Calm weather off the south coast of England means a surge in crossings by immigrants setting off from France. By the beginning of November – and despite the hopes of the UK government to “stop the boats” – migrant numbers risking the English Channel have already exceeded the total for all of last year.
The government is desperate to find a solution. The issue has done more than any other to destabilise British politics in the past five years and has immeasurably boosted Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party. Reform has led opinion polls for months. It triumphed in May’s local government elections, winning power in 10 English councils.
But – whisper it – have we reached peak Farage?
UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is studying the immigration system introduced by the centre-left government in Denmark, said to be the toughest in the EU. Ms Mahmood has already announced that legal migrants must learn English to a high standard, have a clean criminal record and volunteer in their community if they are to be granted permanent settlement.
She sent Home Office officials to Copenhagen to learn more about the Danish example.
This included the idea that refugees who live in housing estates where more than 50 per cent of residents are from what the Danish government regards as “non-western” backgrounds will not be eligible for family reunion with relatives abroad. As Ms Mahmood puts it, the UK government has to “understand why so many people feel the country doesn’t work for them” and “if we do not rise to this challenge, our vision of an open, tolerant, generous country will wither”.
Part of this initiative is obviously driven by the political challenge from Mr Farage. His one largely popular and coherent policy is Reform’s strong anti-immigrant stance. It plays particularly well with older voters although less so with those younger.
Yet Mr Farage may now be the victim of his party’s recent spectacular successes. The problem of actually governing, rather than merely criticising others from the sidelines, has been – to put it politely – something of a challenge in those very new and therefore inexperienced 10 Reform-led English councils.
Embarrassing scenes were recorded in an online meeting of key Reform members of the Kent County Council. This led to a public row, including rude language and swearing, and a split in what had been billed as Mr Farage’s “flagship” local government council. The party originally had 57 Kent councillors. It has lost nine so far.
The news site PoliticsHome reports that Reform had lost 36 councillors across England by the end of last month, including 11 expelled from the party, six suspended and at least nine that have left.
More strikingly, Reform’s boast that they would take a chainsaw to local government spending – perhaps trying to echo Elon Musk and “Doge” in Washington or Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding President, Javier Milei – seems merely an impossible boast. The Institute for Government think tank reports that it would be “very difficult for Reform councillors to find excessive waste in [English] local authority spending” and cuts to vital services like social care or fixing potholes would not be popular with voters.
The next few months therefore will demonstrate whether Reform and Mr Farage himself are merely part of a culture of whingeing and grievance about immigration, or whether they can realistically manage finances and make life better for voters at the local government level.
Mr Farage seems to understand the risks. He has hastily abandoned some of Reform’s wilder promises of tax cuts. “We want to cut taxes, of course we do,” he told a news conference in London, “but we understand substantial tax cuts given the dire state of debt and our finances are not realistic.”
What’s also “not realistic” therefore is Mr Farage’s 2024 election manifesto promise to deliver £90 billion (almost $120 million) in tax cuts and other changes to the tax system.
For Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government, all this may help politically since Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is widely expected to break the governing Labour party’s own 2024 election promise on not raising taxes on working people in her budget at the end of this month. We shall see. Either way, Mr Farage is in no position to criticise Labour’s possible about-turn after announcing his own.
All this is hard-knuckle politicking, and it emphasises why Denmark’s tough attitude to immigration may prove attractive to Mr Starmer, and why Mr Farage’s own U-turn on tax may help Labour.
UK voters remain very concerned about immigration. Polls show Mr Farage and Reform still leading on the issue. Yet in Labour circles, there is hope that the government can somehow get a grip on this challenge – perhaps by learning from the Danes – while Mr Farage is constantly reminded of his U-turn on tax cuts along with continued in-fighting inside Reform.
British politics therefore may potentially be about to shift once more.
The Labour party has more than three years before the next general election. Take away immigration as a flashpoint and Mr Farage would still have plenty to say, but would most British people still be listening? Stay tuned.
