When Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain stepped before a lectern at 10 Downing Street last month, he made clear how misguided he thought the country’s immigration policies had been. He described its recent approach as a “one-nation experiment in open borders” that Britons never voted for. In its place, he announced a slew of measures to toughen border controls, raise skill requirements for immigrants and effectively end mass migration.
All this is coming from Britain’s center-left Labour Party, which long favored openness toward migrants. That reflected Labour’s modern base of urban progressive voters. Higher immigration was economically advantageous for them, in particular by holding down prices, and it was consistent with their humanitarian worldview.
The trouble is, these views tend to be at odds with the views of many working-class voters. Those less affluent voters have questioned the impact of mass migration for years, worried about its impact on housing, public services, wages and communities. The response of urban progressives in Britain, as in other parts of Europe and the United States, has often been to denounce working-class voters as narrow-minded or racist. It should hardly be surprising that voters responded by switching their political allegiances. Immigration, more than any other issue, symbolizes the wedge between center-left parties and their traditional class base.
For the sake of the progressive left and all it stands for, Mr. Starmer’s announcement represents a crucial acknowledgment that both the policy and the political direction must change.
Political analysts and rivals interpreted his announcement as a defensive maneuver to lessen the threat of Reform U.K., a right-wing, anti-immigration party. There is an element of truth in this. Labour managed to win back working-class support in the election last year partly based on early moves toward a tighter border policy, although that support is at risk now that the party is trying to govern. Labour politicians are reasonably worried that Britain will follow the path of Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, all countries where the right wing overtook the center left in the last election.
But it is a mistake to see Labour’s new policy as mere tactics. Getting serious about immigration can be part of a coherent progressive vision, not just a bargain with working-class voters to stave off the right. Progress toward a more equal and fair society depends on stability and community.
Importantly, Mr. Starmer has also fought the excesses of the nativist right. When anti-immigration riots spread across the U.K. last summer, he was quick to clamp down. He helped restore order and calmed fears, rather than escalating the tensions. This approach was a far cry from the ugly tactics that the Trump administration has used against protests this month in Los Angeles.
Still, the political right has often aligned with public opinion on immigration because parts of the left have ignored a basic truth: The ability to control borders, to decide who does and does not come into a country, is central to a democracy. Without that ability, the citizens of a nation lose control over it. Without strong borders, the post-World War II welfare state — which exists because voters decided to tax themselves to help their fellow citizens — will break down. If people believe that national governments are a waste of time, we are not headed for the socialist utopia that some open-borders advocates imagine. In the absence of order, survival prevails.
Disordered borders create psychological instability. I recall a member of my own family describing how boats would wash up on the stony shores of the beach we played on as children on the South Coast of England, mostly full of men, who would quietly disembark on the pebbles and walk off into the country. The destabilizing impact of loose borders has an outsize political impact.
Mass migration has had a tangible impact too, felt more acutely by working-class communities. Every year now, Britain adds on average as many residents as live in Sheffield, our sixth-largest city. This scale of immigration almost always frays social cohesion. In Britain, high immigration has already affected the availability of subsidized housing, as well as held down wages and challenged community integration. If Britain repeats the recent pace of immigration over the next decade, it will risk losing popular support for the public resources needed to maintain a socially cohesive society. The overall numbers matter.
The root of the modern progressive dilemma is identity. The left has de-emphasized class in favor of other characteristics and alienated many working-class voters. As the liberal order comes under threat from authoritarians on the right and on the left, a new progressive politics needs to emerge, anchoring people in identities that make them feel safer and more in solidarity with one another. Renewing the concept of the modern nation can help achieve that goal. The starting point for a new progressive future can be the idea of a community that provides security and opportunity, and to which we owe as much as we expect from it.
The political right is wrong when it defines a nation based on ethnicity or excludes all immigrants. But the left is wrong when it adopts an ultra-globalism that erodes national identities and undermines the sense of belonging that a national community can bring. A modern national identity, based on collective responsibilities, earned citizenship and shared risk and reward, can start to bring our societies back together.
More progressives are beginning to recognize this reality. In Denmark, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has transformed her center-left party’s approach to immigration since 2019, based on the idea that restrictive immigration is progressive because it helps preserve the Danish social model that citizens hold dear. Ms. Frederiksen has won that debate and weakened the Danish far right. Mr. Starmer is essentially trying to follow her path. In the United States, some congressional Democrats have started shifting in that direction.
Immigration needs to move from an issue that progressives avoid to one that they seek to own. If handled well, it can be a catalyst for putting national community and citizenship at the center of a new progressive politics. There is an even bigger prize to win than beating back the populist right. It is the chance to emerge from the failures of modern globalism and forge strong, self-confident and socially cohesive nations.
Claire Ainsley, the director of the Project on Center-Left Renewal at the Progressive Policy Institute, worked as a top policy adviser to Keir Starmer from 2020 to 2022, before he became prime minister of Britain. She is the author of “The New Working Class: How to Win Hearts, Minds and Votes.”
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Claire Ainsley, a former adviser to Keir Starmer, is the director of the Project on Center-Left Renewal at the Progressive Policy Institute.
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