‘Control and compassion’
Sunder Katwala, the director of the British Future think tank that focuses on migration, said there are “definitely risks” that Labour’s choice to chase Reform voters could boost the Greens, as well as the SNP in Scotland.
This risk, he said, is heightened particularly if Labour MPs try to give different messages to different constituencies while focusing too much on the “insatiable” voters who will think immigration is too high regardless of whether numbers fall.
He argued Labour could be successful in appealing to a “broad balance” across the U.K. if it talks about both “control and compassion” — on one hand talking about a crackdown on irregular migration while also discussing how it wants genuine refugees to stay in Britain if they’ve arrived through regular means. Being the party who scrapped the Conservatives’ highly controversial — and ultimately ineffective — plan to forcibly remove small boat arrivals 5,000 miles away to the authoritarian state of Rwanda could be another mollifying point.
“You can’t outflank a populist party on slogans,” Katwala argued. “A government will be judged on delivery.”
Luke Tryl, the U.K. director of the More in Common think tank, reckons the “show, not tell” approach has the potential to overcome some problems in government messaging, with the record numbers of removals having “amongst the lowest cut through of any Labour policy.”
But he stressed a need to avert the “danger” of “just pushing the discourse further in a direction that benefits that populist right.” One way to do this, he argued, is to point out the “flaws” and the “unworkability” of Reform’s platform.