UK Prime Minister Just Conceded Post-War Consensus on Migration as an Unalloyed Good Is Dead

The United Kingdom experienced a massive Overton Window shift in real time on Monday as the country’s left-wing Prime Minister conceded it is now the view of the government that mass migration does not cause economic growth and that large numbers of arrivals weakens society.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer made a landmark announcement promising a significant cut in migration arrivals to the United Kingdom by the end of this Parliament, yet his set piece was immediately overshadowed by mass migrant boat arrivals on England’s southern coast and his own refusal to take concrete steps to change anything. Despite Starmer’s earlier vows to “smash the gangs”, illegal boat migrant arrivals continue to stack up, having already soared to all-time record numbers this year under Labour’s watch, with some 400 boat arrivals just this morning with several injured and one killed on the way.

Britain will “finally take back control of our borders”, the Prime Minister said in Westminster on Monday morning while dinging the previous Conservative-led government for having presided over record-high arrivals over its 14 years in power. The country will see immigration fall by 2029, Starmer said, stating: “I’m promising it will fall significantly, and I do want to get it down by the end of this parliament, significantly. That is what this plan is intended to achieve.”

While promises to cut migration by political parties which, bluntly, are not invested in the idea at all are ten-a-penny in British politics, the most significant remarks by the Prime Minister on Monday were earth shattering, as he expressed that the long-held liberal arguments for mass migration were not actually true. One unassailable Westminster assumption that long acted as a backstop during the Tory era was that whatever other problems migration brought, it was responsible for economic growth and that was the primary purpose of government.

Migration, therefore, could not be reduced.

Yet Starmer today stated what has been perfectly obvious to migration critics outside the political mainstream for years, stating the link between migration and economic growth has been “tested” and “doesn’t hold”.

Another unutterable truth now stated by Starmer is the impact of mass migration on society and culture. For decades, open borders critics have stated that new arrivals can be assimilated at a low levels, but once migration hits certain levels this becomes functionally impossible. Acknowledging this, Starmer said that without arrival controls: “we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together”.

To promote this, he said: “people should commit to integration and learning our language. And the system should distinguish between those that do and don’t. That’s fair. Britain must compete for the best talent in the world”. Being able to speak English for those living in Britain is “common sense”, said the Prime Minister.

While these remarks are helpful to migration critics in the long run because — coming from a centre-left Prime Minister — they normalise key arguments in favour of border control and divorce the matter from being a partisan issue, Starmer’s actual proposals to improve the situation appear to amount to little if anything at all.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage — polling well to be the next Prime Minister himself and doubtless the cause of this sudden government interest in border control — noted that for all the big talk, the government still won’t consider leaving the European Court of Human Rights, a European institution that has been a major stumbling block to repeated attempts to deport unwanted migrants. Farage and allies have said withdrawing from the court is a major step to the government getting the flexibility to side-step endless lawfare to keep migrants in Britain.

He said: “This government will not do what it takes to control our borders. Only Reform UK will leave the ECHR and deport illegal migrants.”

Also not present is any sort of migrant arrival cap, only a promise to reduce overall numbers. Starmer did defend himself from this notion, arguing the previous government had set caps that were never achieved, stating: “Going down the failed route is not a sensible way for me”, saying he was only interested in “looking at the things that will actually make a material difference”.

While technically true, that the previous government repeatedly set itself ambitious migration caps and targets that were never met, it also had no intention of hitting them and never even tried. Rather, they were a piece of political theatre intended at best to dupe the public into continue voting for them. Recent polling suggests the public is now wise to this deceit, at least.

While Starmer’s remarks were mainly about legal migration, he also touched on illegal or irregular migrants and referred back to his plan to “smash the gangs”. Yet a demonstration of how successful he has been on that endeavour so far was played out even as he spoke from Westminster on Monday morning, with hundreds more landing on England’s southern shore.

One migrant male was killed and several were burnt or suffered from hypothermia when a smuggler’s boat caught fire in the English Channel on Monday morning. In all, at least 400 boat migrants came ashore amid a wave of arrivals that is pushing 2025 to be a record year, already well in advance of previous record-holder 2022.

Beyond criticism from the pro-border control wing of British politics for appearing unready to actually do anything to enact change, Starmer also came under fire from the left on Monday morning as well. The Guardian reported complaints of a “crushing blow” to industries that rely on low wage migrant labour while the Green Party accused Starmer of being “panicked” by the electoral successes of Nigel Farage, leading him to make “ill-thought-through reforms”.

The Times of London brings niche concerns, noting housebuilders are critical of the plan to cut migration because they need to import tradesmen from abroad to build the huge numbers of new homes Starmers’ government commands be created. Yet — somewhat dishonestly — this snippet report fails to interrogate the situation around this whatsoever, given without mass migration the country practically wouldn’t require new housebuilding anyway.

After all, natural population growth in the United Kingdom is zero with more people dying than being born each year, its record-setting total population growth being pushed by migration arrivals alone.

The newspaper of record had more luck, at least, with its analysis that Starmer demolishing the British post-war consensus that migration is an unalloyed good means he is shifting towards a Danish position on border control. As now long-reported at Breitbart News, a new left wing position on border control is starting to emerge in Europe, a more intellectually honest take that acknowledges that a national welfare state can only sustainable exist if it isn’t open to use by the whole world.

Under this precept a left-leaning country can only take one of two course, therefore: dismantle its borders or dismantle its welfare state. This is the view taken by left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht in Germany and, as stated, by Danish left-progressive Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. As previously reported, Frederiksen has led one of the most closed-borders governments in Europe from the left for years:

“Security is also about what is going on in your local community”, says Danish Prime Minister Frederiksen in an interview that illustrates how she has bucked the trend for European centre-left Social Democrats losing power in recent years, apparently by bowing to public demand for border control and deportations.

… In comments that would be remarkable from a mainstream left-wing leader in practically any European country except Denmark, Frederiksen [said]: “I consider this mass migration into Europe as a threat to the daily life in Europe”. Her objection to mass migration is precisely because of her left-wing views and consequent concern for the working class, she explained, going on to say: “No matter if you look at statistics on crimes or if you look at problems on the labour market, insecurity in local communities, it is the most vulnerable who experience the consequences”.

There is no contradiction here, Frederiksen said, even if most European left-wing leaders would strongly disagree. She continued, Politico reported: “I totally believe in equal opportunities and a Scandinavian welfare model with a tax-paid education, social benefits and health care. But for me that’s only one traditional pillar of being a social democrat… Being in control of migration is the second pillar.”