PM's immigration ploy will be boost for political rivals

THE prime minister's policy announcements on immigration last week have come in for much criticism.

- Ron Beadle

For example, some have asked if he would he support Spain should its government require British ex-pats to learn Spanish. Perhaps more subtly, his phrase an “island of strangers” cannot have made it to the final draft without someone in Number 10 noting the echoes of Enoch Powell's reference to the “strangers in our land” in his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech.

While the prime minister denied that his pronouncement had anything to do with politics, the fact that it was made after Reform UK's success in the local elections has led many to see it in precisely such terms. The reaction of Reform UK and, of the ‘migration critical’ Press, suggest that if this were his motive, it hasn’t worked.

But the prime minister's problem is worse than that because Labour is in danger of losing far more votes to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens than they are to Reform UK. Right now, it does not seem this way but the results on May 1 are deceptive.

The majority of Reform voters have never voted Labour. They are former Tories, independents and people whose only previously vote was for Britain to leave the EU.