Yesterday, Keir Starmer described Reform's policy on the right to indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in the UK as “racist”, “immoral” and likely to “tear the country apart” by stripping ILR from people working in hospitals and schools, or running businesses.
He was right to do so. The terms are accurate.
Today, Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will apparently say that migrants to the UK will be denied ILR and be forced to leave the country if they fail to meet a clear set of criteria in a new points system. The requirements are that:
- They must not claim benefits
- They must be paying National Insurance
- They need to speak English to a high standard
- Must have a clean criminal record, and
- They must be volunteering in their community.
Let me describe this. This policy is “racist”, “immoral” and likely to “tear the country apart” by stripping ILR from people working in hospitals and schools, or running businesses.
Being unemployed is most often not a person's own fault. Nor is economic downturn a reason why a person should suffer deportation from this country. But the suggestion is that this will be the case for those with ILR. This blatantly contravenes their human rights.
Working in a job that does not pay a living wage is often a consequence of working for an abusive employer (including, on occasion, the UK state or a contractor to it) that does not reward work sufficiently to ensure a person can afford to live. It is not a person's fault. And it is a problem exacerbated in a country where all the odds are stacked in favour of landlords and regulated suppliers of monopoly services and against families and children.
Meanwhile, every day, I hear poor English in our media, and it profoundly annoys me. So who determines what this means? And who allows for regional and country-based variations in how our language is used?
We also all know that the criminal justice system - even the likelihood of being suspected of a crime - means that the odds are massively stacked against migrants in our country. Is there going to be no allowance for this?
And what does volunteering mean? If it does not include service at your Mosque, Temple, or other place of worship, what is the purpose of this? This suggestion stinks of colonial attitudes, requiring service to the master.
Reform is racist, abusive and utterly immoral. But so too is Labour planning to be so on this issue. We do not need to choose one over the other. We need to reject both. Racism is racism, whoever offers it.
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Knee jerk politics meant to satiate something dark and horrible for a political objective. Nothing more.
We all come from somewhere else. The British Isles had no human population in the last Ice Age glaciation about 20,000 years ago. Ok, so 20,000 years is a long time. But none of us can trace our history back that far and likely we all (or almost all) have some immigrant ancestors since at least Roman times when we know some people in the UK had come from what is now France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Germany, but also North Africa, and the Middle East.
More recently, the UK went out into the world and colonised many places, gave British citizenship to the local people, and invited them to come back to the “mother” country when it needed their labour: to crew ships or to fight in wars or to work in factories or hospitals. From the Far East, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas. Is it very surprising that many of them or their descendants are still here?
Is there a rational explanation for so many politicians becoming
so hostile to welcoming people to the UK who look like themselves or their parents or grandparents?
Homo sapiens have been around for much longer than 20,000 years. That’s the key point. We’re all immigrants.
Not only are we all immigrants (apart from a few who never left our starting point in Africa), we are all distant cousins of each other, sharing a single ancestral mother (Mitochondrial Eve), and separately a single ancestral father (Y-chromosomal Adam).
Note that our common ancestral parents change over time. For example if the current Mitochondrial Eve had 2 daughters (since it is the female egg that carries the mitochondrial DNA), and all the descendants of one of those daughters die out, then the other daughter would become the new Mitochondrial Eve.
Estimates are that our ancestral mother was around 155,000 years ago, and our ancestral father around 200,000-300,000 years ago.
Note that these were obviously not the only humans around at their time, just the one whose descendants are alive today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam
“We studied more than 70 different elections that took place in 12 western European countries over several decades, and found that when mainstream parties take more anti-immigration positions, it leads to more support for the radical right.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/26/labour-reform-uk-nigel-farage-immigration-voters
In May 2025 the official data showed that 34% of all people claiming Universal Credit were in work (approx 2.7 million people). I don’t know how many of these are currently have indefinite leave to remain’, but unless we manage to do something about Starmer, they won’t have to wait till the next general election to feel the full weight of this performative discriminatory cruelty.
Agreed
Please, forgive the “anon”…. but this is very “close to home”
Bloke in Pub: That Farage bloke, he talks a lot of sense…
Me: So, what have you got against my wife?
BiP: Nothing, she’s lovely… why?
Me: Well, you are prepared to vote for a man that would remove her right to live here. Why?
BiP: I don’t mean her; she would be allowed to stay…. I mean all the others. “Our Nige” would never boot out your wife.
Me: But it is his stated policy – she would have to reapply for the right to live here and as far as I can tell, she doesn’t meet the requirements.
BiP: But surely it won’t happen… not to her?
Me: No, it won’t – only as long as YOU stop supporting this ****. Please think about my wife before you vote.
BiP: Err….. mumble, mumble….
My wife is really worried by this…. and me, to.
I have many friends – like your wife, no doubnt – to whome this applies and of course the BiP will say “Not to them”, and then what ever Reform will call the ICE will arrive…
And given no one with a second passport now has a legal right to be here, I too am at risk.
The rise of extremes in both left and right are a worrying development. Without immigration, a lot of our services fail. Healthcare and agriculture are two that come to mind. Whenever I encounter someone with an extreme view, I quote the comedian, Doug Stanhope, “Nationalism does nothing but teach you to hate people you never met, and to take pride in accomplishments you had no part in” Whilst he may not be the first that comes to mind for social commentary, the sentiment is clear.
Clear, and correct.
Lots of immigrants work two jobs and still have to claim benefits, no matter how long they have lived here.
So they have to work long enough on minimum wage to not claim benefits yet still have time to volunteer?
Will parents have any time to see their children any more?
Does volunteering include working for groups like Majority Movement?
Does it include helping the police in situations like this?
https://www.thecanary.co/opinion/2025/09/28/newcastle-far-right-march/
All totally valid points.
The radical right is like a small yappy terrier.
It is small, much smaller than they would have us believe, perhaps no more than 15% of the population. All of these people now seem to have found their way into Reform, but not all people who might support Reform are part of the radical right and by definition, almost certainly racist.
They(radical right) are yappy, making sure they always make more noise than is expected for their size. The media, who are now amplifying the noisy barking, should be ashamed when the vast majority of their readership disagree with the yapping.
Starmer is right to call out racist policies, while being extremely careful to separate the racism from Reform support.
As expected, his words, although crystal clear have been misrepresented by the fascist Farage in the manner of Joseph Goebels and reported in the Daily Mail.
The Mail is a long standing supporter of fascism, having done so in the 1930s as anyone can see from the archives.
My brother’s former wife came here from Zimbabwe 25 years ago.
She has worked her fingers to the bone ever since, to the detriment of her health and relationships.
She will have paid a fortune in tax and NI. She is in her 50s now and will be feeling very uncomfortable.
There will be very many like her.
All comes down to money.
LINO have decided there is none & as a consequence things are unchanged from when the Tories ran things. People are deeply unhappy and the right whinge/Deform seize their chance. The “immigrants” & the penumbra of bollocks that surrounds it is a symptom of increasing disfunctionality (caused by money/lack thereof) in a country run by financial imbeciles/deeply corrupt puppet-politicos (ref starmer-mcsweeney, reeves-finance-sector). The head-bangers are coming, everybody can see that and…………nothing.
Absolutely pathetic from labour. Starmer, finally, gets around to doing what he should have been doing for months regarding Reform, only to have this clown of a Home Secretary ape the same language as the disgusting Reform racists.
What kind of political strategy is this? The left hand of labour doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Still, despite Starmers language, apeing the far right and pandering to it.
Pass the sick bucket please.
Forked tongues does not begin to describe this. I’m the daughter of a migrant, and it makes me feel sick. Jen W, your thoughts occurred to me too.