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I would love to know what exactly happens, in the top-level meetings where the prime minister decides to be even tougher on immigration. Is there anyone in there saying: “This will not halt Reform. This will not make Reform less obnoxious. This will not make them more moderate, and it will not stop people voting for them. All it will do is make your own supporters despair.” If there is, are they screaming it, or whispering it, with a thousand-yard stare?
It’s bad enough that the government has swallowed this anti-immigrant rhetoric wholesale; that it’s decided to land its misdirected toughness on the care workers is dumb on so many levels. First, Starmer’s claim that that migrant care workers are “cheap foreign labour”. Pause to note how extraordinary it is, to hear this kind of denigratory language coming from a human-rights lawyer. It is also untrue that migrants are driving down wages. People who employ care workers could tell him it’s untrue; data could tell him it’s untrue. The last vestige of faith in this Labour government was that it rooted its arguments in fact. As it ceased to be the anti-austerity party, and dropped its promises that anything would get better, it would – at the very least, and it wasn’t much – not just say any old bilge that tested well with the imaginary Angry Red Wall Inhabitant.
Anyone who’s ever interacted with any care workers feels a huge debt of gratitude to them, and yes, newsflash, this is irrespective of whether they were born in the UK. If you know any care workers, it’s because they’re caring for you or someone you love. It’s a pretty tight bond, far more intimate and meaningful than any you’ve ever had with your MP. To hear that we risk becoming an “island of strangers”, as Starmer has said, because of foreign-born care workers – well, it’s hard to muster the appropriate outrage because it’s just so patently untrue.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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