Starmer calls Reform’s policy on immigration ‘racist’ and says Farage’s party would ‘tear country apart’ – Labour conference live | Politics

Here is some more comment on Keir Starmer’s BBC interview this morning, and his decision to call Reform UK’s immigration policy racist.

Commentators on the left are generally enthusiastic.

From the LBC presenter James O’Brien

This is good (for once). Farage has to stay front & centre for almost 4 more years & I don’t see how he can without edging ever closer to the National Front credo that’s always animated him. For now, Starmer must wait until he’s *blatantly* racist before using the term. Otherwise it loses power 1/2

A thing to watch for, discourse-wise, is racism-deniers & facilitators in ‘mainstream’ media trying to detoxify ideas that have been beyond the mainstream pale since the Eighties. The Liddles & Littlejohns openly relish the opportunity that Farage offers them to remove what’s left of their masks.

From Atul Hatwal, editor of the Labour Uncut website

I thought the Friday Starmer speech was inadequate in terms of meeting the moment. Felt like it was drafted to respond to the Robinson march, basically ignored Reform’s mass deportation plan. Much better this morning, finally called it right ‘racist and immoral’

From Jonathan Portes, an economics professor and immigration specialist

Exactly the right language and tone from Starmer here -no nonsense about “legitimate concerns” or weasel words about cost/practicality. Now government needs to put his money where the PM’s mouth is (in policy terms)

From Adam Bienkov from Byline Times

The Prime Minister’s condemnation of Nigel Farage’s racist and immoral mass deportation plans has come far too late for many in his party

james O’brien bluesky

From Paul Mason, the broadcaster, writer and campaigner

This is probably Starmer‘s finest statement of principle since he’s been PM – the creeps outside shouting about Fabianism need to be defeated, not appeased

But Fraser Nelson, the former Spectator editor who now writes a column for the Times and a Substack blog, argues that Starmer has made a mistake. He recently made a documentary for Channel 4 about Reform UK, and it included an interview with Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP who fought off a threat from the BNP in her Barking and Dagenham constituency (helped by a young Morgan McSweeney, now the PM’s chief of staff). Nelson says Hodge gave him a quote explaining why Starmer may have made an error. On in a post on his Substack he says:

I interviewed [Hodge] for the film, and we didn’t get to use much of it. Which is a shame because she made some very interesting points on the r-bomb [calling someone racist]. [Hodge said:] “Throughout that whole four-year period of campaigning against the BNP, I never called anybody a racist. The moment you do, you belittle their concerns about the impact of immigration on their community and unfairness coming into the system (as to who got a council home and who didn’t). If I had accused them of being racist, I would simply have driven them even further into the BNP camp because they would have felt offended that I didn’t really understand their concerns.” …

This dynamic – that a challenger party is strengthened when attacked by a larger rival – is important. It is a dial that can be moved by the challenger: you trigger them. Say or do something to get them talking about you: preferably in hyperbolic tones. This is the basic art of populist war, which Donald Trump mastered because the Democrats rose to the bait every time. This explains the effect of shock-tactics in election campaigns – Farage’s HIV/immigrant line in 2017, his Sunak/D-Day line in 2024 and his Sarwar/Pakistani line in Hamilton. Yes, condemnation comes, but with it, attention. And if you’re attacked for making a point that most voters agree with, it’s a net plus.

So dropping the r-bomb may be gratifying for Farage’s opponents to use. It may rally the base in the week of a conference. But as Baroness Hodge says, doing so when there is no grounds for it risks diminish you – and bolstering your opponent. It could well be that Reform’s opponents keep playing into its hands.