Keir Starmer today admitted Labour has ‘shied away’ from tackling immigration despite legitimate concerns.
The PM delivered the mea culpa as he desperately tries to convince Brits that he is taking tough action on borders.
Sir Keir has been facing collapse in the polls amid mounting anger about Channel boats and asylum hotels.
There has also been a growing backlash against the scale of legal arrivals.
Promoting his new plan to introduce digital IDs for individuals to validate their right to work in the UK, Sir Keir emphasized it is ‘essential’ to address ‘every aspect of the illegal immigration issue’.
At the Global Progress Action Summit in London, he is set to caution against using migration to fill workforce shortages, stating it ‘is not compassionate left-wing politics’.
Writing in the Telegraph, Sir Keir said he wanted to show there is an alternative to Reform UK’s ‘toxic’ approach.
Keir Starmer today admitted Labour has ‘shied away’ from tackling immigration despite legitimate concerns
Sir Keir has been facing collapse in the polls amid mounting anger about Channel boats (file picture from this month) and asylum hotels
‘There is no doubt that for years left-wing parties, including my own, avoided addressing people’s concerns about illegal immigration,’ Sir Keir stated.
‘It has been too easy for people to enter the country, work in the shadow economy and remain illegally.
‘We must be absolutely clear that tackling every aspect of the problem of illegal immigration is essential.’
Sir Keir’s summit speech follows a torrid summer marked by protests near hotels housing asylum seekers.
The campaign known as ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ has also seen flags attached to lamp posts and signs throughout the UK.
The PM has announced the rollout of mandatory digital ID cards in a bid to crack down on those working illegally.
He will insist ‘the simple fact is that every nation needs to have control over its borders’.
‘For too many years, it’s been too easy for people to come here, slip into the shadow economy and remain here illegally,’ he will tell attendees.
He will continue: ‘It is not compassionate left-wing politics to depend on labor that exploits foreign workers and undermines fair wages. However, the straightforward fact is that every country must have control over its borders.’
The leader will also outline a choice between ‘a politics of predatory grievance, exploiting the issues of working people’ and ‘patriotic renewal, rooted in communities, constructing a better nation, piece by piece, from the ground up, including everyone in the national narrative’.
Discussing online political discourse, Sir Keir will describe ‘an industrialized infrastructure of grievance, an entire world, not just a world view, created through our devices’.
He will add: ‘That is miserable, joyless, demonstrably untrue, and yet, in another way, totally cohesive.
‘That preys on real problems in the real world, identifies clear enemies – that’s us.
‘And, at its heart, its most poisonous belief, on full display at the protests here in London just a week or two ago, (is) that there is a coming struggle, a defining struggle, a violent struggle, for the nation – or all our nations.’
Sir Keir will warn of ‘a language that is naked in its attempt to intimidate’.
The Centre for American Progress Action Fund, think tank Labour Together, and the Institute for Public Policy Research are hosting the summit.
The PM will say that campaigners who think of themselves as progressive must look themselves ‘in the mirror’ and identify areas where they have allowed themselves ‘to shy away from people’s concerns’.
