Starmer on immigration…

[headshot]

I listened to most of Starmer’s speech live this morning and much of it seemed eminently sensible stuff. I didn’t object to much of what he was saying, he seemed calm and erudite and made his points well.

This is how the Guardian is reporting it:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -migration

Starmer defends plans to curb net migration after backlash from MPs.
Prime minister’s ‘island of strangers’ speech was likened to rhetoric of Enoch Powell

[El Pollo Diablo]

Please can you elaborate more on what he said? Because I'm too busy to listen and the reporting makes me want to punch things.

Edit: For the record, my mother is now in a care home, and prior to moving in last month was receiving care at home four times a day. All of her home carers, without exception, were from sub-Saharan Africa, and all were brilliant people. In her care home, it's a mix of British people and immigrants. But the care sector is fundamentally propped up by immigration and will absolutely collapse with Yvette Fielding Cooper's latest Reform-baiting b.llsh.t.

So, I'm feeling really quite angry about this, and I'd like people to tell me why the government aren't a bunch of gormless fuckwits.

[TopBadger]

Anacdata: My daughter's NHS care has easily been delivered by >70% non-UK born staff... Greek Surgeon, Romanian Registrar, Italian Pediatrician, etc, etc. We import care staff because we don't train / can't source enough from within.

Immigration = Bad is complete BS.

[discovolante]

If a link to the speech in full is available too that would be great, thank you.

[insignificant]

Link to speech

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ ... 2-may-2025

I haven't read it, but seeing one of Starmer's tweets on Bluesky where he used the phrase "common sense" was depressing

[kerrya1]

The bit that stuck in my mind was "[high immigration is] causing incalculable damage to the UK", I think that a crumbling Health and Care system which will fall apart entirely without the immigrants currently propping it up will cause far more damage.

[Grumble]

Anacdata: My daughter's NHS care has easily been delivered by >70% non-UK born staff... Greek Surgeon, Romanian Registrar, Italian Pediatrician, etc, etc. We import care staff because we don't train / can't source enough from within.

Immigration = Bad is complete BS.

Anecdata: I know British nurses who aren’t getting work because the care homes are using agencies that have closed UK offices and opened ones in the Philippines. Just because your nursing/medical/care staff aren’t British doesn’t mean that British staff couldn’t fill those roles. There’s a bit of a vicious cycle that happens. Businesses like to employ cheap staff to save costs, so import them. There’s nothing left wing about promoting the rights of businesses over workers.

[dyqik]

The bit that stuck in my mind was "[high immigration is] causing incalculable damage to the UK", I think that a crumbling Health and Care system which will fall apart entirely without the immigrants currently propping it up will cause far more damage.

What's causing incalculable damage to the UK is a) massive government under investment in services and infrastructure over 50 years, and b) the loss of opportunity, labour and services due to Brexit.

Immigration is what has propped up the UK so far.

[dyqik]

Anacdata: My daughter's NHS care has easily been delivered by >70% non-UK born staff... Greek Surgeon, Romanian Registrar, Italian Pediatrician, etc, etc. We import care staff because we don't train / can't source enough from within.

Immigration = Bad is complete BS.

Anecdata: I know British nurses who aren’t getting work because the care homes are using agencies that have closed UK offices and opened ones in the Philippines.

Are there 130,000 of them? Because that's how many staff the care industry needs at the moment.

[Grumble]

Anacdata: My daughter's NHS care has easily been delivered by >70% non-UK born staff... Greek Surgeon, Romanian Registrar, Italian Pediatrician, etc, etc. We import care staff because we don't train / can't source enough from within.

Immigration = Bad is complete BS.

Anecdata: I know British nurses who aren’t getting work because the care homes are using agencies that have closed UK offices and opened ones in the Philippines.

Are there 130,000 of them? Because that's how many staff the care industry needs at the moment.

Why would you train as a nurse if you can’t compete in the job market?

[dyqik]

Anecdata: I know British nurses who aren’t getting work because the care homes are using agencies that have closed UK offices and opened ones in the Philippines.

Are there 130,000 of them? Because that's how many staff the care industry needs at the moment.

Why would you train as a nurse if you can’t compete in the job market?

So there's a massive shortage of nurses, and the nurses you know can't get jobs because there's nowhere to apply to at the same time?

That's not an immigration issue. It's a poor management issue, cause by the government abandoning management and funding of the sector.

[El Pollo Diablo]

I'd say it's also a lack of policy alignment issue as well - I remember Ken McK saying some years back that we limit (*cough* stifle *cough*) the number of medics and presumably nurses being trained due to funding, lack of available teaching spaces, etc to a figure much lower than the numbers we need to be bringing through, and then expect the rest to be done by immigrants who we happily steal from other countries. But then the government also tells immigrants that they're awful c.nts who should just f.ck off and die.

[IvanV]

The Labour party appears to have taken to heart the accusation of "failing to listen" on immigration. You hear that phrase all the time, even on the BBC.

What should our attitude be to that accusation? There are always loud minorities who want something badly, but it doesn't mean they should necessarily get it. Or is it a widespread view? So what does it actually mean, and in what sense, if any, is it true? If it is true, in some sense, how does a politician do the right thing when a lot of their voters seemingly want something else?

Fwiw, it is not an issue confined to the UK. Anti-immigration politicians are becoming influential across higher income European countries, like the Netherlands and Finland. And some previously sleepy places, like Sweden and Norway, are suffering major crime waves it seems easy to blame on high rates of immigration, especially when so many of the criminals are from immigrant communities.

[bob sterman]

Please can you elaborate more on what he said? Because I'm too busy to listen and the reporting makes me want to punch things.

Edit: For the record, my mother is now in a care home, and prior to moving in last month was receiving care at home four times a day. All of her home carers, without exception, were from sub-Saharan Africa, and all were brilliant people. In her care home, it's a mix of British people and immigrants. But the care sector is fundamentally propped up by immigration and will absolutely collapse with Yvette Fielding Cooper's latest Reform-baiting b.llsh.t.

So, I'm feeling really quite angry about this, and I'd like people to tell me why the government aren't a bunch of gormless fuckwits.

In a sense they've got their priorities backwards - there are desperate shortages of staff in the care sector - and mass redundancies in the higher education sector (e.g. lecturers).

So Labour are going to ban recruitment of care staff from overseas, and prioritise visas for people like university lecturers?

[Woodchopper]

Possible that Starmer is working on a deal with the EU and this is a bit of a smokescreen designed to distract the Faragists.

I suspect that the long term problem isn’t going to be a critical shortage of healthcare personnel. But instead the government taking lots criticism when the public learns about the inevitable relaxing of the immigration rules.

[headshot]

Full transcript here: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ ... 2-may-2025

The bit that caught my ear was this:

We will create a migration system that is controlled, selective, and fair. A clean break with the past that links access to visas directly to investment in homegrown skills so that if a business wants to bring people in from abroad, they must first invest in Britain. But also, so settlement becomes a privilege that is earned, not a right, easier if you make a contribution, if you work, pay in, and help rebuild our country.

Linking homegrown skills and training with decisions on immigration seems sensible.

The bit that everyone (including the left) is losing their minds about is the “island of strangers” quote. If people actually listened to it, he’s talking about how we could become a ghettoised society, unable or unwilling to integrate or interact with one another. I see it happening in parts of Birmingham. It fed into the “no go area” rhetoric a few years ago. There are what some might call “Asian” areas where you will hardly hear English spoken and where some white people might feel afraid to go. I’m not, I’ve been into these areas many times and had no issues at all. But it does drive the narrative that some people aren’t willing to integrate or are segregated from “British” society (whatever that is).

Here’s the quote in context:

Nations depend on rules – fair rules. Sometimes they’re written down, often they’re not, but either way, they give shape to our values. They guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to one another. Now, in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.

[IvanV]

Linking homegrown skills and training with decisions on immigration seems sensible.

But the long-run shortage of homegrown skills is due to deficiencies in the system, and repeated attempts at failed ideas to fix it, rather than adopting a known successful system such as many continental countries demonstrate. Though of course these would require money. Telling employers to pay for it won't work, at least not in the present model, because it never has, even before they could get East Europeans in quantity.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Full transcript here: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ ... 2-may-2025

The bit that caught my ear was this:

We will create a migration system that is controlled, selective, and fair. A clean break with the past that links access to visas directly to investment in homegrown skills so that if a business wants to bring people in from abroad, they must first invest in Britain. But also, so settlement becomes a privilege that is earned, not a right, easier if you make a contribution, if you work, pay in, and help rebuild our country.

Linking homegrown skills and training with decisions on immigration seems sensible.

The bit that everyone (including the left) is losing their minds about is the “island of strangers” quote. If people actually listened to it, he’s talking about how we could become a ghettoised society, unable or unwilling to integrate or interact with one another. I see it happening in parts of Birmingham. It fed into the “no go area” rhetoric a few years ago. There are what some might call “Asian” areas where you will hardly hear English spoken and where some white people might feel afraid to go. I’m not, I’ve been into these areas many times and had no issues at all. But it does drive the narrative that some people aren’t willing to integrate or are segregated from “British” society (whatever that is).

Here’s the quote in context:

Nations depend on rules – fair rules. Sometimes they’re written down, often they’re not, but either way, they give shape to our values. They guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to one another. Now, in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.

Problem is, new immigrants like to live near people like them, we all do - people with a shared culture, where there's a shop or two to buy the ingredients you're familiar with to make the food you grew up with, and where family might also be nearby. So these communities have a natural and understandable source of creation. I do understand why it creates the tensions and divisions we see (I was in Burnley the day after the race riots at the start of the century), but avoiding that happening, if that's the goal, requires significantly more government control over where immigrants are allowed to live than we use at the moment. It's a level of illiberalism that is very counter to what Britain is used to.

[monkey]

...But it does drive the narrative that some people aren’t willing to integrate or are segregated from “British” society (whatever that is).

Pretty sure a big driver of that narrative is prominent politicians saying things like that during their speeches. Y'know, like Starmer just did.

[TopBadger]

...But it does drive the narrative that some people aren’t willing to integrate or are segregated from “British” society (whatever that is).

Pretty sure a big driver of that narrative is prominent politicians saying things like that during their speeches. Y'know, like Starmer just did.

What politicians say is much less a driver than peoples lived experience.

[headshot]

...But it does drive the narrative that some people aren’t willing to integrate or are segregated from “British” society (whatever that is).

Pretty sure a big driver of that narrative is prominent politicians saying things like that during their speeches. Y'know, like Starmer just did.

Yes. But I don’t think that’s the point Starmer made.

What I took away was that the inability (or refusal) to integrate ALL cultures leads to further division along cultural lines which could create the “island of strangers”. Segregated communities who have no common interests - be it religion, language, culture or whatever

I don’t know what the solution is, but I do see stark lines being created between communities in cities like Birmingham and I don’t think it will end well.

We are stronger as a community - be it local, national or international. We should seek to bring communities together, not divide them further.

Of course, it’s possible Labour’s policies could cause more division. Who knows?

But to compare Starmer’s speech to Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of blood” speech, as many on the left are doing, takes it too far IMHO.

[Stephanie]

...But it does drive the narrative that some people aren’t willing to integrate or are segregated from “British” society (whatever that is).

Pretty sure a big driver of that narrative is prominent politicians saying things like that during their speeches. Y'know, like Starmer just did.

What politicians say is much less a driver than peoples lived experience.

I'm sceptical of people's lived experience here, because some of the places that complain most about immigration do not have particularly diverse populations

[dyqik]

Pretty sure a big driver of that narrative is prominent politicians saying things like that during their speeches. Y'know, like Starmer just did.

What politicians say is much less a driver than peoples lived experience.

I'm sceptical of people's lived experience here, because some of the places that complain most about immigration do not have particularly diverse populations

Which is why Reform is strongest in rural Norfolk, etc., some of the whitest places in the country. Meanwhile, the most diverse places in the country have the highest votes for non anti-immigration parties.

[monkey]

...But it does drive the narrative that some people aren’t willing to integrate or are segregated from “British” society (whatever that is).

Pretty sure a big driver of that narrative is prominent politicians saying things like that during their speeches. Y'know, like Starmer just did.

Yes. But I don’t think that’s the point Starmer made.

What I took away was that the inability (or refusal) to integrate ALL cultures leads to further division along cultural lines which could create the “island of strangers”. Segregated communities who have no common interests - be it religion, language, culture or whatever

I don’t know what the solution is, but I do see stark lines being created between communities in cities like Birmingham and I don’t think it will end well.

We are stronger as a community - be it local, national or international. We should seek to bring communities together, not divide them further.

Of course, it’s possible Labour’s policies could cause more division. Who knows?

But to compare Starmer’s speech to Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of blood” speech, as many on the left are doing, takes it too far IMHO.

I agree that it doesn't go that far, Powell's rhetoric was much more inflammatory and racist. (I suspect that might be why the Mail and others are saying he should have gone further.) But the basic message is the same - migrants will ruin our way of life unless we do something about it. And just 'cos Starmer's nicer about it don't make it right.

It's also a message I've heard from various pundits and politicians of all sorts of flavours for what seems my entire life. It was divisive then, and it's divisive now, led to cruel policies, and has not unified anything.

[nekomatic]

I'm sceptical of people's lived experience here, because some of the places that complain most about immigration do not have particularly diverse populations

Yes, exactly this. Also that public concern about immigration almost exactly tracks the amount of coverage that the popular media devote to immigration.