People notice that the Labour Party is rightly criticising Nigel Farage over his views on NHS privatisation, the climate, or “Trussonomics” – the focus of Keir Starmer’s speech today.
But the Prime Minister never seems to criticise what Farage says about migration. And when that is the main plank of the Reform agenda, that silence comes across as a tacit endorsement of those views – because what else explains the absence of criticism of Farage’s horrific anti-migrant rhetoric?
The Prime Minister told us that the UK risks becoming an ‘island of strangers’, a phrase eerily reminiscent of Enoch Powell, while launching an Immigration White Paper that seeks to create a more hostile environment for migrants.
Meanwhile, we continue to see daily news stories telling of Reform’s growing popularity, and a Labour government following in its coattails in the mistaken belief that this will calm the threat.
This is a difficult time to be a Labour member of colour
We are at a crossroads. We can continue down a rotten path – invoking “stranger danger”, giving legitimacy to the racist riots that only last summer saw fascists attempt to burn down hotels with residents trapped inside. Or, instead, we can choose to forge a new one.
READ MORE: Revealed: Labour’s financial woes as party unable to balance books this year
This is a difficult time to be a Labour Party member, and particularly so as a person of colour. We feel the shame of knowing that policies being progressed by the government we campaigned for, would have prevented us, our parents, and grandparents, from having come to this country if in place at the time of our arrival.
The hostile environment sends a message to all of us with a migrant background: we are not wanted. It is not tenable to, on the one hand say migrants make a vital contribution to this country, and on the other boast about the number of people you are expelling from it. The disconnect between those two positions speaks volumes.
It’s hard to believe Starmer’s speech was not borrowing from Powell
No. 10 has said that Keir Starmer did not consciously borrow from Enoch Powell. Yet, it’s hard to believe that the similarities are coincidental. Not only was the callback to “becoming strangers” reminiscent of Powell saying white people were being ‘made strangers in their own country’, but there is clear crossover in the speeches.
Powell spoke of people refusing to integrate, saying that many migrants ‘never conceived or intended such a thing.’ The Prime Minister said that people coming to the UK must ‘commit to integration and to learning our language’, casting all burden and fault onto individuals rather than the system politicians have devised.
As Zarah Sultana has rightly highlighted, it is impossible for it not to be a conscious callback. With the number of people involved in writing such a speech, at least one would have thought to check to ensure there was no similarity between it and the most infamous anti-immigration speech in our nation’s history.
But even beyond Powell comparisons, describing a period of relatively higher migration as a ‘squalid chapter’ is truly awful. It’s deeply concerning that the party’s strategists considered this in any way an acceptable speech to make. It raises serious questions around the judgement and values of those guiding the party’s leadership, suggesting not simply a misstep, but a deeply flawed strategic calculation.
Let’s learn from how Harold Wilson responded to Enoch Powell
Rather than copying them, there is another way of responding to the rise of the far right.
In 1968, following Powell’s speech, Harold Wilson condemned the Tory Party as a whole, identifying that the ‘virus of Powellism [had] taken so firm a hold at every level.’ He made a point to reiterate that ‘the struggle against racialism is a worldwide fight’, and that ours was ‘the party of human rights.’ Instead of kowtowing to Powell’s demands, Wilson passed the 1968 Race Relations Act, making racial discrimination illegal.
That Keir Starmer was a human rights lawyer is the second most well-known fact about the Prime Minister, behind his father’s occupation. Proclaiming proudly that ‘we are the party of human rights’ is something that Starmer could very capably do. There is a defence of the rights and dignity of all individuals that the Prime Minister could ably speak to. Yet when questioned recently, he gave a timid defence of the European Convention on Human Rights, and instead perversely linked it to being able to tackle so-called ‘illegal migration’.
What trust communities of colour had in the government looks to be collapsing following the ‘island of strangers’ speech. Better policy, rooted in anti-racism, dignity and respect for all people of colour, are needed now more than ever.
There has been misstep after misstep by the party on issues that particularly impact communities of colour, whether that’s mimicking Enoch Powell or saying Israel “had “the right” to withhold food and water in Gaza. These are problems – morally and electorally – that the Labour Party could easily have avoided.
We need to get on with reviving BAME Labour
That the party’s instincts on race and migration are so misguided speaks in part to whose voices are being listened to and who gets ignored. At the same time that the far-right sympathising ‘Blue Labour’ and ‘Red Wall Caucus’ are shouting from the rooftops, BAME Labour is still to be revived, seven years after being wound down, leaving BAME members no democratic vehicle to raise our voices.
Each year sees Labour shelves plans to revive a democratic BAME Labour, this year citing an “impossible” cost to let members meet. Rather than seeing BAME Labour’s self-organisation as a burden to fund, the party should recognise BAME members as a long-neglected but vital asset in the fight for anti-racism and community power.
The last General Election showed what the Labour Party can achieve with a message of hope. But it also revealed fractures in Labour’s vote, particularly with minority ethnic voters. Rebuilding trust with communities of colour will require more than optics. It demands policy rooted in dignity, justice and respect.
There is growing frustration and anger with the scapegoating, dog-whistles, and outright racial hostility that has become a mainstay of British politics. The party can no longer take our communities’ support for granted, nor can it rebuild the country without us.
Labour must reject punitive anti-migrant policies and instead commit to confronting racism in all its forms, advancing policies rooted in justice and compassion. Only then can we begin the process of rebuilding trust with communities of colour and lead with the moral clarity this moment demands.
