Michael Howard’s Tories went into the 2005 election – twenty years ago – with the slogan “People have had enough talk. It’s time for action.”. The cornerstone of their Manifesto was the looming disaster of uncontrolled migration the UK was sleepwalking towards. They were dismissed as “the nasty party” by the media. The Guardian editorialised that “politicians have a duty to address people’s fears, but they also have a responsibility to avoid inflaming ill-informed prejudice”.
Voters agreed, and comprehensively rejected the anti-migrant message and opted to grant Labour a third term in office.
The rest, as the saying goes, is now history. The electoral drubbing the British voter gave Michael Howard’s Tories made the party run scared of an anti-migrant position again, and – following Labour’s defeat in 2010 – the Tory-led coalition government, followed by a decade of Tory-lite governments, ran scared of pressing the issue, such was the toxic power of the “nasty party” label.
What did Howard tell the electorate in 2005?
This [Labour] Government has lost effective control of our borders. More than 150,000 people (net) come to Britain every year, a population the size of Peterborough. Labour see “no obvious upper limit to legal immigration”.
Our asylum system is in chaos. Instead of offering a safe haven to those most in need, the current system encourages illegality. Desperate individuals are forced into the hands of people smugglers and when they reach Britain they are open to continuing exploitation in the underground economy. Only two out of every ten asylum seekers are found to have a genuine claim.
Britain has reached a turning-point. That is why a Conservative Government will bring immigration back under control. We have set out a series of practical and considered steps to restore control and fairness to our immigration system.
It goes on to promise:
- Establishing Border Control Police with the sole function of securing the UK’s borders
- A points-based system to ensure the UK prioritises people it needs
- Reviewing ‘outdated’ asylum polices
- Processing asylum claims outside the UK and taking a fixed number, while automatically rejecting those smuggled in
It concludes:
We are committed to making a continued success of Britain’s diversity. There should be popular consent for further demographic change. And the best way to secure continuing support for future migration is by showing that government has control of our borders. Refusing to set a limit on new migrants is irresponsible politics. Only the Conservatives take this issue seriously enough to insist on a limit, and will introduce the policies necessary to police it.
Today – 20 years later, not to put too fine a point on it – Labour PM Keir Starmer has pledged:
- To take back control of immigration
- To curb overseas recruitment and raise English language requirements.
- To bring down net migration figures
- To fast-track “high-contributing” individuals such as doctors and nurses
- To require university degrees for skilled worker visas
- To extend the naturalisation period from 5 to 10 years.
- To deport foreign nationals who commit crimes, particularly those of sexual violence
Sound familiar?
Seemingly an echo of Howard’s promise to seek popular consent to demographic change, Starmer talked of the risk of the UK becoming “an island of strangers“. He even appeared to paraphrase Howard’s “enough talk, time for action” slogan in condemning the previous Tory government of being all talk and no action.
Is what was once ‘nasty’ now ‘necessary’?
Suspended Labour Party MP, Zara Sultana goes further than thinking Starmer is channelling Michael Howard. She stated: “The Prime Minister imitating Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech is sickening. That speech fuelled decades of racism and division. Echoing it today is a disgrace. It adds to anti-migrant rhetoric that puts lives at risk. Shame on you, Keir Starmer.”
Meanwhile, Labour MP Nadia Whittome snapped: “The step-up in anti-migrant rhetoric from the government is shameful and dangerous.”
The joke is, while angering his far-left base, no one else really believes Starmer’s heart is in it or that he will do what he says. I predict that this will do nothing to arrest the gains Reform is making in promising to do now what the majority collectively believed was nasty and unnecessary two decades ago. I fear it is too late to reverse the damage to our social fabric and – frankly – the best idea for dealing with smuggled migrants, the ‘Rwanda Plan‘, was taken off the table by Starmer with such petulance that it is hard to see how he could now implement anything similar without accusations of hypocrisy from one quarter and betrayal from another. It is no wonder, therefore, that Starmer made no mention of the ‘boat people’ – now arriving in record numbers – in his speech.
Starmer claims he is not appearing to pivot to “respond to that party” but instead because it is “right” and “fair. Perhaps he also has a bridge to sell.
The tragedy is that we could have dealt with this 20 years ago, and it could have been dealt with by an established and fiscally competent party with experienced statesmen who weren’t insane. Reform, on the other hand, while pledging to deal with this one issue – which is now arguably the BIGGEST ISSUE facing the country, will land us with utter clowns in leadership positions. Like this one, who thinks that Jews and others circumcise their sons in order to prepare them to become transwomen!
A growing majority looks to Reform to deal with our national existential crisis, and since every mainstream party has failed the country in this crucial area, it is no surprise. But how are their inexperienced, incompetent or insane leadership going to manage everything else?
It’s a huge worry, and as I argued recently, I think that their recent local election success may be their undoing. There are potholes to fill, budgets to balance, and rubbish to collect. Their promises to deal with migrant hotels affecting property prices and migrant sex-pests terrorising local women on the local high street will be frustrated and derailed by legal challenges and left wing union action. It is a charlie-foxtrot which will play out between now and the general election in 4 years time, potentially fatally damaging people’s confidence in Reform.
As for Starmer, he may have made an even bigger promise to the electorate he has no plausible way of keeping. It is hard not to be fatalistic. Indeed, a majority of Britons are. According to a YouGov poll out today, a majority of respondents believe “no party” will be able to deal with the migration problem.
