What a nice chap Sir Keir Starmer is! And so caring when it comes to the working class.
In his speech on Tuesday, the Labour leader was at pains to establish his working-class credentials. He didn’t want to come across as a North London middle-class lawyer, which is what he is.
His mentioning the working classes three times was a calculated ploy. He wanted to emphasise that he will defend their interests. The implication was that the Tories aren’t doing so.
He hopes that his proposal to build ‘one and a half million new homes across the country’ will put him squarely on the side of those working-class people who yearn to own their own house. Everyone knows the Tories have failed on this front, and that the housing crisis has got worse during their 13 years in power.
Sir Keir bullishly promised ‘shovels in the ground, cranes in the sky’, and undertook to ‘build the next generation of Labour new towns’. In other words, if elected his party will set about concreting over great swathes of the English countryside.
In his speech on Tuesday, the Labour leader was at pains to establish his working-class credentials
Many will applaud Sir Keir’s plan. It has even been welcomed in some supposedly Right-wing quarters, such as the Adam Smith Institute. There’s a widespread view that Labour is connecting with people’s concerns, and that the Tories are hopelessly out of touch.
May I dissent — at least so far as Labour is concerned? My complaint about Sir Keir is that he isn’t telling the truth. Like so many politicians, including Tory ones, he talks about the housing crisis without ever alluding to the major contributory cause. Immigration.
This word didn’t appear in his speech. Not once. Discussing the shortage of affordable homes without citing the effects of uncontrolled immigration is a bit like telling the story of Isaac Newton observing an apple fall from a tree without mentioning the effect of gravity.
Last year, net legal immigration reached an all-time high of 606,000. Illegal immigration was around 50,000. That’s an awful lot of people. All have to be found somewhere to live. Most will rent in the short term, and some of these will aspire to buy their own homes.
There’s no mystery about the effects of high immigration on housing. In 2020, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published various forecasts. One of them, called the ‘high migration scenario’, imagined overseas net migration to England at a constant 263,000 per year, which was the actual level in 2019. This would see the number of households increase from 23.2 million in 2018 to 27.9 million in 2043 — a rise of 4.7 million.
Sir Keir’s shovels and cranes are going to be working very hard to fulfil that target since he envisages building a mere one and a half million new homes over an unspecified period, though this would admittedly be a spectacular achievement in comparison with what the Tories have achieved.
In fact, immigration is running at a much higher level than imagined by the ONS. The statistically impeccable Migration Watch has estimated that if immigration were to persist at existing rates — by no means an incredible prospect — between six and eight million new homes would have to be built by 2046, which is equivalent to between 15 and 18 cities the size of Birmingham. Sir Keir’s shovels may never rest, while the manufacturers of concrete are likely to be rich and happy.
The truth is, of course, that no government — not even Sir Keir’s imagined one — is going to be able to put up new homes at such a pace. If we want to ameliorate the housing crisis, we are going to have to bring down the rate of immigration by a significant amount. Otherwise demand will continue to outstrip supply.
![Starmer didn’t want to come across as a North London middle-class lawyer, which is what he is](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/10/11/22/76447697-0-image-a-115_1697059524816.jpg)
Starmer didn’t want to come across as a North London middle-class lawyer, which is what he is
That is why I accuse Sir Keir Starmer of dishonesty. He poses as the protector of ordinary people. He claims he will sort out the shortage of affordable homes by creating new towns. But he refuses to acknowledge the contribution excessive immigration is making to the housing crisis. In fact, he doesn’t mention immigration at all, which suggests he thinks it’s a problem he can’t discuss, and that a Labour government would therefore be unlikely to do anything about it.
If he were honest, he would also accept that pressure on the NHS and schools is inevitably worse as a result of the unprecedented high numbers of people arriving here. But the self-proclaimed friend of the working class won’t admit that either. Much easier simply to blame the Tories.
I don’t, of course, believe that the strain on housing and public services are the only undesirable consequences of letting immigration run out of control. When too many people arrive too quickly, that is liable to undermine social cohesion, which is what Home Secretary Suella Braverman was getting at in her recent, widely criticised remarks about multi-culturalism.
Mrs Braverman can be abrasive. But who can honestly dismiss her statement that multiculturalism ‘[has] failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it’, and enabled them to ‘pursue lives aimed at undermining the stability and threatening the security of our society’?
![Home Secretary Suella Braverman was widely criticised for her remarks about multi-culturalism](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/10/11/22/76447721-0-image-a-116_1697059583689.jpg)
Home Secretary Suella Braverman was widely criticised for her remarks about multi-culturalism
The sight of protesters in London and Manchester supporting the barbaric behaviour of Hamas has been alarming. It’s not merely that since 2021 Hamas has been a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK, so that showing support for it is a criminal offence (not that the police seem to care overmuch). It is also because what Hamas did in southern Israel was merciless, and so far off the scale of civilised values.
I hope the majority of British Muslims find such demonstrations abominable. The fact remains that to witness British citizens celebrating mass murder is shocking. Such people don’t regard British Jews as fellow citizens. According to the Community Security Trust, a British Jewish charity, anti-Semitic incidents are up threefold since Hamas’s attack. This is the climate of hate in which British Jews now live — in their own country.
Suella Braverman was not entirely right. There has been a fair degree of assimilation —certainly much more than in France, for example. Most Britons of all creeds and beliefs remain tolerant of one another. But more uncontrolled immigration will further imperil social cohesion.
![The sight of protesters in London and Manchester supporting the barbaric behaviour of Hamas has been alarming](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/10/11/22/76447775-0-image-a-117_1697059666557.jpg)
The sight of protesters in London and Manchester supporting the barbaric behaviour of Hamas has been alarming
There’s little doubt, too, that, for all kinds of reasons, many British people including immigrants and the descendants of immigrants are becoming increasingly uneasy about the huge numbers coming here. A number of polls suggest as much. Sir Keir Starmer is apparently deaf to these anxieties.
And the Tories? They have presided over record immigration. Some of them favour an endless supply of cheap labour, regardless of the social consequences. But a few wiser souls — Suella Braverman for one, Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch for another — recognise the dangers of continuing mass immigration. Since they’re both non-white, no one can easily accuse them of racism.
The Tories have a lot of humble pie to eat. They have made many mistakes. But there is still time before the election to show that, on this issue at least, they are closer to ordinary people than are Sir Keir Starmer and Labour.
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