninhabitable. Everyone who lives here now has immigrant ancestry at some stage, whether yesterday or 8000 years ago.
Another point. Almost all the comments come from people who feel threatened by Starmer’s attitude. I am not threatened — all my great-grandparents were Lancs or Yorks lower class — but I am still furious, angry, ashamed at Starmer’s, and Reform’s, attitudes. You don’t have to be an immigrant to condemn hostility, let alone absolute lies about “incalculable damage”. Won’t more people like me condemn these racist attitudes?
Thanks, Linda.
The British economy is all the better for economic migrants.
Then after exploiting immigrants, Margaret Thatcher, started selling it off our assets to anybody who had a bit of cash. And here we are. Neoliberalism, profits before people.
Just when I thought Keich (Scottish word for ‘shit’) Starmer couldn’t disgust me any further, he comes out with this steaming pile of horse shit.