Keir Starmer today admitted Labour has ‘shied away’ from tackling immigration despite legitimate concerns.
The PM delivered the mea culpa as he desperately tries to convince Brits that he is taking tough action on borders.
Sir Keir has been facing collapse in the polls amid mounting anger about Channel boats and asylum hotels.
There has also been a growing backlash against the scale of legal arrivals.
Touting his latest idea of introducing digital IDs for people to prove they have the right to work in the UK, Sir Keir said it is ‘essential’ to tackle ‘every aspect of the problem of illegal immigration’.
At the Global Progress Action Summit in London he will warn that relying on migration to plug workforce gaps ‘is not compassionate left-wing politics’.
Writing in the Telegraph, Sir Keir said he wanted to show there is an alternative to Reform UK’s ‘toxic’ approach.
Keir Starmer today admitted Labour has ‘shied away’ from tackling immigration despite legitimate concerns
Sir Keir has been facing collapse in the polls amid mounting anger about Channel boats (file picture from this month) and asylum hotels
‘There is no doubt that for years left-wing parties, including my own, did shy away from people’s concerns around illegal immigration,’ Sir Keir said.
‘It has been too easy for people to enter the country, work in the shadow economy and remain illegally.
‘We must be absolutely clear that tackling every aspect of the problem of illegal immigration is essential.’
Sir Keir’s summit speech follows a torrid summer marked by protests near hotels housing asylum seekers.
The campaign known as ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ has also seen flags attached to lamp posts and signs throughout the UK.
The PM has announced the rollout of mandatory digital ID cards in a bid to crack down on those working illegally.
He will insist ‘the simple fact is that every nation needs to have control over its borders’.
‘For too many years, it’s been too easy for people to come here, slip into the shadow economy and remain here illegally,’ he will tell attendees.
He will add: ‘It is not compassionate left-wing politics to rely on labour that exploits foreign workers and undercuts fair wages. But the simple fact is that every nation needs to have control over its borders.’
The premier will also set out a choice between ‘a politics of predatory grievance, preying on the problems of working people’ and ‘patriotic renewal, rooted in communities, building a better country, brick by brick, from the bottom up, including everyone in the national story’.
Turning to political discourse online, Sir Keir will describe ‘an industrialised infrastructure of grievance, an entire world, not just a world view, created through our devices’.
He will add: ‘That is miserable, joyless, demonstrably untrue, and yet, in another way, totally cohesive.
‘That preys on real problems in the real world, identifies clear enemies – that’s us.
‘And, at its heart, its most poisonous belief, on full display at the protests here in London just a week or two ago, (is) that there is a coming struggle, a defining struggle, a violent struggle, for the nation – or all our nations.’
Sir Keir will warn of ‘a language that is naked in its attempt to intimidate’.
The Centre for American Progress Action Fund, think tank Labour Together, and the Institute for Public Policy Research are hosting the summit.
The PM will say that campaigners who think of themselves as progressive must look themselves ‘in the mirror’ and identify areas where they have allowed themselves ‘to shy away from people’s concerns’.
