A scathing attack on Starmer and Labour's inability to make a counter argument on anything and so are stuck trying to ape Farage, by Peter Foster, World Trade Editor of the Financial Times
"Labour's immigration announcement is a reflection of the paucity of honest debate by BOTH political parties over the last decade on this issue.
Labour has never made a counter-argument, or been honest about economic cost of immigration curbs, so it's stuck making Tory/Reform arguments.
Labour wants to curb immigration: but doesn't want to engage in social care reform
It wants to curb student visas and encourage more UK training: but won't fund universities or FE colleges.
It just tells voter they can have both.
Labour's exactly the same on the 'reset' with the EU. It tells voters they will 'tear down the barriers to trade' while sticking with the same barriers (no single market or customs union) that created Boris's barriers.
And made the UK poorer and harder to invest in - foreign or domestic
It says the same thing on tax as the Tories too -- that efficiency savings, sacking civil servants AI and cuts at the back end of the forecast can make the number add up.
And it won't hit frontline services. But flat-cash settlements will.
The reason Starmer's Labour is stuck in this loop is that it has never made the counter arguments. It moved tactically to remove Corbyn to take power and then stuck with the tactics that led to the 'ming vase' manifesto...which, in a gaslight to the entire nation..was entitle "Change".
It's not at all surprising, because Labour never dared make an alternative argument.
When the Blue team was trashing UK trade via Brexit, the Red team was too frightened to say anything.
It just acquiesced. And now it's trapped in its piddly 'reset' because it never socialised an alternative.
It's never dared to say that lower migration means more expensive social care -- higher taxes, in effect.
That its programmes -- the 1.5mn houses, a new grid -- require welders and engineers that UK Further Education colleges can't afford to train.
They ducked council tax reform. Ducked broad based tax increases. Duck social care reform.
Duck and cover at every opportunity because too frightened to launch a counter-argument...Despite Johnson, Truss..all the madness. But still.
Starmer and Badenoch will never out-farage Farage. Surely they've learned this by now. Because Farage is the only one telling a story.Might not be to your taste, but it's a story.
Merry old England, mustard cords, by jingo blah blah
But populists can't be the only ones telling compelling stories. There has to be a progressive narrative too, but you can't build credibility overnight.
Years of cravenness and timidity take their toll. A plague on all their houses."