In late 2025, the Labour Government increasingly emphasised the security threat of growing migration to the UK. This has so far culminated in a policy paper from November called ‘Restoring Order and Control’, outlining their aim to overhaul the UK’s “generous” migration model and implement harsher measures to decrease numbers of arrivals and over-stayers.
Although some of the issues mentioned in this paper (notably societal divisions and the inability of their asylum system to manage the increase of migrants) are significant and do need to be managed, the paper only seems to serve as further proof that Labour is abandoning its original beliefs and supporters. Instead, it has accepted a dehumanising rhetoric about migrants that oversimplifies the complex nature of the migration issue in bad faith.
For instance, Labour MP Alex Norris has defended seizing valuable assets from refugees to contribute to the costs of their benefits. There is nothing “compassionate” or “tolerant” about this treatment, no matter how much Labour tries to convince people that the harsher measures they wish to implement are “vital for maintaining confidence in [these] values”.
The most infuriating argument in the paper is their misleading statement that “illegal migration is making this country a more divided place”. It’s not illegal migration itself that creates divisions, but the disseminated narratives around migrants that intentionally other and ostracise them, frequently along racial lines, and form barriers for migrants wanting to assimilate into new communities. But these constructed divisions don’t only affect illegal migrants: they can also ostracise legal, working migrants and immigrant families that have successfully assimilated.
This isn’t about legality, but about an exploited sense of insecurity among UK citizens. Migration is a small matter of division when compared to huge socio-economic disparities across the UK, inflated costs of living, and the ongoing housing crisis. Removing illegal immigrants or decreasing migration isn’t suddenly going to fix Britain’s issues. Labour seemingly joining the right in naming migration the UK’s new existential threat is an easy excuse when the actual problems that need to be tackled are systemic and economically benefit the elite actors involved.
In response to the electoral threat posed by Reform, the Labour Government has pulled the classic, always-detrimental move of trying to appeal to the right, yet again abandoning its more left-leaning voters in the process. We’ve seen this happen repeatedly (most notably with Kamala Harris during the 2024 US presidential elections) and so I ask: when will majority, left-leaning parties start having faith in, and actually act on the wants of, their electoral base?
Labour has lost sight of its ideals, and until the systemic issues harming people in the UK are tackled, these harsher measures against migrants will only serve to deepen peoples’ sense of insecurity. Instead of “restoring control and order”, this framing will only generate more resentment and distrust within lower classes, whose problems will continue regardless of how hostile and dehumanising we become towards migrants.
“Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends NATO Summit” by UK Prime Minister is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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‘Restoring Order and Control’? Unpacking the Immigration Policies of a Broken Labour Party
In late 2025, the Labour Government increasingly emphasised the security threat of growing migration to the UK. This has so far culminated in a policy paper from November called ‘Restoring Order and Control’, outlining their aim to overhaul the UK’s “generous” migration model and implement harsher measures to decrease numbers of arrivals and over-stayers.
Although some of the issues mentioned in this paper (notably societal divisions and the inability of their asylum system to manage the increase of migrants) are significant and do need to be managed, the paper only seems to serve as further proof that Labour is abandoning its original beliefs and supporters. Instead, it has accepted a dehumanising rhetoric about migrants that oversimplifies the complex nature of the migration issue in bad faith.
For instance, Labour MP Alex Norris has defended seizing valuable assets from refugees to contribute to the costs of their benefits. There is nothing “compassionate” or “tolerant” about this treatment, no matter how much Labour tries to convince people that the harsher measures they wish to implement are “vital for maintaining confidence in [these] values”.
The most infuriating argument in the paper is their misleading statement that “illegal migration is making this country a more divided place”. It’s not illegal migration itself that creates divisions, but the disseminated narratives around migrants that intentionally other and ostracise them, frequently along racial lines, and form barriers for migrants wanting to assimilate into new communities. But these constructed divisions don’t only affect illegal migrants: they can also ostracise legal, working migrants and immigrant families that have successfully assimilated.
This isn’t about legality, but about an exploited sense of insecurity among UK citizens. Migration is a small matter of division when compared to huge socio-economic disparities across the UK, inflated costs of living, and the ongoing housing crisis. Removing illegal immigrants or decreasing migration isn’t suddenly going to fix Britain’s issues. Labour seemingly joining the right in naming migration the UK’s new existential threat is an easy excuse when the actual problems that need to be tackled are systemic and economically benefit the elite actors involved.
In response to the electoral threat posed by Reform, the Labour Government has pulled the classic, always-detrimental move of trying to appeal to the right, yet again abandoning its more left-leaning voters in the process. We’ve seen this happen repeatedly (most notably with Kamala Harris during the 2024 US presidential elections) and so I ask: when will majority, left-leaning parties start having faith in, and actually act on the wants of, their electoral base?
Labour has lost sight of its ideals, and until the systemic issues harming people in the UK are tackled, these harsher measures against migrants will only serve to deepen peoples’ sense of insecurity. Instead of “restoring control and order”, this framing will only generate more resentment and distrust within lower classes, whose problems will continue regardless of how hostile and dehumanising we become towards migrants.
“Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends NATO Summit” by UK Prime Minister is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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