READ NOW: A shocking year, strewn with failure. Pull your socks up or go!
Today (Friday 4th July) is the first anniversary of Sir Keir Starmer’s landslide election win. Cruising to victory against a disorganised and demoralised Conservative Party, Sir Keir won the largest majority since Sir Tony Blair in 1997.
As followers of Migration Watch will know, we have been raising the alarm on disastrously high levels of mass migration since not long after Sir Tony won his first election. The BBC has a handy recap of that period in the form of a documentary, first broadcast last November, available on YouTube – featuring Migration Watch and its impact on the national debate around migration.
It’s often said that the Tories had 14 years in government but achieved very little. That much is true – conversely, Labour had 14 years outside of government, but seem to have learned very little.
While the Tories flailed around, failing to control our borders, enforce existing migration law, or arrest the demographic decline of the White British, Labour had ample opportunity to learn from their mistakes – and learn from organisations like Migration Watch, which have been producing research on mass migration for over twenty years.
Undoubtedly, some people voted Labour because of their pledges on migration. These included:
- To “reform the points-based immigration system so that it is fair and properly managed, with appropriate restrictions on visas”.
- To crack down on employers who are breaching employment law, with those who flout the rules being “barred from hiring workers from abroad”.
- To establish a “Border Security Command”, that would be funded by ending the Rwanda Scheme, to disrupt people smugglers and seek an EU security agreement.
- To recruit additional caseworkers to clear the asylum backlog, which stood at 224,742 in June 2024, a record of four times its standing only a decade earlier.
- To end the use of hotels for asylum accommodation.
- To create a “Returns unit” with 1,000 staff to fast-track removals and negotiating returns agreements.
Now, it must be obvious to most readers that Labour has failed on all of these pledges. For a full breakdown of exactly what was promised, and what Labour has failed to deliver, we recommend reading our report on the Migration Watch website.
The net result of the first year of this government is they have failed to reverse the worst migration policies of the last government, while utterly failing – on their own terms! – to solve the existential issues of illegal Channel migration, demographic decline, and a monstrously expensive and inefficient asylum system. Consequently, the public have lost faith and patience in Sir Keir’s ability to deal with our migration disaster.
Ultimately, this is not a game. Sir Keir made promises; he has failed to deliver; and we, the British public, are paying the price. At some point, we must tell him:
Pull your socks up or go!