Squeezed middle: in truth, most reject political extremes

How many people, I wonder, seriously think that Keir Starmer has much in common with Enoch Powell? It’s true that whoever came up with the phrase island of strangers” was, at best, naive. But those three words don’t do justice to his whole speech. Powell was a proud) racialist. Starmer is not.

- ALAN RUSBRIDGER

But, somehow, in modern Britain as elsewhere, we are more comfortable with pigeonholes. Not so long ago, Starmer was typecast as weak-kneed and woke-minded on the issue of immigration. Now he apparently spies the River Thames foaming with much blood. Maybe his views aren’t so extreme, but he has simply been persuaded to nudge a little to the right to undermine the threat from Reform. In other words, perhaps Starmer is, at heart, that most ridiculed of creatures: a centrist dad.

But aren’t most of us somewhere in the middle on most of the big issues of the day? The common wisdom is that we’re living in an age of great polarity, which is true up to a point. But, increasingly, I suspect, most of us aren’t attracted to extremes. We are repelled by pigeonholes and huddle for warmth somewhere in the middle instead.

I am no John Curtice, so what follows is a gut feeling rather than a psephological revelation. But that feeling, when it comes to immigration, is that most people appreciate that, as a country, we do benefit from migration, and that we also need controls on who – and how many people – should be allowed in.

In other words, we do buy the argument that migrants bring considerable benefits and are probably necessary for growth, but we also understand those who fear that, wrongly handled, there could be a risk to social cohesion; and that unskilled workers, in particular, feel threatened by the lower pay rates that an excessive number of foreign workers can cause.