By David Osland

I can’t be the only Labour Party member deeply angered by Keir Starmer’s “island of strangers” speech. For much of the early part of this week, my finger hovered perilously over that “cancel direct debit” button more closely than ever before.

After all, I’m three-quarters an immigrant kiddie myself and a socialist to boot. But the dismay extends well beyond the people our leader had in mind when he told lefties not to let the door bang their arses on the way out three years ago.

The sense of shock extends to some of his most supine cheerleaders, while media reports suggest renewed plotting on the part of a sizeable contingent of Labour MPs, many already unhappy at scrapping Winter Fuel Allowance and the coming vote on cutting disability benefits.

Starmer’s stock among the commentariat and his own backbenchers now stands at its lowest ebb since that crushing defeat at the Hartlepool by-election. At the very least, he has reduced himself to the standing of damaged goods.

His net favourability ratings have descended into minus territory not just with the electorate but among paid-up Labour members too. And it’s not as if there isn’t a stack-heeled potential contender for the role of Lady Macbeth lurking in the wings.

Meanwhile, a bevy of progressive politicians – from Zack Polanski to John McDonnell and Ed Davey – have directly compared the words “island of strangers” to Enoch Powell’s notorious 1968 invocation of white people becoming “strangers in their own country”.

But apply the principle of charity here. Surely no Labour prime minister would wilfully channel the grandstanding xenophobic rhetoric of the most incendiary racist outburst delivered by any mainstream political figure in British history?

Instead, let’s work on the assumption that when making a parallel argument, there exists a natural inclination to reach for the same malign symbolism.

I’m doing my best here, but I’m not 100% certain in giving Starmer the benefit of the doubt. What is notable is that he hasn’t strenuously distanced himself from such assertions. At the very least, the insinuations appear not entirely unwelcome.

In any case, there was no mistaking Starmer’s central message. He talked of “forces pulling our country apart”, and described “a one nation experiment in open borders” as a “squalid chapter” that has done “incalculable” damage to this green and pleasant land.

The chief proponent of a second referendum on Britain’s decision to quit the European Union then closed his populist tour de force by rolling out the key Brexit slogan of taking back control of our borders.

For the benefit of slow learners, he even doubled down on a trip to Albania on Thursday, with a press pack consisting solely of GB News, presumptuously announcing an agreement to establish “return hubs” in that country.

This came as news to Albanian prime minister Edi Rama, who slapped him down with the insistence that no Rwanda-in-the-Balkans deal had in fact been signed.

Labour’s historic record on racism is far from pristine. The Crossman Diaries, Richard Crossman’s insider account of the first two Wilson governments, records then-Home Secretary James Callaghan telling a cabinet meeting just months after Powell’s calculated invective: “No more bloody immigrants.”

Crossman himself – earlier in his career a Bevanite leftwinger – confided: “Immigration can be the greatest potential vote loser for the Labour Party if we are seen to be permitting a flood of immigrants to come in and blight the central areas of all our cities.”

Future Home Secretaries under Blair, such as Jack Straw and Charles Clarke, repeatedly targeted asylum seekers, the Pakistani community and women who observe Islamic dress codes as an easy means of appealing to the reactionary predilections of Middle England.

New Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown famously called for “British jobs for British workers”, a word-for-word repetition of the National Front’s best-known 1970s maxim.

Even Ed Miliband drenched platforms in the Union Jack while signing off on coffee mugs emblazoned with a demand for immigration controls as official Labour Party merch.

Starmer’s emulation of these tawdry precedents – did somebody say squalid? – looks like a transparent response to the kicking administered to Labour at the recent local government elections by innumerable Faragist feet.

The plan from election-winning genius Morgan McSweeney is said to consist of ensuring that the next election is a two-horse race between Labour and Reform.

Even given the poll-attested reality that Labour is hemorrhaging more support to the Greens and Lib Dems than to Britain’s homegrown populist right, the thinking runs that the threat of Farage in Number Ten will bring progressives reluctantly back into line.

But anyone with the most rudimentary political antennae must know a strategy of nowhere else to go redux isn’t going to work.

I don’t know who needs to read this – well, I do actually – but the axiomatic loyalty of leftists and people of colour and the conditional backing of more-left-than-right types has frayed; indeed, I suspect it has irretrievably snapped.

After Bristol Central, Islington North and Blackburn, the psychological barriers against casting a so-called wasted vote have largely dissipated.

If the polarisation reaches the point of a straight choice between Reform and Reform Lite, millions will opt for Reform. Millions more will reject Reform in either iteration. This is the very definition of a lose-lose situation.

Starmer recently branded the Tories a “dead party walking” and contended that it is inexorably heading for “brain-dead oblivion”. Perhaps he should look in the mirror.

David Osland is a member of Hackney North & Stoke Newington Constituency Labour Party and a long-time leftwing journalist and author. Follow him on Twitter at @David__Osland

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/number10gov/53839153838 Creator: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Str | Credit: Simon Dawson / No 10  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed