Farage-Wary Labour MPs Urge Keir Starmer To Be Vocal About Immigration In 2025

5 min read28 min

“If we don’t reduce immigration, we are knackered,” one Labour MP told PoliticsHome.

The issue of immigration has rarely been a simple issue for Labour to navigate.

Labour leaders have generally found it easier to discuss issues closer to the party’s comfort zone like the National Health Service and pressures facing working people. The tumultuous Brexit years and pressure to ‘take back control’ made it an even trickier topic, particularly when many people in the party argue embracing immigration is a Labour Party value.

In more recent years, however, things have changed.

The last Conservative administration’s failure to ‘stop the boats’ combined with record net migration numbers recorded on the Tory watch meant that the issue of controlling the borders became a row that the Labour Party was more confident to have.

In the run-up to his historic General Election win in July, Starmer vowed to scrap the Tory party’s Rwanda deportation scheme — a pledge that he has since fulfilled — and tackle illegal migration by increasing international cooperation and arresting smuggling gangs.

In more recent weeks, he has accused previous Tory governments of using the UK as an “open border experiment” — an indication that the Prime Minister is keen to continue pursuing immigration, whether it be Channel crossings or economic migrants, as a political argument.

But there is a group of Labour backbenchers who argue Starmer is going to have to make immigration an even more prominent part of his political strategy next year and beyond if Labour is going to fight off the threat of Reform, the right-wing party led by Farage.

The pressure from Reform is acutely felt by Labour MPs in seats in the North and the Midlands where Farage’s party came second at the 4 July election. Of the 98 constituencies where the right-wing party came second, 89 — so around 90 per cent — are held by Labour. There were fears within Labour heading into the summer election that senior MPs like Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Dan Jarvis could be ousted by Reform challengers.

Labour MPs are already looking ahead to the next general election, warning that Reform could inflict much more damage on their party if by that point the Starmer Government is seen by voters as having failed to tackle immigration.

“I may be on the soft left of the party, but the voters care about it,” said another Labour MP.

“If we sort it out now, we will be in a better place to take on Reform by 2028/29.”

This anxiety has manifested itself in the Red Wall Caucus: a grouping of 30 Labour MPs recently set up to represent the party’s traditional heartlands in the North and Midlands. 

The backbench group recently had over a dozen of its members meet with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Liz Kendall, to discuss how she plans to get more people in the UK into employment. Deborah Mattinson, author of Beyond the Red Wall and Starmer’s former director of strategy, is due to meet the caucus in January.  

Members of the Red Wall Caucus are keen for the Government to be more vocal on immigration and its record of overseeing the mass deportation of migrants from the UK.

Jonathan Hinder, Labour MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, who is a member of the group, told PoliticsHome he believed Starmer was in the “right place” on immigration and wanted the party to be “proud” of its achievements.

“The main thing that the likes of myself and other people, who are part of this Red Wall Caucus, would say is let’s talk about what we are doing on this a bit more and be proud about it,” he said.

“Don’t worry about the fact that some people are going to be upset about it. The Government’s done great work on deportations in the first few months.”

He added that given the Conservatives no longer “have any credibility” on this issue, “Reform is the most obvious threat” to the Labour Party.

“The Tories are second in my seat, second in the vast majority of seats that Labour hold. We’ve always got to be mindful of what they’re doing on it,” Hinder said. “But the public has completely lost trust in the Tories, because they’re the ones who have promised again and again that they’re going to grip it, and it has just gone out of control.”

With Reform expected to make significant gains at the May local elections, the electoral threat posed by Farage’s party will likely only become more salient among Labour figures. And while recent council by-election results suggest Reform is still a bigger problem for the Tories than Labour, MPs like Hinder argue Labour would be unwise to take Reform’s threat seriously.

Not all Labour MPs share the caucus’ view, though.

Those on the more progressive wing of the party believe this approach would further upset its core base in metropolitan cities and leave space for the Green Party to exploit the frustration.

While Labour achieved a historic victory on 4 July, some of its inner-city majorities fell in what was widely seen as a sign of frustration with the party’s direction among younger, more left-wing voters. Although it was not enough to derail Starmer’s landslide victory in 2024, some Labour figures believe it could become a bigger headache in the future.

In the capital, for example, where Labour has 59 seats, the Greens and independent candidates are expected to be a more serious electoral threat to Labour MPs than Reform. 

“We’ve shot ourselves in the foot and now we’ve only got two toes,” said a London Labour MP.

Despite this, the direction of travel is clearly towards a strategy of trying to nullify the growing electoral threat of Reform. PoliticsHome understands Labour HQ has decided to devote more energy to finding more attack stories to use against the right-wing party.

Whether it can be successful is one of the big political questions heading into 2025.

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