Nick Hart, Socialist Party National Committee
Just when you thought there wasn’t another thing Starmer could flip-flop on, at September’s Labour Party conference he revealed his latest master plan to stop the growth of Reform – by copying Reform!
On the Sunday, Starmer was attacking Reform leader Nigel Farage’s announcement on scrapping of Indefinite Leave To Remain for foreign-born workers as “racist” and “immoral”. But then, just three days later, Labour announced plans to stop the families of people granted asylum from joining them in the UK. In addition, the former ‘human rights lawyer’ plans to “look again” at ways for asylum tribunals to get around human rights law on torture and degrading treatment.
This comes on top of huge cuts in the number of jobs eligible for skilled worker visas – shutting out everyone from bricklayers, dental hygienists, chefs and over 100 other job roles. The RMT rail union recently protested against the plans, with its members on London Underground threatened with having their right to work stripped from them.
The government’s approach represents the worst of both worlds. It will lead to the families of refugees facing a choice between staying in danger in their home countries or paying even more to people smugglers to help them across the channel alongside their husbands and fathers.
And it won’t stop the growth of Farage or the anti-immigrant right. Faced with a choice between a pale imitation and the real thing, workers who are currently thinking of voting Reform are unlikely to be won over by Starmer’s newfound eagerness for deportations.
We shouldn’t trust Starmer or Farage to decide who has the right to live in the UK – immigration and asylum rules should be democratically decided on and overseen by the working class.
Reform UK, by posing as anti-establishment, is capitalising on the huge anger out there. After years of Tory and Labour austerity devastating public services and housing, who wouldn’t be angry?
Every morning in cities like Birmingham, working-class Reform sympathisers get up and go to work alongside workmates from across the world, and face the same increased workloads and shrinking pay packets. They share the same gripes about the wait to get healthcare on the NHS or the council not sorting potholes and fly-tipping.
It’s not wishful thinking that workers from a wide variety of backgrounds can come together and fight back against these problems – one of the biggest victories won by unions in recent years include the ‘united nations’ strike by bus drivers at National Express West Midlands scoring above-inflation pay rises.
A new mass working-class party, which Jeremy Corbyna and Zarah Sultana’s Your Party has the potential to become, could help workers to see their shared interests and make the case that it’s the ruling class to blame for our problems, not people like us who happen to have been born in a different part of the world.
