At the top of Labour, they feel that they can't win an election if it is a immigration general election, if they've taken small boats and these hotels off your television screens, then they're in play and somehow they can crawl back from the abysmal ratings that they have at the moment.
But if those issues and that anger is at the top of people's minds, if it is the most salient issue come the next general election, I think there are people at the top of the Labour Party that think they might as well pack their bags and not even turn up. Hello and welcome to the forecast. Is the government's immigration strategy doomed to fail? Despite the tough language, the one in, one out deal with France and the rapid closure of asylum hotels, Labour continues to plunge in the polls.
So why is it going so badly? Has Keir Starmer, as many of his critics charge, played directly into Nigel Farage's hands by elevating immigration? Or is there a long term plan that could yet pay off? To discuss, I'm joined by our community's editor Darshna Soni, who has just been in France meeting asylum seekers sent back under the new scheme, and by our political editor Gary Gibbon in Westminster. Gary, let me start with you. The latest polling has Labour in
a dire situation. To what extent is immigration to blame for that? It's in play. It's not everything. When you ask voters to identify the issues that have driven them away from Labour, people who voted Labour in 2024, immigration is is up there. Winter fuel allowance used to be the number one thing they mentioned quite often. Now it's cost of living. It's in play. It's a very top player in this dynamic and it's a dynamic which, as you say, is looking
dire for Labour at the moment. And and and why is that? Is it because it doesn't appear to have a clear vision on this? Labour built an enormously broad coalition of voters at the last election. Shallow, but broad. And that included a lot of people whose natural inclination hadn't been Labour over the years. A lot of them were previous Conservative voters, people who've now hopped to reform their their attitudes, their outlook, their priorities were not necessarily a perfect match
for the traditional Labour sell. And they have broken away from the iceberg. The problem for Labour is they've broken away in significant numbers and they're also having a lot of fracturing on the other side. The voters seem to deeply dislike Labour at the moment and immigration is one of the components of that. And Darshney, you've been looking at their current way of trying to to tackle the immigration issue. You know, the last government had Rwanda.
This government has one in, one out. You've been looking at these early days of that policy. How is it working from what you've been finding? Well, it's interesting that this was announced to much fanfare back in July. The government made a big deal out of this and said that this was going to help deter people crossing the Channel in small boats. Now, so far there's only been a small number. It is only a pilot, but it's really interesting.
We've been to France and met some of those, mainly young men who have been deported and the picture that they painted was of a system that's still quite chaotic, it's still not working as it should be. So for example, we met people who had come to England and they were detained straight away. They were held in detention for around 58 days.
Some of those that I spoke to and they weren't told why they had been singled out, but they told us they had been given the impression that they'd be able to apply for asylum in France. Once they get to France, it's a very different story. So for example, we got footage of the hostel where they're staying. It's a very cramped place. There were around 40 people sleeping in one room.
They were told that actually under the Dublin Convention they won't be able to play, they won't be able to apply for asylum in France. So actually a lot of them that we spoke to are now trying to get back to England. So it just all adds to this perception of the Home Office being out of control. And you mentioned the Dublin Convention, which makes us all think back to those days of Brexit, which in many ways triggered or seemed to to inflamed the current immigration debate.
Explain how it's working and and why it's relevant to these men. It's a really important point and it's something that's cited by a lot of people who are seeking asylum. We went to Calais as well and almost everybody that we met there said that because of Dublin they were trying to get to England because Dublin doesn't apply.
So under the Dublin Agreement, EU EU countries had agreed that migrants could be sent back to the first country they entered in Europe and their asylum claim will be processed there. So as many migrants do, for example, if you're coming and you're travelling the route from Libya across the Mediterranean, you might land in Italy, then you might make your way to France and then to England. Under this arrangement you can get sent back, for example to Italy.
A lot of people say they only cross through these countries, obviously because they had to on their way to a place of safety, and they're worried that if they get sent back to some of these countries, they may eventually be deported to their countries of origin. They feel, rightly or wrongly, that Britain has a much more sympathetic immigration system to people from certain countries like Eritrea or Sudan where there has been a civil war since Brexit.
That doesn't apply here, which is why, for example, the Prime Minister tried to dub these boat crossings the Farage boats. They're saying that it all started because of Brexit. Now the only country that we have a returns deal with is France under this one in one out scheme and. It's one of the reasons why the men are saying to you they want to get back here. Yeah, it is a big factor. And we met people who had settled, for example, in Germany for many years. Now suddenly in Germany, the
political tide has turned there. They're getting much more strict. And they're saying that even though people have settled there for a number of years, waiting for their asylum claims to be sorted, they're now being told, no, you can't stay here. And that's happened to people from a number of different countries. And a lot of people said to me that England is their last chance and that's why so many are desperate to get here. I mean Gary, stop the boats Rwanda, one in one out.
All those short snappy 1 liners don't really get to the complexity of this issue for successive governments. If this policy ends up being one out, the same one back again as Darshner suggests it might how? How problematic would that be for the Labour government? Oh, enormously problematic. Labour MPs are in anguish about these headlines. The idea that you can be sent out of the country and then come straight back on a on a boat again, yeah.
I don't think they have enormous confidence in the a lot of Labour MPs in the returns. Those of them who are particularly concerned about immigration issues and sit in, for instance, red wall seats where these issues can often be more prominent, more salient for voters higher up their list of
priorities. They're looking to Shabana Mahmoud to do a lot of other things, what you might say, reform leaning, conservative leaning policies to try and get a grip of what they see as an enormous problem. And they're, they're interested and you get the impression that elements of the government are interested in removals to adjacent third countries to country of origin.
So maybe some exploratory talks going on in the background soon with countries in Africa that maybe have some sort of more of a population issue that they welcome additional people coming to their country, maybe trying to come to deals with some of those countries and encourage people to go back there. Also looking, I strongly suspect at the source of policy which Italy has combined with Albania to do, where you set up a camp in a third country and you send failed asylum seekers there.
And that is something which Keir Starmer thought he might be onto a winning ticket with Albania on. But Albania said, no, we're not having yours. We're just doing a deal with Italy, no other country. They don't want to appear as a dumping ground. They have their own country's image to think about.
They that was one of the arguments that came out from Albania. But there are other countries and you get a strong sense that the exploratory talks are going on a lot in the background, exploring that. And these these camps, if you have a look at some of the footage there, they've got air conditioning units on the side of a very small room. So it it, it would feel a lot like some sort of prison in a hot climate. And it's not quite clear what happens to people once they've
arrived there. Well, you know, what is their next destination? What's the path of their life beyond this? But nonetheless, this is stuff which at the top of government is being considered and pondered. So yeah, one in, one out, not looking like it's going to change the dial for Labour on the politics of of illegal migration, but other areas are being looked at and they're quite hard line some of them.
I mean, Darshner, part of the difficulty for all the politicians presumably is that immigration, asylum, they've all become inextricably linked with this idea that, you know, it's a 0 sum game with people who are struggling very specifically, not just a broad working class, but the white working class. I mean, what are you finding on the ground?
So here in the UK, what's interesting is that it has become one of the most defining and divisive issues of our times, and small boats in particular. They're just such a visual representation of this problem and it does make people very angry. So yesterday, for example, we looked at this report that the Home Affairs Select Committee did about the amount of money
being spent on asylum. And if you are in a town and you are struggling with the cost of living and you feel like you can't get a point, an appointment at the doctor's surgery and you feel that, you know, your kids school is overcrowded. These things might not necessarily be linked to asylum, but that link has been made in certain narratives. And people are watching the
headlines. They're seeing the images of these boats coming in. And then they're hearing that the amount of money that we're spending on asylum has gone up from something like 4.5 billion, it has tripled now to £15 billion. And this is at a time when we're hearing that Rachel Reeves is struggling to balance the books, that taxes might have to go up, that businesses might be hit.
So this is this is fuelling resentment when these things keep being linked and there are people out there who are angry and they just see successive government, successive home secretaries unable to get a grip on the situation. But it's interesting, isn't it, that often that anger is directed at asylum seekers and migrants rather? I mean, you could reasonably be really furious at the government for the terrible contracts that they've had on these asylum
seekers. You could be reasonably enraged by the private companies making money. But it's often this idea as, as I found myself, you know, in parts of Middlesbrough where people will say they get everything and we get nothing. So that is a huge issue and that's what was so interesting about this Select Committee report. The amount of profit that these private companies are making doesn't get talked about.
And some of the terms of those contracts, I mean, there was a lot of criticism yesterday because people were saying that when these contracts were set up, the civil servants responsible for overseeing it didn't understand how private contracts work. Within those contracts there are no clauses, for example, no penalties for the companies if they provide substandard accommodation.
And although we constantly hear this narrative that asylum seekers are in plush hotels, that they are given free housing, I've visited a lot of this housing all over the country. I've been to a lot of these hotels and some of the conditions are grim inside, especially in some of the Hmos when they're dispersed from hotels out in the into the communities. Yes, they have got a roof over the head and they are given a weekly allowance whilst their claim is heard.
But by no means are they living in luxury. And I know that many people in government get frustrated at the fact that they haven't been able to communicate this. And the narrative is that people are, you know, living a life of Riley, that they are living in luxury and that they aren't working when actually they're not allowed to work. That is a huge issue for many of these asylum seekers.
And that is a very real problem for the government isn't it, That narrative, if you can't, you can Fact Check it all you like and you can say to people they don't get iPhones, you know, they're not living with big wide screen televisions, perhaps they're living, as Darshana suggests, sometimes quite grim existences. But at the same time, you know, that narrative has taken hold, Gary. And what does a Labour government do about it?
Yeah, they they try to reduce the salience of the issue because I think at the top of Labour they feel that they can't win an election if it is a immigration general election. They can win an election if they have neutralized the issue, if they've made people think there is real progress happening, if they've taken small boats and these hotels off your television screens, then they're in play and somehow they can crawl back from the abysmal ratings that they have at the moment.
But if those issues and that anger is at the top of people's minds, if it is the most salient issue come the next general election, I think there are people at the top of the Labour Party that think they might as well pack their bags and, and not even turn up because it it could be very, very grim indeed. It's interesting how they're trying to trying so many different levers Labour to neutralize this issue.
And sometimes they do it with a little whiff of what you might call opposition politics, not necessarily the most worked out policy document in front of you, considering the many, many officials that lurk in Whitehall and could Polish these things up. Today we've been hearing about barracks being used. When you probe a little about how ready those plans are used for people who are currently in hotels, fairly small number of them being talked about, two
areas being talked about. But when you probe, it doesn't sound as though it's incredibly worked out. And then of course we had another, we had a speech from Keir Starmer just before the Labour Party conference when he was talking about digital ID. And again, it didn't sound like the thing was remotely worked out. It has applications potentially across the whole realm of of
people's lives. But he, he was selling it in some big way as part of the solution to illegal migration and yet the thing hadn't been fully worked out. So they are busy, they are shoving stuff out the door. It isn't always, to mix my metaphors, fully cooked, But yeah, they don't, they don't have a solution. They're trying to put a lot of levers.
Remember the conventions, we haven't talked about those, the ECHR, the Refugee Convention, They're interested in trying to get changes to the way courts interpret those. And they think they have allies in Europe to help on those fronts as well. The sort of thing, though, that Labour governments would never have counted in the past. Now in play and and and you. Talk about them, them trying to, to, to workout where they should be on this, You know, it is
their strategy. In the end, you say, to remove the salience. Is it in a way to desperately try to not talk about it? Because a big part of the problem, you know, we saw Keir Starmer with his Islands of Strangers speech, which many of his own MP said had echoes of Enoch Powell. And he was forced to say that he he was sorry about the use of that language. You then had a sort of about turn with him calling reform plans to end indefinite leave to remain racist.
And politicians don't generally like to to be as definitive as that. It's it's hard to see where Labour sit compared to the much more definitive position, say of reform and now a resurgent Green Party. It's very. Interesting those moments you talked about there on Keir Starmer's journey on this issue, the Island of Strangers speech. I remember sitting under under his nose as he delivered it and asking him afterwards.
You know that that that didn't sound like you, but he delivered nonetheless, recanted of it later. And then when he came off the stage after that speech you've just referred to at the Labour Party conference when he attacks reform, he said to someone in the wings as he came off the stage, that was me. I felt what he was saying was I,
I felt good about that. Most people are too young to remember Mike Yard, an impressionist who would say, and this is me at the end of all his impressions and pull off an imaginary mask. He, he clearly felt that he was saying something that was true to himself that he felt
comfortable with. Certainly the case watching his party in the hall at Liverpool, that they felt comfortable with it. They were basking in it and applauding it. They loved the fact that he was actually going for reform rather than, as he sometimes can sound,
some people aping them. Whether this all means there's an absolute shift in Labour policy, well, you know, he just constructed an entire reshuffle around trying to get Shabana Mahmoud in as home secretary and moved a lot of other pieces on his chess board to make that happen. And he was doing that because she represents a harder line approach and might just implement some of those policies I was talking about a moment ago, which go way, way outside Labour's conventional comfort zone.
So which is the real key? We still, I mean, he's, he's still sort of mid Mike Yarwood. He's, we're not really quite sure where he's going with this, but he was definitely more comfortable singing that song at party conference. I'm definitely old enough to remember who Mike Yarwood is, even if nobody else is Darshna. I mean, on the ground, I know it's very difficult, but on the ground, you know, the government may hope to to take the air out of the balloon if you like.
Reformer, not going to want to do that on the ground. The communities that you talk to, do you think immigration will remain a really, really difficult, important issue for them? I think it will at the minute, as long as we keep seeing the images of those boats coming over, as long as we keep hearing about Home Office chaos. I mean, whilst we were filming in Paris on Friday, you couldn't make it up. That's when we got news about the immigrant sex offender from the Bell Hotel being
accidentally released. I mean, it was like some sort of farce. As soon as we, you know, these kind of stories just keep it up there and they just add to this impression of incompetence. And I've spoken to a lot of people who have said the Tories couldn't get a grip of it. Now Labour can't get a grip of it.
We might as well try reform. People who wouldn't necessarily vote for reform or say that they don't agree with for reform on all of their policies now feel that they might be the only ones or they they should be given a chance because everybody else has tried but failed. And, you know, there are all sorts of people who feel that sometimes we as journalists give it too much prominence and we're feeding that narrative. And there's, you know, but in that climate, it is in the
headlines every single day. It is a talking point. And as long as people are making that link, that is a worry for the government. As Gary said, I mean in. In a sense, what, what this debate has become in, in in many parts of the country has been very focused around, you know, what maybe 10 years ago would have been defined as a broad
working classes. Now very specifically, many people would say for specific reasons being defined as white working class and what they are not getting and what they are losing out on. And that is a, an area of problem for the government, isn't it?
It's a. It's a. It's a huge problem and, and they're very focused on it inside #10 I think they think there's a section of the what we might call white working class vote that they picked up in, in the last general election which is lost to them forever. Which is much, which is, which has moved from the Conservatives temporarily used Labour as a tool with which to get the Tories out and has now hopped away from a very long hop over
to Reform, not coming back. There are others who are more biddable, who are similar but not as strident in their views and maybe not as despairing, maybe not as utterly pessimistic. And Labour thinks if they can neutralize this issue, bring bring the election back to issues like public services where they Labour don't think Nigel Farage is as strong, that there's a chance of pulling back that segment of votes and Arshan 1.
Of the other things that perhaps is a consequence of, of where this debate has gone, you know, people talk about it as a toxic debate in, in, in many parts of the country. People say that, you know, talking about valid concerns. There's a, there's a very thin line sometimes between that and out and out racism. And I just wonder, you know what again you're seeing from your reporting on the ground.
It's an interesting. Debate isn't it because often when I travel to different areas, people will start speaking to me and they will always say I'm not racist. Before you've even started the conversation or before you've even asked them about their views or anything. People, there is a perception that talking about this will be will somehow earn you the label of being a racist. And you know, we hear it from politicians all of the time. Nigel Farage has made a big thing about this.
There was the issue with Sarah poaching talking about advertising. And it was interesting. Gary was saying about Keir Starmer feeling comfortable now taking on reforms. It's interesting how quickly W Streeting came out at the weekend and used the R word. He actually used racism when he was talking about this. So it's one of those interesting things that people feel very uncomfortable. And I think still talking about it and the politics around it has been very, very toxic.
It's tied up with things like the issue of the flags, how black and Asian people are made to feel at the minute, that whole debate about whether it is patriotism or whether it's an obvious symbol that brings back memories of the 70s and 80s and the National Front and so on. So it is a very difficult, toxic debate at the moment, not helped by social media, some of the influence of people from America that we're seeing playing out here. It is just a very, very toxic
time. And people feel that some of the language and some of the way that we speak to each other about it has just become very, very difficult. And Gary, just. To finish, I mean if as you've talked about, you know, they hope to take the salience out of this, this subject, how likely is that it's all very. Well, for Labour to say they want to reduce the salience of immigration and get people talking about cost of living and public services, but they they haven't got a great tune to
whistle yet on those two. And that is one of the reasons why Labour is in such a miserable place in the polls and staring potentially at horrible results next May. So yeah, they have to get that side of things working. That's their avowed intent. But so far it's not producing many goods. And of course, we have the budget coming up at the end of November, which might just make life even more difficult for quite a few people.
Gary Gibbon. Darsh Nasani, both of you, thanks very much for talking to me today. That is it for this episode of The Forecast. Until next time, goodbye.