Labour will never ‘out Farage’ Farage – so this performative cruelty over immigration is pointless

Labour’s immigration campaign is a calculated move in the battle for votes, writes Femi Oluwole, but it could be giving Reform the upper hand

Labour publishing videos of immigration raids on people accused of being in Britain illegally has me asking one question: what’s the point?

The government is boasting with migrant misery montages because the party thinks it needs to appear hostile towards foreigners to avoid losing voters to the Reform Party. But Labour will never out-Farage Nigel Farage, so it won’t work.

Not only is the cruelty pointless, but it is wasting a huge opportunity to finally fix the conversation around immigration.

Of course, a functioning migration system needs enforcement when the rules are broken, but does it need to be publicly celebrated?

The government is boasting about footage showing the arrest and potential deportation of people who were living in the UK without the proper documentation. The lives that those people tried to build are being torn apart on camera, with political points broadcasted.

These people weren’t being pulled out of mansions. These were working-class people being torn out of their working-class homes in the dead of night. And they had been living with the threat of that happening hanging over their heads.

Are these the villains whose suffering we should enjoy?

If someone in poverty steals food, nobody would complain if the police stopped them. But how would you feel about the government posting videos of them being dragged out of shops? Are they the ones really hurting this country?

Just like how the hungry shoplifter is a symptom of a society that hasn’t done enough to address poverty, people crossing the channel in small boats is another symptom of governmental failure.

Former home secretary Suella Braverman already revealed that because of the absence of safe asylum routes, the only way to claim asylum in the UK is to cross the English Channel “illegally”. So, even the people smugglers arrested in Labour’s videos are simply capitalising on the UK government’s failures. All those videos show is that the only people allowed to make their careers by exploiting the UK’s failure to provide legal asylum routes are UK politicians.

It's frustrating because the whole point of a “progressive left-wing” party is to get into power and prove to people that those policies will actually improve their lives.

But this kind of performative cruelty against minority groups still sends the message that right-wing policies are the answer to people’s problems.

It undermines the Left and strengthens parties like Reform, which will always appear more committed to those kinds of policies.

The public already has all the evidence we need to know that when a politician builds their platform around opposing immigration, it just makes us poorer.

The Tories tried to send asylum seekers to Rwanda at a cost of £169,000 per refugee and still left us with a bill of around £320m, despite never sending anyone there. Brexit was sold based on the promise of cutting immigration, and now two-thirds of Brits believe Brexit has made us poorer, not richer. The loss of EU free movement also created labour shortages, which have pushed up prices. The end of free movement has made our NHS staffing crisis worse.

And it’s frankly embarrassing that they’re doing all this because they’re worried about Reform, a party whose promises around immigration have all been disproven.

Reform party leader Nigel Farage (AFP via Getty)

In 2016, Farage said that as EU members “there is nothing we can do” to control immigration. In 2017, when I showed him the laws proving this was untrue, he said, “Femi, you’re right … Under European treaties, there are restrictions that can be placed”.

Farage promised that cutting immigration via Brexit would lead to higher wages. Yet, not only has Farage admitted that we haven’t benefited economically from Brexit, but several Reform party candidates say that Brexit is making us poorer. Worse still, when nurses and teachers tried to demand better wages by going on strike, Farage implied they were part of a left-wing conspiracy.

So, Keir Starmer is compromising Labour’s morality to beat a party that has effectively admitted that its anti-immigration agenda is a threat to working-class people.

As Labour MP Diane Abbott warned, Starmer turning Labour into Reform-Lite will take the UK in a very dangerous direction. This would be tragic when, (and I don’t say this often) thanks to Brexit, we now have the opportunity to go in a much better direction.

The narrative that immigration drives down wages is based on employers taking advantage of the high demand for jobs to pay workers less. But that’s a failure of capitalism.

Labour’s Employment Rights Bill is aimed at strengthening unions so workers can demand fair pay.

The narrative that asylum seekers threaten our borders relies on the fact that small boats are the only way to claim asylum in the UK.

Creating safe routes for people to claim asylum and start working in our economy would defeat that narrative.

Posting videos that push the idea that foreigners suffering is the same as Brits prospering will only help Nigel Farage become prime minister.