Keir Starmer’s Immigration U-Turn: Open Borders to Censorship and Crackdowns

After the United Kingdom’s right-wing Reform Party had sweeping victories in council elections earlier this month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer — who once said, “We welcome migrants, we don’t scapegoat them” — suddenly realized that the country is deeply unhappy with immigration. Indeed, the massive influx of foreigners poses challenges for a country of just under 70 million people; the government’s provisional statistic is that nearly 1 million immigrants arrived in the country last year alone. So now Starmer is singing a different tune, and the lyrics sound like they were written by an unpaid intern for the Reform Party.

The prime minister’s account stated the following on social media: “We’re ending Britain’s open borders experiment. For too long, businesses were actively encouraged to bring in lower paid workers, rather than invest in our own people. We’re fixing the system and restoring control to our borders.” (Perhaps unintentionally, it is a spectacular admission of guilt that implicitly acknowledges that Britain was, in fact, running an “open borders experiment.” However, the Labour politicians are attempting to blame it all on the Tories.) Starmer similarly took a swipe at immigration from his personal account, stating: “If you want to live in the UK, you should speak English. That’s common sense. So we’re raising English language requirements across every main immigration route.” (This, of course, doesn’t do much about the non-English-speaking immigrants already in the United Kingdom.) He also wrote the following on May 14: “I will take back control of our borders. . . . That means cutting migration, ending the use of asylum hotels, and ramping up our efforts to stop small boat crossings.” (We’ll have to wait a bit for policies enforced against the boats, since GBNews reported this week that a fleet of little ships crossing the English Channel to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation was redirected to accommodate a migrant-carrying boat.) He further promised that “migration numbers will fall.”

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Abigail Anthony

Abigail Anthony is a staff writer at National Review.

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After the United Kingdom’s right-wing Reform Party had sweeping victories in council elections earlier this month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer — who once said, “We welcome migrants, we don’t scapegoat them” — suddenly realized that the country is deeply unhappy with immigration. Indeed, the massive influx of foreigners poses challenges for a country of just under 70 million people; the government’s provisional statistic is that nearly 1 million immigrants arrived in the country last year alone. So now Starmer is singing a different tune, and the lyrics sound like they were written by an unpaid intern for the Reform Party.

The prime minister’s account stated the following on social media: “We’re ending Britain’s open borders experiment. For too long, businesses were actively encouraged to bring in lower paid workers, rather than invest in our own people. We’re fixing the system and restoring control to our borders.” (Perhaps unintentionally, it is a spectacular admission of guilt that implicitly acknowledges that Britain was, in fact, running an “open borders experiment.” However, the Labour politicians are attempting to blame it all on the Tories.) Starmer similarly took a swipe at immigration from his personal account, stating: “If you want to live in the UK, you should speak English. That’s common sense. So we’re raising English language requirements across every main immigration route.” (This, of course, doesn’t do much about the non-English-speaking immigrants already in the United Kingdom.) He also wrote the following on May 14: “I will take back control of our borders. . . . That means cutting migration, ending the use of asylum hotels, and ramping up our efforts to stop small boat crossings.” (We’ll have to wait a bit for policies enforced against the boats, since GBNews reported this week that a fleet of little ships crossing the English Channel to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation was redirected to accommodate a migrant-carrying boat.) He further promised that “migration numbers will fall.”