A few days after the murder of Martin Luther King in Memphis, the conservative politician Enoch Powell, then Secretary of Defense in the Shadow of the United Kingdom Government, pronounced in the conservative Political Center in Birmingham one of the most controversial speeches of British policy. He called him “Birmingham’s speech.” Everyone else, “The discourse of the rivers of blood”. In him, Powell warned that British, perhaps English identity was at risk because of immigration. The British, he said, ran the risk of becoming “foreigners in their own country.” 57 years have passed, but Powell’s echo has resonated again in British politics. And for the speech of a Labor Prime Minister.
This Monday, Keir Starmer, a human rights lawyer auged at the number 10 of Downing Street with an absolute majority, announced a severe anti -immigration policy with phrases that remembered Powell. “In a diverse nation like ours, we run the risk of becoming an island of foreigners”Said Starmer to launch a promise: “We will regain control of our borders.” Although he acknowledged that “migration is part of the national history of Great Britain” and an essential factor for the “great reconstruction” of the country “after the war”, the labor politician raised the need to “significantly reduce immigration.” Among other things, the time of stay will increase from five to ten years to request permanent residence, it will require greater mastery of English to newcomers or prevent the hiring of more foreigners in care tasks, for example, in the homes of the elderly.
It is the same Starmer that in 2020 said that migrants “should not be converted into scapegoats.” “The low wages, precarious homes and poor public services are not the fault of migrants, we have to defend the benefits of migration,” he said five years ago. Almost as if he had forgotten, the new Starmer wondered this week “why parts of the economy seem almost addicted to the importation of cheap labor instead of investing in the skills of the people who are here and wants a good job in their community.”
But Starmer’s turn has not sat well in his own ranks. Sara Owen, Labor President of the Women and Equality Committee, of Malaysia-China descent, declared: “If the track follows the right track of taking our country along a very dark path.” Another Labor Deputy, no one Whittome said: “suggest that Great Britain runs the risk of becoming an island of foreigners due to immigration imitates the alarmism of the extreme right.” A former Labor, Zarah Sultana, wrote: “It is disgusting that the prime minister imitates the” rivers of blood “speech by Enoch Powell. That speech fed decades of racism and division. Repeating it today is a shame. It adds to the antinmigrant rhetoric that puts lives at risk. What a shame, Keir Starmer!” Alf Dubs, a labor parliamentarian who arrived in the United Kingdom fleeing from the Nazis, commented: “I dislike that we have high -ranking politicians who use a language that reminds Powell. […] It is not the type of person who is [con relación a Starmer]and I don’t think it’s what he really believes. “
But… Why has Starmer done this, then? The explanation, as always, is on the extreme right. A few days before his controversial announcement, Ultra Nigel Farage, of Reforma UK, swept local elections. In the Labor ranks they scared. The solution? Imitate Farage’s speech, although it has been shown on different occasions to imitate the extreme right only benefits the ultras. In 2022, Cambridge professors, trying to check if it had really worked on occasion to accommodate the speeches of the extreme right. And not. “When the majority parties address issues of the radical right, they run the risk of legitimizing and normalizing the discourse of the radical right and, in the long term, strengthening it,” they concluded.
This same theory, columnist of Mirror. “A right turn – Lewis wrote – he will not make the Labor Party popular among those who, otherwise, would follow that path; he will simply confirm Starmer’s disposition to continue betraying so many people who trusted him as an antidote against the xenophobia of conservatives. […] The Prime Minister, the man in command of the supposed party of the working classes, has cast millions of voters on Monday. “In fact, Nigel Farage himself considered the announcement of Starmer as an” instinctive reaction “to his victory in the local elections. Although he said he did not trust that he would” carry them forward, “he said he would support many of these measures, such as prohibiting the entry of foreign caregivers.
The new Starmer policy has even bothered a part of the business world, aware that a large part of its employees are migrants. In fact, the prohibition of hiring more foreign personnel for care tasks has alerted the sector. Christina Mcanea, general secretary of the Unison union, in fact, has warned about what “The care sector would have collapsed years ago if it was not for the thousands of workers who have come from abroad”. Some have also criticized that Starmer used a paternalistic rhetoric in relation to care employees. In Financial TimesMartin Green, executive director of Care England, representative of independent social assistance suppliers, clarified that “social care is not a low qualification work.” “It is a work of high qualification and low remuneration that deserves respect, due recognition and significant investment,” he replied to regret that, “instead of investing in the sector and resolving the hiring crisis, the government closes the door to one of the only sources of labor that still work.”
Despite the criticisms of which until now they were his main support, of those who took him to the number 10 of Downing Street, Starmer does not seem to listen. In social networks, in fact, It is difficult to differentiate its texts from Nigel Farage. “Building in the United Kingdom is a privilege that is won, not a right,” he wrote on Wednesday. A day later, he insisted: “Remember my words: I will regain control of our borders. That means reducing migration, ending the use of asylum hotels and redoubled efforts to stop crosses into small boats. We will destroy the traffic bands of people in their origin.”
