There is no greater dilemma for a liberal democracy than how it regulates immigration. The issue has been weaponised by the right. Donald Trump’s return to the White House was built on his cruel rhetoric against migrants, alleging repeatedly that some of those entering the country from central and south America were members of criminal gangs and rapists and stating, without any evidence, that migrants from Haiti were eating other people’s pets.

This hateful language has normalised a new kind of racism – a language which demonises undocumented migrants but is basically about race. The unspoken suggestion is: if you don’t look like us, then you aren’t like us, and so what are you doing here?

The progressive side of politics has struggled with immigration policy. The centre left instinctively wants to allow legal migration to meet skill gaps and to provide refuge for those facing oppression – as long as the scale doesn’t provide a rallying issue for the right.  The left hasn’t much of clue what to do about illegal immigration. Many of those who come without permission are young, hard-working and by instinct entrepreneurial. Just the sort of people ageing societies such as Britain need. But the tolerance for those who bust the rules so blatantly is diminishing.

 The scale of net migration – that’s immigration minus emigration – has risen sharply, peaking at 900,000, or 1.3% of the population, in the year to June 2023. It’s a big number, but the country relies on overseas-trained doctors and nurses to run the health service, migrants on the minimum wage to work shifts in care homes for the elderly, and overseas students paying higher fees to keep universities financially afloat. Migration is built into Britain’s business model. But that has fuelled the rise of Nigel Farage’s populist right-wing Reform UK party, which opinion polls suggest currently has wider support than Labour or any other party. 

Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, has been prompted by the change in public mood to harden his approach on migrants. And one phrase in particular that he uttered in the past week, while launching a tougher immigration policy, will linger like a bad smell over British public life.

The prime minister declared that mass migration risked turning Britain into as ‘island of strangers’. This outraged many on the left of Starmer’s own party. It bears an uncomfortable echo of the most controversial speech in modern British politics. In 1968, Enoch Powell – a senior figure in the Conservative Party and former cabinet minister – declared that his (white) constituents ‘found themselves strangers in their own country’.

Powell warned that unless migration was reduced to ‘negligible’ proportions, Britain would witness a race war. His remarks have gone down in history as the ‘rivers of blood’ speech, from an allusion Powell made to a river in ancient Rome ‘foaming with much blood’. He was immediately sacked from his senior role in the Conservative Party and banished to the margins of British political life – but his speech gave a huge boost to the racist far right.

Keir Starmer is not predicting racial strife and he is not a racist, but he wants to position his party as being tough on an issue which alarms many voters. He said Britain had ‘become a one-nation experiment in open borders’ – which will be news to anyone who has applied recently for a UK visa – and argued that unrestrained immigration had caused ‘incalculable’ damage, particularly by the burden imposed on public services. He pledged that he would ‘close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics, our economy and our society’.

The government has announced a more restrictive visa regime, in particular limiting visas for migrants coming to do low-paid jobs such as care workers. Starmer also wants foreign workers to be able to demonstrate greater ability in English, and he’s cutting the time overseas students can spend in the country after graduation. He is also set to unveil new measures to tackle the separate but parallel problem of illegal immigration:  every year, tens of thousands are making their perilous way by small boat across the Channel, and the total number of unauthorised migrants in the UK is believed to be about one-million.

Keir Starmer has made a political calculation. He believes the language he is now using about migration – which many on the left and within minority communities see as divisive and distasteful – is the only way to stem Britain lurching to the right. The problem is, as always when trying to steal the clothes of populist parties, he is fighting on turf which his political rivals have defined as their own.  By focussing on immigration as second only to the economy in terms of political importance, he might help build right wing populism rather than banish it.

Andrew Whitehead is a former BBC India correspondent.

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