Trying to outbid the extreme right is a mug’s game and it’s plain wrong

Surely Keir Starmer knows this or does he?

Why is Keir Starmer channelling Enoch Powell

Unbelievably it’s come to this where people are asking whether Sir Keir Starmer, a Labour Prime Minister, is echoing the sentiments of a deceased extreme right wing politician whose rabid rhetoric propelled racist gangs onto the streets .

Sir Keir is named after Labour’s founder Keir Hardy. In 1905 when the Party was making its first appearance in parliament, with just six MPs, they bravely stood out against the introduction of The Aliens Act, Britain’s first piece of immigration legislation, described by Mr Hardy as being ‘fraudulent, deceitful and dishonourable’.

What would he have to say about the man who follows in his footsteps as Labour leader while talking the talk of the extreme right by claiming that Britain risks ‘becoming an island of strangers’ if immigration levels are not to be cut?

The answer is that Keir the First is unlikely to appreciate Keir the Second echoing Enoch Powell, the most prominent racist of his day. In 1968 Mr Powell infamously warned that Britain was becoming a place where, due to immigration, white people ‘found themselves made strangers in their own country’.

The Starmer speech left many of his own colleagues gasping but he got a pat on the back from Nigel Farage, today’s most prominent racist, who said: ‘We at Reform…very much enjoyed your speech on Monday. You seem to be learning a great deal from us.’’

There is nothing in Sir Keir’s history that suggests he is racist and indeed he has had some kind words to say about immigrants. But even this cockup-prone Prime Minister must surely understand that the tone of his speeches, not the small print, are what sticks in the mind.

So, why on earth did he say something like this? Is he setting out to destroy his legacy as a human rights lawyer who bravely defended some of the hardest cases that came his way?

Did he actually believe that using the language of the most rabid immigrant haters would satisfy them?

Can he really be deluded enough to think that immigrant bashing would lure Reform supporters who don’t want venom-lite but the real thing?

Another possibility is that Sir Keir is afraid of the bullies in the media and parliament and calculates that appeasement is the best way of dealing with them. Of course he denies running scared yet he can’t help himself constantly bending over backwards to pander to his fiercest critics.

While embracing a Farage-themed agenda, Labour seems indifferent to the impact on its most ardent supporters who value the party’s record as defender of the oppressed. If Sir Keir is complacent enough to assume that those on the left, or indeed of a liberal disposition, can be ignored because they have no other place to go, he is in for a rude awakening.

Of course it is always possible that Sir Keir has changed his mind and now genuinely believes immigration is the number one problem. Indeed a couple of days after his ‘island or strangers’ speech he was back on his feet, with more words to reassure immigrant haters. He said ,‘ make no mistake – this plan means migration will fall. That’s a promise.’

If Britain’s chronic problems of poverty, housing, low productivity and a failing health service could actually be fixed by lowering immigration, a rethink would be required from those of us who unfashionably celebrate the contribution of immigrants to Britain.

Yet, study after study shows that immigrants make a substantial net contribution to the wealth of the nation. But there many people who don’t like studies and are fed up with experts and don’t trust them.

Governments tend to assume that ordinary folk are stupid and fail to realise that, however sceptical public opinion may be about so called expert opinion, people trust the evidence of their own eyes when visiting a hospital mainly run by immigrants and their descendants. On a daily basis they see people of immigrant backgrounds working extraordinarily long hours in care homes, shops and eating places.

Less clear to the naked eye is the fact that the quintessentially British dish, fish and chips, was introduced to these islands by Jewish refugees from Portugal and that Britain’s favourite restaurant staple, Tandoori Chicken Masala, is highly unlikely to be derived from Britain’s proud Anglo Saxon heritage. Is this making us strangers in our own country?

Of course anyone with a brain knows all these things but somehow the most avid immigrant-phobes detach the reality of their lived experience from an unshakable belief that the country is being overrun by in-commers threatening the British way of life.

When this phobia is fuelled by the leader of the Labour Party, a party which still claims to be attached to the democratic socialist principles of its founders, the shame of its current leader betraying these principles is excruciating. Worse, the stupidity of the government’s present trajectory leaves it open to that most cruel form of condemnation - mockery.

And if this Labour government can offer no better explanation than that what is does is a ‘means to an end’, they must surely know that the means often turn out to be the end. The only thing worse than political opportunism is stupid opportunism.