The Guardian has criticised the Labour government's latest immigration bill, arguing that it represents a continuation of the failed Conservative approach of using legislation as political performance rather than effective management. Since 2022, an act of parliament changing the UK's immigration and asylum system has been passed every year, yet public confidence in border management has not increased, and radical rightwing anti-immigrant parties have continued to rise.
The new bill, published this week, includes measures such as a new body to handle asylum decision appeals outside the existing court system, a means-tested scheme to charge asylum seekers for state-provided support, and narrowing the terms for claims under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which guarantees the right to private and family life.
Performance Over Remedy
According to the editorial, there is 'more performance than remedy in this package.' Setting up a new appeals body could be a costly distraction from improving the existing process. Billing claimants for state support will raise negligible sums, as few have resources to meet the payment threshold. Narrowing the purview of the ECHR might sway a handful of cases but will not revoke underlying humanitarian protections, though it gives political succour to those who want all human rights law repealed.
Lessons from the Conservatives
The editorial notes that the last Conservative government tested this method to destruction, culminating in the 2024 Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act, which gave ministers power to declare Rwanda safe for deportees regardless of facts. Sir Keir Starmer repealed that act and scrapped the unworkable scheme, dismissing it as a 'gimmick.' Two years on, Labour is caught in the same trap, hoping another law will prove toughness on immigration control.
Precedent suggests a different dynamic: each draconian turn reinforces voters' conviction that the system is out of control, encouraging support for opposition parties promising ever more extreme measures. Public attitudes are more responsive to campaign rhetoric and selective media coverage than data. Net migration to the UK has been falling since the general election and is now at its lowest level since the 2010s, but numbers only make headlines when the trend is rising.
A Call for Effective Management
The editorial warns that the right of British politics is in a 'vortex of radicalisation,' with demands shifting from limiting new arrivals to a sinister agenda of deporting settled people. A Labour government should do everything to stop these attitudes encroaching further into the mainstream. Britain does not need another law that confirms beliefs that immigration is out of control.
Instead, it needs more courageous arguments for a robust but humane system, a period of quietly effective management at the Home Office, and a campaign of persuasion to mobilise the portion of public opinion – a majority, in all likelihood – that rejects the paranoid politics of turning neighbours into strangers and strangers into enemies.
