Starmer would deny us the care of strangers
Much is being and will be said about Keir Starmer’s mind-boggling migration speech on Monday, offering us a choice, as the usually pro-Starmer Labour List says in its latest email newsletter, between Full Fat Reform UK or his own brand of Reform-lite. JVL’s statement on the matter appears here.
In the poem reproduced below, Michael Rosen delivers a powerful and moving rebuttal to Starmer’s appalling Enoch speech. In a poetic tour de force connecting the personal and the political, Michael in one phrase, “may you have an island of strangers like I had”, flips the racist opportunism of a vacuous and reckless Prime Minister, to assert our common humanity.
At the bottom of the post we reproduce Labour List’s catalogue of criticisms coming at Starmer from all sides. Even LBC has run with the equation of his speech with Enoch Powell’s divisive rhetoric. Xavier Greenwood in the Observer examines the nuts and bolts of the policy under the headline Labour’s new immigration plans won’t beat Reform.
GS/NWI
A Poem by Michael Rosen
I lay in bed
hardly able to breathe
but there were people to sedate me,
pump air into me
calm me down when I thrashed around
hold my hand and reassure me
play me songs my family sent in
turn me over to help my lungs
shave me, wash me, feed me
check my medication
perform the tracheostomy
people on this ‘island of strangers’
from China, Jamaica, Brazil, Ireland
India, USA, Nigeria and Greece.
I sat on the edge of my bed
and four people came with
a frame and supported me
or took me to a gym
where they taught me how
to walk between parallel bars
or kick a balloon
sat me in a wheel chair
taught me how to use the exercise bike
how to walk with a stick
how to walk without a stick
people on this ‘island of strangers’
from China, Jamaica, Brazil, Ireland
India, USA, Nigeria and Greece.
If ever you’re in need as I was
may you have an island of strangers
like I had.
|
When The Daily Mail and The Guardian agree… |
By Luke O’Reilly, Labour List
May 13, 2025
Keir Starmer is besieged from all sides by an unholy trinity of unions, left-wing MPs, and left- and right- wing newspapers over his new immigration reforms.
On the broadcast round today, Yvette Cooper had to deny parallels between the line “we risk becoming an island of strangers” and Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech (which imagined a future multicultural Britain where white people “found themselves made strangers in their own land”). Trevor Phillips also reckons it channeled his own line from his famous (also controversial) “sleepwalking our way to segregation speech” in 2005: “We are becoming strangers to each other.”
Suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana described the rhetoric as sickening, while Unison and Unite put out statements warning the care sector was reliant on migrant labour.
The Guardian also splashed on Starmer “echoing far-right rhetoric”, while The Mail and The Sun cast doubt on Labour’s ability to bring the numbers down.
In essence swathes of the left are horrified by his words, and the right doesn’t believe he means them.
Dead cat strategy?
Inside Number 10, however, the calculation must surely be that all these negative headlines will only enforce in people’s heads that Labour are taking a new hardline stance on immigration – targeting exactly the kind of older, non-graduate white voters the party lost to Reform in the local elections. It also shifts attention away from thorny questions of detail.
Many will wonder if the move could backfire, if enough of the left jump to the Greens, Lib Dems, independents or non-voting to threaten Labour seats, and if right-wing voters choose full-fat Reform over Reform-lite.
If the focus was really integration, the PM might have actually said more about it rather than on immigration policy alone – rather than language that risks exacerbating divisions he nominally wants to avoid.
But Starmer does have his defenders, with national executive committee member Abdi Duale taking to X to say the “strangers” line was really about promoting integration, and being deliberately misconstrued. One MP told my colleague Tom they “don’t think anyone who mouthing off actually read the whole speech”, which argued ‘without things that we hold in common we risk becoming a nation of strangers” – a “totally reasonable” take.
Instead of saying “we risk becoming a nation of strangers” Starmer could have say something along the lines of “we risk becoming a nation that lacks solidarity and cohesion as a nation we need to hold to our common human values”
Starmer is trying to appeal to Reform supporters, thus, legitimism Reform anti-migrant narrative. While at the same time no Reform supporter would trust Starmer after all his promises while in opposition only to very quickly perform U turns.
Then is the use of anti-terrorist legislation to try to control freedom of speech and assembly.
I wish the PLP revolts soon and give Starmer the marching orders. Otherwise, the brain drain that started with Brexit will increase among young people. I can see activist, progressive journalist in a few years time leaving Britain and starting claiming political asylum abroad.
Britain is an “Island of Strangers”
… The rich against the poor
… The powerful against the powerless
Starmer’s reliance on Aunt Sallies to deflect our anger merely demonstrates his shallowness and his ineptitude.
DEPRAVITY
When the Foreign Office find a Convention’s gone astray,
Or the Air Force lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair—
But it’s useless to investigate— Depravity’s not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
‘It can’t have been Depravity!’— for he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him feasting, or a-licking of his thumbs;
Or pompously lambasting the alienness of bums.
Depravity, Depravity, there’s no one like Depravity,
There never was a Don of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place— Depravity wasn’t there!
And they say that all the Labour spivs whose wicked deeds are known
(I might mention Clammy Hands, I might mention Streetwise Stone)
Are nothing more than flunkies for the Boss who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Vassal Don of Slime!
Depravity, Depravity, there’s no one like Depravity,
He’s an evil fiend in human shape, a master of banality.
You may meet him in a side street, you may see him in the square—
But when a massacre’s discovered – oh then Depravity’s not there.
(With acknowledgements to T.S. Eliot and Hannah Arendt).
How can we disagree with Luke and Maria`s comments? Many of us experienced the violence, hatred and fascism of the National Front in the 70`s: taking their lead from Enoch Powell and his “Rivers of Blood” speech. Starmer`s cynical, vile, deliberate appeal to base racism, is another distraction to deflect attention from his attacks on the poor, disabled, elderly, unemployed and continued austerity. His support for Israel, suppression of free speech and the right to protest, ties in with his authoritarian clampdown and silencing dissent. Ken Loach said, at the time of his election as Labour leader, that Starmer is “a very dangerous man”. His blatant appeal to the racists and far-right is a desperate attempt to reclaim “credibility” after the recent calamitous election defeats for his party. Starmer and the Labour Party are the antithesis of democracy. The sheep’s clothing is off the wolf. The Labour Party and those who remain in it are complicit in Starmers racist, authoritarian endeavours. If they have any conscience, they should leave now. It gives no pleasure saying “we told you so”.
Starmer has kicked more members of the Labour Party out of the party or off the front benches than any previous Labour leader I know of, and they are the best among us. He hasn’t invited any, let alone all, the Europeans back who had to leave here because of Brexit. He is supporting verbally and with deadly weapons the genocide by fascist Israel against the Palestinians. So why believe he wouldn’t kick immigrants into the sea who were asking for asylum? And if he has really been misunderstood, why hasn’t he published a statement about what he really meant.
As I have suggested before, there is something dark at the deep heart of the present Labour Party. I would humbly suggest that Starmer is sadly lacking in political intelligence and political empathy. A good number of those at the political centre of the Party – not MPs necessarily but the same people that engineered the persecution of Corbyn and the Left – have reified and objectified power reducing it simply to ‘Project’ status . In so doing they have isolated it from traditional Labour Movement empathy and service . A lack of care in the use of metaphor and language illustrates this. When a political Party does what Labour has done, in order to silence alternative voices, political power becomes an end in itself. Where is the heart and soul in Labour today?
Michael Rosen’s poem was an echo of my experience of being cared for so beautifully in the past. As Neil G says we fought off the NF on our many marches against racism in the 70s. How long before we march against Reform too? And how long before Starmer decides it’s a good idea to form a coalition?
This racism is also connected to the racism against Palestine. Strangers are only strangers if you do not want to know them or how they contribute to social wealth. Some people like Starmer et al are are strangers because the alienate themselves from the human race by their actions, statements, and policies. They seem to be blind to what is happening in Palestine. At a talk In the bicentenary of the Irish famine in Transport House in Belfast the speaker said-amongst other things-that the difference between the famine then and famines in Africa etc. is that you can watch them on television now. We could say the difference between the genocide in Germany in the 1940’s and the genocide in Palestine present day is that you can watch it on television. How can people be blind to that.