Identity crisis

Digital ID cards could be an effective tool against the illegal migration corroding Labour's credibility

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Neil Kinnock calls it “the audacity deficit”; the gap between what mainstream opinion in the UK thinks this Labour government ought to do to solve a particular problem and what it actually does. On immigration, the deficit is spiralling out of control.

The government could talk itself out of confronting the issue of immigration on the basis that there shouldn't be one. It could tell itself that people really shouldn't be protesting outside asylum seekers' hotels, because there are only half as many of them as there were two years ago. It could brush past the obsession with small boats, because they only carry a small proportion of total migrants.

But voters are protesting and they are obsessed, and not just the racists and far-right agitators who are making hay in Epping and elsewhere. Look at the polls: immigration is voters' No 1 concern, Reform UK is on a roll. And the old argument holds true - if progressive parties don't bring in credible and humane immigration policies, populists have plenty of inhumane ones.