To think Starmer is utterly reprehensible

[Thegreyhound]

I know everyone will disagree, that’s ok- But I just have to say that Starmer today seems to have sunk lower than I ever believed he would with his incendiary ‘island of strangers’ and ‘incalculable damage’ rhetoric.
I find it particularly shocking because he has calculated this and decided it’s worth it to throw immigrants under the bus and essentially give all the ground in the debate to Farage, Tommy Robinson and Enoch Powell types.
Policy can be altered without making statements that are designed to impact race relations and make life even more difficult for people who are just trying to get along and make a living here.
Starmer is vile. This country does indeed feel like an island of strangers these days but the strangers are not the immigrants :(

I’m so done with the debate around immigration. Sick of politicians courting Reform supporters whilst not dealing with the very real structural problems with our economy.

You clearly haven't been in areas where out of a NHS clinic of perhaps 15 patients, I have to use an interpreter for 12-13 of the appointments.

I can't help but get frustrated.

Obviously this is more rare than common, but unfortunately I agree with the need for better English speaking.

I sometimes ask patients how long they have lived here.
And when the answer is "years" and they have made no effort of learning any English, I feel like I just despair. I hate it. I feel like a foreigner in these areas.

Work like this is soul destroying and draining. It has become far more common over the last 20 years or so I've done this particular job.

In 2022-23 the NHS alone paid out £113 million in translators and translating services for patients. Councils spend millions more for same services. If people want to live in the UK they should speak decent English as a minimum entry requirement or pay for their own translation services. Having skilled immigrants coming to UK to work and contribute to UK economy is quite different than allowing in people with a criminal record, people with low skills who won't earn enough to live so will just need to claim benefits and people coming in to the UK illegally, throwing their passports into the sea and claiming they are either a child, gay or Christian so can't go home and need to be put up in 4* hotels at £145 per night per person. Plus food money and phone plus credit.

I'm a fairly classic capital-centric liberal/centrist elite by various definitions. I'm also an immigrant. I don't feel thrown under the bus at all.

Being an immigrant means a lot of bureaucracy, sure, and that's a pain in the arse. But it also means that another country has invited you in, usually because they're trusting you to make a positive contribution to the country - by filling a job, completing or growing a family, contributing to the academic sector, building a business, whatever. The exception is of course refugees who rightly don't have the same conditionality.

But to be honest it's fine that there are conditions. Being an immigrant should feel like a gift and a responsibility, not a right. We should be expected to work to become part of the wider communities we live in.

Being an immigrant is bloody hard work but it becomes even harder work as the social contract over immigration is eroded.

Exactly. I don’t think people deny that we need immigrants that come here to wor. It is those that enter illegally and plan to rely on benefits who must be stopped.

Neither does regurgitating cliches from GB News, but it hasn’t stopped you.

I love a lot of what he he has done and I am pleasantly surprised at the progress he has made in such a short time. But pandering to the right is not the way forward. And I'm utterly disappointed in that

Well said

It was just shown as lead story on BBC News at 10.
He definitely did say it.

I agree with you @Thegreyhound . The language is incredibly inflammatory and disappointing.

Oh, and I do live in a very multicultural City.

House prices have to take a lot of the blame here. Inflated by Blair and Brown, then subsequent Tory governments.
The consequence is people can’t afford kids if they’re just making ends meet keeping a roof over their heads.
Combined with wage stagnation (in part caused by unlimited cheap immigrants from the EU, initially triggered by Blair) then it’s no wonder people aren’t having kids. Not unique to the UK though.

I’m a migrant and I agree with him. Uncontrolled immigration is a blight on this country. Allowing many thousands of people, particularly men, to immigrate from countries and cultures that do not share our values is detrimental to Britain. FWIW I’ve voted Labour or Lib Dem in every election I’ve been eligible to vote in.

It looks like this the first Gov since 2000 to actually do anything to control immigration - three cheers for Starmer ( or should it be Nigel)

This seems to have passed everyone by.

What do you mean men who don’t share our culture and values? What could you possibly mean?

And tbh the concept that if you need to hire a worker from overseas to fill a skill gap, you also need to invest in training in the local population to ensure those skills are available in the future is a very good one.

Too many sectors are hooked on foreign labour and investment in adult skills is woeful - partly because visas are cheaper than upskilling.

Do you have a solution to the lack of investment in infrastructure? Higher taxes?

Smacks of ivory tower - primary schools closing? Our area in Herts has had a massive boom in immigration and population in the past few years, we don’t have enough primary places and they keep putting up more and more blocks of flats. My child needs a change of school but there are zero places that we can feasibly reach with spaces. About 70% of the class if not more are the children of immigrants. They are lovely children, and I would never blame their parents coming here for a better life, but we simply do not have the infrastructure to provide schooling, GP appointments and hospital provision to all these new people. It’s causing fractures in the community that serve no one.

It's too late as the damage has already been done.

@Thegreyhound

YABU. He is merely catching on to what many of the British public think.

Kudos to him for doing this. Just a shame it took REFORM wiping the floor with Labour and Conservatives to make him sit up and do something...

It’s not your vote he needs. It’s those switching to Reform.

Personally I am fed up of all the slagging off of Keir Starmer and the Labour Party . I think he is a serious intelligent politician who wants to try and improve society and its services . Let’s face it things couldn’t get much worse. I would be glad that any immigrants who commit crimes will be deported. I live in a major city and it is starting to feel unsafe. I watched that met crime program last year and was shocked that all of the people committing crime and also victims of crime seemed to be immigrants. Why is that?
People also want immigrants if they are here to integrate and attempt to learn our language . Perhaps we need to be more welcoming too.

What difference does it make
to your job that you have to use interpreters?

it’s interesting because I think if I started a post saying ‘I’m sick of all these English people coming to Wales who don’t speak the language and don’t even bother to try’ it would get a very different response than this post.

In true MN fashion the first comment nails it.

There’s another thread running about a howl of 400 immigrant men. Not only are these people starkers but potentially this is dangerous. Starmer, generally speaking, is a total goon but he’s right to crack down on immigration. We are a small island and there’s too many people.

Well. He is force to say it. He is in the same party than Sadiq Khan who has said London is open… I do not believe KS meant it and only is saying it because he is cornered.

People are not saying that immigrints are taking the money. They are using services that are limited.

If you add a million extra people to a place where there are not that many new homes, either they will end up in slums or on the streets, or others will as they are pushed out.

The others who end up on the streets are usually the most vulnerable.

If you only build so many new schools, or fund so many new clinics, but you add more people than the places you create, it means more lack of provision.

I work in a library. Every day I have immigrants in who have come to work, they have found places to live, jobs, etc. I also have people who are living in the shelter, or sleeping rough. Many of them look for housing for months without finding a place. Others can't find work.

It's a recipe for disaster.