Labour opened the floodgates – pretending to be tough on migrants to take on Reform is an act of deceit

THAT great patriot and visionary author George Orwell once wrote, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”. Those words are a perfect description of Labour’s new advertising campaign, which boasts about the Government’s supposed crackdown on immigration abuses. Filled with striking images of officials battering down doors and handcuffing illegal migrants, this initiative aims to overturn the widespread public view Sir Keir Starmer’s party is soft on border controls.

But this publicity drive is a vast exercise in deceit. Labour is the party that opened the floodgates, and turned the worship of cultural diversity into the official creed of the modern British state. For Starmer’s Cabinet to pose now as the stern guardians of national integrity is like Kanye West suddenly presenting himself as a champion of feminine modesty. There is no conviction behind Labour’s stance.

Battered by unfavourable poll ratings, the party’s strategists have only adopted this approach out of cynical opportunism and deepening fear. In recent months they have been badly spooked by the astonishing rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform movement. Until recently, Reform was seen mainly as a threat to the Tories, but all that has changed as Farage shatters the traditional two-party system. The sense of panic in Labour’s ranks is clear, especially after one poll last week put Reform no fewer than four points ahead of the Government.

It is little ­wonder then that alarm bells have been ringing in Labour HQ and across Westminster. As Labour has recognised, the issue of immigration is the rocket fuel behind Reform’s surge. Ordinary voters are profoundly disturbed at the social revolution that our politicians imposed on Britain without any mandate, with the result that our once gentle, well-ordered society is scarred by savage violence, disintegrating solidarity, contempt for our heritage, and economic stagnation.

Nigel Farage has always been a principled opponent of unrestricted immigration, which now gives him tremendous credibility with the electorate. But his willingness to challenge the ruling orthodoxy has come at great personal cost. In the 2016 Brexit Referendum campaign, the shaken establishment tried to turn him into a pariah after his team produced a poster with the slogan, “Breaking Point” above a photo of a snaking queue of Middle-Eastern refugees.

Until recently, Reform was seen mainly as a threat to the Tories, but all that has changed as Farage shatters the traditional two-party system. Typical of this condemnation was Yvette Cooper, now Labour’s Home Secretary, who called the poster “dishonest and immoral”. Yet today Cooper and her colleagues give the impression that they want to do the same as Farage. In 2016 they treated him as beyond the pale.

Now they are trying to out-Reform his party. In one video just released, ­Cooper herself turns up on a raid, apparently eager to see the arrests of illegal migrants. The shameless determination to ape Farage is also reflected in the use of Reform’s shade of blue in Labour’s adverts on social media, while the party’s logo has also been dropped. What Labour calls its “fightback” against Reform is actually an unintentional tribute to his effectiveness as a politician.

But the party’s attempt to ape him will not work because Labour are the key architects of the current shambolic migration policy. Their politicians gave us the 1998 Human Rights Act which has done so much to prevent deportations of foreign criminals and illegal migrants. In the same way, they dished out visas and British passports like confetti, relaxed restrictions on bringing in dependents, and made it easier to claim asylum.

The numbers spiralled out of control. Peter Mandelson, the Blairite senior Cabinet member, admitting frankly that “we were sending out search parties for ­people”. Part of the goal was to change the very fabric of Britain through the doctrine of multi-culturalism or as Tony Blair’s speechwriter Andrew Neather notoriously put it, “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”. That record is why Labour’s claims to be robust on immigration are so unconvincing.

The party now trumpets the increase in arrests and deportations, which were up 73 per cent last month compared to January 2024. But there is little credit in outperforming the useless Tories, whose spectacular ­failings on immigration were a key reason for their landslide defeat. Moreover, even with this rise in arrests, the Home Office and Border Force are only back to the levels of 2017. It will take far more radical action to turn the tide, and Labour has no credible plan beyond publicity stunts and bureaucratic tinkering.