Labour should ignore its immigration extremists Keir Starmer could follow Denmark's example

Paralysed, a politically moribund Scholz has ceded the discourse on migration to the opposition CDU, who present us with the second potential outcome, of mainstream conservatives adopting a significantly harder line on migration, either to keep the radical Right out of power, or to form mainstream governments in which the radical Right is the kingmaker, as in impeccably liberal Sweden and the Netherlands. As a response to the latest terrorist atrocity, CDU leader Friedrich Merz has proposed declaring a national emergency over migration, enabling the state to turn migrants back at the border, with a blanket ban on admissions from Syria and Afghanistan. None of this is currently within the Overton Window of British politics, but then neither is the new policy from Scholz, Starmer’s German analogue, of deporting dangerous migrant criminals to Afghanistan and the Taliban justice system, unapologetically placing the safety of the German public over the interests of those who have been granted — and then abused — the German state’s hospitality. Depending on the outcome of the Conservative leadership contest, it is not difficult to imagine a Tory party, pressed by a Reform insurgency, either fending off the challenge from its right through a wholesale rejection of its own recent, disastrous record on migration, or pursuing some form of collaboration with Reform, should the new party continue its upward trend.

It is to stave off either of the above scenarios that Labour is presented with the third path, as shown by Denmark. Having, through its adoption of a harder line on migration, disentangled the ostensible task of social democratic government from the pursuit of mass immigration as a moral good in itself — a tendency which has, in recent decades, consumed the Western Left — Denmark has sidestepped the political turmoil overtaking other European democracies. Asylum, in Denmark, is now framed as a temporary measure, rather than a route to permanent settlement, drastically limiting the numbers of those who see asylum claims as an effective legal hack to improve their economic prospects. Those who require a place of refuge are granted one, for as long as their homes remain unsafe: those who do not, and merely exploit the humanitarianism of the Danish public, are rejected. With migration increasingly depoliticised through its overwhelmingly popular new policies, the Danish centre-left is freed to get on with the business of normal governance, a luxury Starmer will soon envy.

If we work on the basis that Labour intends to win the next election, then there are many relatively simple and perfectly humane solutions Starmer can adopt to drain British politics of the poisoned well left to him by previous governments. Indeed, Labour’s promising early start on deportations suggests the former human rights lawyer understands Britain’s tolerant asylum system can only be preserved through aggressive reform. But first he must purge the extremists within his ranks. A decade ago, at the height of Merkel’s grand experiment with opening Europe’s borders to, inter alia, the Islamic State, British liberals found it easy to frame Poland and Hungary’s rejectionist stance as the regrettable policies of mere Central Europeans with tenuous attachments to liberal democracy. For all their parochial solipsism, it will be harder for the British liberal commentariat spawned by Conservative rule and Brexit to condemn Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany as illiberal authoritarian countries lost to enlightened governance.

Harmonising with our closest European neighbours against Britain’s increasingly anomalous immigration maximalism would mark a clear fresh start from decades of Tory failure. During the election, Starmer’s Labour actively and rightly campaigned against the Conservative Party’s bizarre and unnecessary liberalisation of legal immigration, the result of which was nearly 4% of Britain’s population arriving within the last two years. As highlighted by Tony Blair’s intervention last week, observing that Boris Johnson’s government exchanged economically productive European workers for low-waged extended families from the developing world, this is a Tory policy error of catastrophic proportions. Yet errors are better rectified than lamented: all that need be done is allow the visas granted to low-wage migrant workers to expire without renewal. No long-settled populations would be uprooted, no long-standing human rights norms breached. Similarly, why should taxpayers maintain nearly 1.7 million unemployed migrant workers — a uniquely British oxymoron — at an annual cost of £8 billion, while suffering austerity themselves? There is no reason for migrants in the UK not to reside under the same rules that apply to British expats in the EU. What is the defensible case for hosting, rather than deporting, foreign criminals, while releasing dangerous offenders of our own?

Indeed, our European neighbours would welcome an outbreak of sensible centrism among the British governing class. When the French foreign minister Gérald Darmanin claimed that the root of the Channel migrant crisis was Britain’s poorly-regulated, low-wage grey economy, acting as a magnet for the lower-middle classes of the developing world, he was entirely correct. The French government already blames British pro-migration activists for impeding their border control, and now has to deal with migrants making the journey across the Channel from Britain to France. As with the Irish government, blaming Britain’s lax visa rules for their own migration crisis, (and redesignating Britain as a “safe country” to allow pushbacks), our migration woes are a burden on our European neighbours, already grappling with migration crises of their own. Arguing against sensible reform is a genuinely marginal position: even FBPE influencers complaining about post-Brexit passport queues will surely not welcome the increased scrutiny that will follow Britain’s new role as the weak point in the developing EU border regime.

What can be done? British harmonisation with the EU Migration and Asylum Pact would be an obvious, perfectly liberal and humane solution. Not least of its advantages would be a firm acceptance of the principle that migrants should apply for asylum in the first safe EU country they reach, and that unilateral onward movement to Britain should be automatically rejected. Needless tragedies such as the murder of a pensioner in Hartlepool by a Moroccan jihadist, whose baseless asylum claims were rejected by multiple other EU countries before arriving here, would be avoided (as perhaps would have been Hartlepool’s subsequent riots).

As the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has already declared: “It is not unreasonable to treat as inadmissible [an asylum claim] from an individual who has already had [it] considered, accepted or rejected in another safe country.” What can the argument be against such an obviously sensible and moderate reform? That Britain, uniquely in Europe, has the competence to judge such claims afresh, or that the asylum procedures of our European neighbours are too harsh and illiberal to countenance? These are not serious arguments, while harmonisation with the EU would sidestep the activist-led tendency of the British legal system to consider asylum applications from countries such as, until recently Albania or as Starmer himself observed, Bangladesh, almost uniformly recognised by other European countries as safe.

Observing developments in Europe, and the anti-migration riots that marred his first weeks in office, Starmer must recognise he possesses a narrow window to reform Britain’s failing system before it destroys his government. The most likely outcome of its systemic failure is not an endless upward trajectory of mass migration, but no asylum system at all, punishing the genuinely deserving for the excesses of pro-migration activists and the abuses they have brought in tow.

Instead of settling on a policy of mass immigration, and working backwards to find increasingly specious reasons to justify it, British policy should be moderate and evidence-based. If the arguments made are economic, then immigration must be limited to only the economically productive, using data on the economic costs and benefits of different countries of origin as the Danes do (and our state refuses to); if the arguments made are humanitarian, then only those truly deserving international protection should be afforded it, lest abuse of the system demolish it in its entirety. For people who derive their legitimacy from the eternal vigilance against fascism, our liberal governing class has done everything in its power to ensure its return in some postmodern form. To avoid this outcome, Starmer’s Labour must reject the extremism of both sides, following the moderate, middle path of our liberal European neighbours.

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Aris Roussinos is an UnHerd columnist and a former war reporter.

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