IS THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT A VICTIM OF ITS OWN DOG WHISTLING ON IMMIGRATION?

"We are also going to stop Rwandans knifing Swifties, honest"

by Daniel Barge

The real reason the Conservatives lost the 2024 general election is because they got the issue of immigration wrong. They allowed in record numbers of migrants, and did it in a generally dishonest and incompetent way. The system was abused, with "health worker," "student," and "dependent" visas being granted in huge numbers, and other loopholes being exploited. Added to all this was the increasing flood of refugee claimants from across the channel. 

To his credit (at least as a perceptive politician), the previous Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seemed to realise this, implementing some belated hard anti-immigration policies, then launching the election early to catch Reform UK off guard.

However, I suspect that had he won, most of those policies, like the Rwanda scheme and the increased financial requirements for foreign spouses, would have been quietly dropped or allowed to run into a brick wall. Too many people associated with the Tory Party were doing too well out of the "immigration industrial complex."

Many British voters probably smelled a rat as well, and decided to either vote for the no-hope Reform UK Party or give Labour a chance. Yes, in the minds of many voters, Labour was seen as a more serious party on immigration, surprising as that may sound. The Labour Party took pains to encourage this view, talking about "securing our borders."

Don't believe me? Well read the Labour manifesto.

"...the system needs to be controlled and managed and we need strong borders. The small boats crisis, fuelled by dangerous criminal smuggler gangs, is undermining our security and costing lives. Rather than a serious plan to confront this crisis, the Conservatives have offered nothing but desperate gimmicks. Their flagship policy – to fly a tiny number of asylum seekers to Rwanda – has already cost hundreds of millions of pounds. Even if it got off the ground, this scheme can only address fewer than one per cent of the asylum seekers arriving. It cannot work. Chaos in the Channel has been matched by chaos at home. The Conservatives’ unworkable laws have created a ‘perma-backlog’ of tens of thousands of asylum seekers, who are indefinitely staying in hotels costing the taxpayer millions of pounds every week."

The messaging here was unmistakable: "The Conservatives are failing at immigration, vote for us instead." This of course was something that Labour voters in Northern towns like Liverpool, Sunderland, Hull, and Rotherham could see for themselves. Yes, the Labour Party was dog whistling pretty hard to anti-immigrant voters in the Red Wall areas. 

Some of what they were offering even sounded good:

"Labour will stop the chaos and go after the criminal gangs who trade in driving this crisis. We will create a new Border Security Command, with hundreds of new investigators, intelligence officers, and cross-border police officers. This will be funded by ending the wasteful Migration and Economic Development partnership with Rwanda. This new Command will work internationally and be supported by new counter-terrorism style powers, to pursue, disrupt, and arrest those responsible for the vile trade [...] Labour will turn the page and restore order to the asylum system so that it operates swiftly, firmly, and fairly; and the rules are properly enforced. We will hire additional caseworkers to clear the Conservatives’ backlog and end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds. Labour will set up a new returns and enforcement unit, with an additional 1,000 staff, to fast-track removals to safe countries for people who do not have the right to stay here. We will negotiate additional returns arrangements to speed up returns and increase the number of safe countries that failed asylum seekers can swiftly be sent back to."

Yup, one massive dog whistle that was code for "they have to go back."

Don't think they didn't heavily run this subtle and insidious message through focus groups and tweak it so that it implied exactly what they wanted it to imply, while allowing wriggle room to walk away from those implied commitments. 

Of course, even if Labour had been sincere, nothing would have happened for several months anyway. That's just the way government works...slowly. 

But there wasn't even a sign of anything happening in the first few weeks of the Starmer government. Instead, what Labour voters in the North saw were the same milling crowds of brown and alien people that they had been seeing in increasing numbers for years. What they saw were yet more reports of migrant boats arriving on the South Coast. What they saw were more hotel rooms in their neighbourhoods filling up with migrants. 

Then three little girls got stabbed to death, with others injured, by the 17-year-old son of Rwandan refugee parents.

While the horror and rage they felt at this atrocity were possibly the predominant emotions, it is entirely likely that a great many of them also felt a deep sense of betrayal, especially if they were Labour voters. After all, the Labour Party had lured them away from the Conservatives and Reform with promises to end the "chaos in the Channel," resolve the "perma-backlog of tens of thousands of asylum seekers," and "speed up returns."

Labour voters in those cities that have seen the riots voted for Labour to get a grip on the problem. Maybe they have been a little impatient, but the deaths of innocent children will do that to people. Now the Labour government that many of them voted for is reduced to calling them "fascist thugs." Is that how the Labour Party thanks working class Brits for their votes?