Watch as the Overton Window on Immigration Shifts to the "Far Right"
On 28th November, UK Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave a speech on immigration that resonated, in many respects, with what Nigel Farage’s Reform Party and so-called “far right” parties across Europe have been saying for years. It was a classic “get-tough-on-illegal-immigration” and “stop mass immigration” speech that wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow coming from Nigel Farage, but coming from a Labour leader, it signalled a recognition that the failures of immigration policy in the U.K. have become a political liability that transcends the left-right political divide.
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The language of Starmer’s speech is the very same language that has been condemned for years across Europe as “far right” by mainstream journalists and politicians. Here are a few excerpts. If you didn’t know better, you’d think they had come from the mouth of Nigel Farage (barring the swipe at Brexit), Alternativ für Deutschland, or the Austrian Freedom Party:
“The previous Government were running an open borders experiment.”
“As the ONS sets out, nearly one million people came to Britain in the year ending June 2023. That is four times the migration levels compared with 2019. Time and again – the Conservative Party promised they would get those numbers down. Time and again – they failed.”
“This happened by design, not accident. Policies were reformed deliberately to liberalise immigration. Brexit was used for that purpose to turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders.”
“The vast majority of people who entered this country did so to plug gaps in our workforce. Skills shortages across the country which have left our economy hopelessly reliant on immigration…Sectors of our economy, like engineering, where apprenticeships have almost halved in the last decade, while visas have doubled.”
“We will reform the points-based system and make sure that applications for the relevant visa routes, whether it’s the skilled worker route, or the shortage occupation list, will now come with new expectations on training people here in our country. We will also crack down on any abuse of the visa routes.”
“We’re also tackling the utter mess we inherited in the Home Office. Asylum returns – up 53% in the last 12 months compared with the previous year. Total returns – up 34% in the last year and we will keep on going because this is the work of change.”
When the UK’s Labour PM is leading up the charge against “open borders” and visa abuses and essentially seconding what Nigel Farage has been saying for years, you know that the Overton window - the range of politically acceptable discourse - has shifted decisively toward the right on immigration.
Whether Starmer will follow through on his promises is anyone’s guess. But this much is clear enough: it was only a matter of time before critiques of mass migration and open borders would become normalised. Sooner or later, we can expect anti-immigration rhetoric to be quietly taken up by the very same parties, whether in the UK, Ireland, France, Sweden, or Germany, that not long ago condemned the “far right” for doing the same thing.
The appropriation of “far right” narratives by centrist and leftist parties is all but inevitable, because the open borders experiment has been a colossal failure across much of Europe, leaving fragmented, under-resourced, and dysfunctional communities in its wake. Reality has a way of catching up on reckless ideologies, and converting them into political liabilities. And that is exactly what is happening with permissive immigration policies, not only in the UK, but in Ireland and the rest of Europe.