Group of Labour MPs urge No 10 to be tougher on migration to fend off Reform
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/04/group-of-labour-mps-urge-no-10-to-be-tougher-on-migration-to-fend-off-threat-from-reform
Posted by potpan0
Group of Labour MPs urge No 10 to be tougher on migration to fend off Reform
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/04/group-of-labour-mps-urge-no-10-to-be-tougher-on-migration-to-fend-off-threat-from-reform
Posted by potpan0
24 Comments
Provide a meaningful alternative to the right and gain support by improving people’s material conditions?
NO! Let’s commission a focus group to repeat back to us our belief that we need to implement a watered-down version of the right’s platform! One more step to the right should work!
Like I genuinely have to remind myself sometimes that Labour won 411 seats in the last election. Because it really does feel like so many of those MPs lack any sort of coherent political framework and just repeat whatever the right-wing press are saying. Completely wet.
EDIT: Is this going to be another one of those silly threads full of two month old accounts insisting successive British governments utilising the powers of the state to divert wealth from the poorest to the richest is, apparently, not ‘right wing’?
Biden and Harris tried that in the US and it handed the Presidency to Trump on a plate.
Reform are riding the wave of unmanaged migration, economic turmoil and rampant online misinformation. Until either of the two main parties offer a real alternative or ideas that will actually make a difference, voters will turn to the private company that offers them a minority group to blame.
Like Biden, Starmer has absolutely no flagship policies or anything to point to to show what he has done in office. He is a lame duck leader wholly disinterested in his job and cares more about the pay-check than coming up with solutions to the many, many problems affecting the country.
If Labour wants to beat Reform, it needs to simply *do something* and push through progressive policies that will actually change lives for the better.
I hate how so many issues have become a way to fend off other parties, and the concern the public has towards it comes second.
European social democrats have been aping the policies of fascists for decades and it hasn’t improved their standing. What it has done is put off their own voters and normalised fascism.
They know they are going to get wiped out at the ballot box come the next GE.
Starmer has the reverse midas touch and his own are turning on him.
Oh and a voice coach wasn’t a key worker in Tier 4 lockdown. Why’s such a lady paying him a visit on Xmas Eve??
Time to resign Starmer.
I get why they are trying this, but I think they are getting things the wrong way around.
Reform voters aren’t going to vote Labour, no matter what Labour does.
Most of them haven’t voted for Labour in a decade if ever. They are not choosing between Reform and Labour, they are choosing between Reform, the Conservatives, another crazy party, and not voting.
They are 2019 Johnson voters, not 2017 Corbyn voters. They’re not coming (back) to the Labour Party. Not least because they do not trust the Labour Party, they’re unlikely to hear anything positive about the Labour Party and, if they do, they won’t believe it. They have already cut themselves off from any news source (legacy or social media) that is likely to say anything supportive of Labour.
Labour could announce a massive cut in immigration (to hell with the cost), and they’d still be supporting Reform, because whatever Labour do either isn’t real, isn’t going to happen, or won’t be enough.
New Labour tried calming the anti-immigrant vote in the 00s. All it did was lead to the Conservatives taking a more extreme position, and the BNP, later UKIP, taking an even more extreme position, shouting that Labour wasn’t doing enough.
Labour will lose a lot of seats in the May local elections (because they are defending a high point, and are a new Government). Reform will pick up a bunch of them, but Reform will be winning Conservative votes. Labour votes will be moving to the Lib Dems, or not voting at all.
Labour “fends off Reform” not by pandering to them, but by pandering to liberals, leftists and progressives. Leave the Reform voters to fight with the Conservatives.
These are the same guys who are effectively bringing back blaspheme laws right?
Best of luck!
Lol! Not to reduce the amount we are spending on them, not to improve work opportunities for young people or to enable wage inflation, not to reduce pressure on housing costs or to protect women – just to try to find off Reform and to try to stay in power !
Another bunch of Labour politicians chasing flighty Tory voters rather than looking after their core constituencies.
If I wanted the country to be run by Tories, I WOULD VOTE TORY you idiots. Stop acting like Tories.
It won’t work. Labour should lean a little left and shore up their core base whilst reform splits off the right vote.
Ahh I see they are using the same political consultants the Harris Walz campaign used for the recent election.
Worked out really well for them didn’t it.
Parties on the left really hate being successful don’t they
Most of the responses here seem to ignore that Reform have a point when they talk about immigration.
I know, I know, this is Reddit and that’s heresy but if Labour want to counter Reform then they need to either explain how having 1,000,000 people arrive last year helped to solve the housing crisis or explain clearly what they are going to do to solve the housing crisis not just for those already here but to also house the many hundreds of thousands that will arrive this year as well.
It’s all very well blaming some vague media ‘right wing narrative’ or ‘media conspiracy’ but many in the working class are living with the consequences of being unable to find somewhere decent and affordable to live. Want to defeat Reform? Just answer the fucking questions clearly and believably.
I also remember the groupings within the Tory party that really helped them.
wouldn’t labour historically be anti-immigration because they want to protect workers’ rights,
And tories historically be pro-immigration as they want cheap labour no matter what
Im one of the few people in the country that seem to actually like Starmer and can’t stand tories or reform but even I want tougher immigration laws. Right now it’s unworkable
The problem isn’t migration, that’s the scapegoat for the problems, Labour in government have deported record numbers of migrants since coming to office and it hadn’t fixed a thing, while support for Reform is growing.
But, this Labour Party are unable or unwilling to address the actual problems, or even openly state that migration is the pyramid scheme this economic orthodoxy subsists on, so all they can do is keep up the charade, knowing full well that by accepting far right narratives you only empower the far right, hoping to outflank the right from the right.
Yes. Because this approach has worked really well in the past…
Stop appeasing the extremists. We know that moving further right leads inevitably to fascism. We’re nearly there ffs. Just look at the USA.
Immigration is an issue, but not the biggest issue by a long way.
Start working for the citizens and not for the politicians
*Sigh*.
You’ll never beat the racists in the racism game. All this’ll do is alienate the voters that can’t stand this shite, while the fellas they are tryna bait won’t budge.
* Holds head* that’s the opposite of how “fending them off” *works* — you’re just telling people Reform are right but you’re not as committed to doing the right thing as they are. You have to actually *argue that they are wrong* and prove it by *doing things to make people’s lives better.* People, you know — large numbers of them. Not just tech billionaires.
God, the “we’re exactly like the Tories, only a bit more competent” strategy was soul-draining enough, but “vote for us, we’re like your faves, *Reform*??” Jesus fucking Christ. They are going to hand the country to Farage on a platter and they will never understand what happened.
You can’t “out reform” the reform party. They need to stop trying to pander to the right and go back left. Let the Conservatives fight reform. Labour should work on convincing liberal Democrats and Green party voters to vote Labour instead also look after Scotland to get the snp vote. It won’t then matter what the right moan about they mathematically won’t get in power.
the problem with this is the fact “immigration” is an imaginary problem. The numbers don’t mean anything, there will always be loads of people saying it should be an order of magnitude less, and claim if you don’t agree with them it will be an order of magnitude more.
we fucked it haven’t we.
The Tories tried to fend off UKIP and it got us Brexit. Maybe stop basing all your policies around what Nigel Farage is doing.
‘hey guyzzz maybe we could like try doing the lefty stuff we said and make things better for people like-‘
Blue Labour : NO TIME FOR THAT LETS SHAG A FASCIST TO TRY AND GET THEM TO RESPECT US