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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
“Clamping down on immigration” in response to a voter backlash is a British political tradition older than universal suffrage. Indeed, it is older than the modern passport — and, in fact, why the modern passport exists in the first place.
In response to the arrival of Jewish immigrants in the late 19th century, the British government erected the first modern border. Similar political backlashes have continued, including reaction to the movement of people within the British empire in the postwar period and the country’s 2016 vote for Brexit following the arrival of large numbers from central and eastern Europe. Sir Keir Starmer’s announcement of a crackdown after a period of increased immigration has made him part of an old, old political heritage.
The UK is by no means exceptional here, though of course some of the forms it has taken (like voting to leave the European Union) have caught people by surprise. But the belief that signalling “things will change” should result in a grateful nation re-electing the Labour party is mistaken.
Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister whom Starmer most resembles, was also part of the tradition of migration crackdown. He made one big and important tweak to his party’s policy by embracing the previous government’s introduction of a colour bar, stripping some Commonwealth immigrants of their automatic right to live in the UK. While in office he also introduced variable charges for those living outside the British Isles, introducing overseas students’ fees in 1967.
One way of looking at Labour’s modern day strategy is to see it as part of that pragmatic push-me, pull-you approach on immigration. This is the way Labour strategists often like to present it in private. Seen another way — the way Starmer likes to talk about it in public — it is a practical necessity and the end of a “failed experiment” in liberal immigration policy.
Both explanations are flawed. One big difference between Wilson and Starmer is that the former led a country whose defence expenditure met the needs of an empire it did not have, where the average person was aged 33, life expectancy was 70 and the state pension kicked in just a few years before.
Starmer leads a country whose defence expenditure must rise, where the average person is aged 40, where life expectancy is around 80 and most of us can expect to have at least a decade of life during which we are in receipt of the state pension. (One additional problem is that for many of us, that period is one in which we will struggle with ill health, rather than enjoy a golden retirement, but that is another issue.)
Reducing freedom of movement — of people, goods, capital or services — comes at the cost to growth. It always has. Governments shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Curbs on the free movement of people, whether in 1905, 1966 or 2019 have inevitably had a cost for the country.
But the UK of 2025, with its older population, its far bigger state, and its greater expectations about the standard and quality of public services, is even more sensitive to hits to growth than the UK of 1905. This is true the world over: it’s why Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni — no one’s idea of an open borders liberal — has continued to freely issue visas and why net migration in Italy is not falling.
Starmer’s party has a policy position that is, to put it mildly, unusual. Labour claims that the Conservatives created a state that was too small — it didn’t build enough, provide enough GPs, hire enough schoolteachers or sort the overly high cost of living. It also claims that fixing these problems can be done with fewer people than the Conservatives managed.
In addition, the Labour government seems to believe that it can achieve all this with a more rigid labour market and by increasing the cost of hiring across the board. It may be that vast increases in the power of machine learning allow them to square this particular circle. Then again it may not. If the future of artificial intelligence is one in which we work alongside AI rather than are replaced by it, then they never will.
The difficult truth for Labour, and for European nations generally, is that when you are as old as our nations now are, and your expectations of the size of the state are what they now are, reducing immigration has become a luxury good. It is one you simply can’t afford if you aren’t willing to cut your cloth elsewhere. The UK had a taste of what that would involve with Rachel Reeves’ first budget and hated it. The country shows no signs of growing to like the medicine in further doses. Other ageing democracies should take note. The UK’s approach is a sign of what not to do.
