So Reform UK wants to "cut immigration" to save Britain – a noble idea, if your vision of Britain begins and ends with bunting and a nice cup of tea, and conveniently skips the part where someone has to clean up after your incontinent uncle. It’s always the same script: immigrants bad, Brits good, problems solved. Except it’s a fantasy that starts with flag-waving and ends with you wiping your nan’s backside because there’s no one else left to do it.
And now – just to prove that political courage is a museum piece – Keir Starmer has wandered onto the stage to offer up the same nonsense, only with slightly better grammar. Labour’s new plan? Cut legal migration to head off Nigel Farage. Because nothing says “vision for the future” like mimicking the policies of a man whose greatest achievement was turning Britain into a punchline.
It’s a tactical nod to the Mail-reading middle: “Don’t worry, we’ll be tough too – just not quite as shouty.” But here’s the problem: you don’t defeat Farage by becoming a diet version of him. You just confirm his diagnosis. And Farage, being Farage, will always offer the louder, nastier cure.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the care sector is on life support. Wages are low, hours are long, conditions are grim – and there’s no queue of Brits waiting to fill the roles. That’s why we rely on migrant workers – not mythical benefit-scroungers, but people doing essential work in a broken system. Many earn so little they fall below the income tax threshold and rely on in-work benefits just to survive – not because they’re idle, but because the work is grotesquely undervalued. They’re not draining the system – they’re holding it together while barely staying afloat themselves.
Critics will point to a chart – perhaps even the one I’ve included – and say, “Look! Below a certain wage, they cost more in benefits than they pay in tax!” And yes – they do. But so would anyone on those wages. The issue isn’t where they come from – it’s what they’re paid. And the truth is, Brits don’t want the jobs at that rate either.
And here’s the irony: care is largely funded by local councils – many of which are already on the brink. They can’t raise wages because they can’t raise revenue. Thanks to years of underfunding and centralised control, councils are forced to outsource, cut corners, or watch services collapse. If migrant labour dries up and wages have to rise just to tempt domestic workers, the cost will fall on councils – who haven’t got the money to pay. Either taxes go up, or provision goes down. There is no magic middle ground.
Starmer’s grand plan to “upskill the domestic workforce” sounds lovely. But unless Labour triples the pay and improves the conditions, it’s just a training scheme to avoid hard graft. The vacancies will remain – and the problems will worsen.
It’s a false economy wrapped in a Union Jack. Migrants, once they cross a modest wage threshold, contribute more in tax than they receive in benefits. That’s not ideology – that’s maths. And yet, the same crowd that complains about NHS waiting times and care shortages wants to expel the very people holding the system together.
If Starmer truly wants to cut legal migration, then he must have the intellectual honesty to explain the consequences: longer hospital waits, collapsing care, rising costs, and councils forced to ration what little they can still afford. If he can’t – or won’t – do that, then he’s not solving the problem. He’s just sweeping it under the rug for someone else to trip over.
What Starmer’s doing isn’t leadership – it’s triangulation on a unicycle. A short-term political dodge with long-term costs. In trying to outflank Farage, he risks following him – straight into a cul-de-sac of economic self-harm and moral cowardice.
So the next time someone says “send them back,” ask them who’s going to look after their mum when the time comes. Because if they think Farage is going to roll up his sleeves and change a colostomy bag – or Starmer, for that matter – they’re in for a very nasty surprise. It's going to have to be the ones saying "send them back".
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