Rob Ford

Putting things like basic ethics aside...

... does anyone really believe that the Home Office, which cant deal with its present asylum responsibilities, is going to be able to review every application, every 30 months?

I have a bridge to sell you

Perhaps Jason Cowley just has a non-traditional understanding of the word "winning".

Well, if the goal is to secure the lowest support for the main centre-left party in over a century, then Denmark *does* provide a good example to follow.

Also 'riding high' in this case is being on 22% in the polls, down from 27.5% at the last election which would constitute the SDs lowest level of support in a national election since 1903.

Good that some Labour politicians draw the right conclusions. I am a broken record on this but Labour is repeating the same mistakes that other social democratic parties made in Europe. Some fragmentation is unavoidable but this is mostly the result of the strategic mistake to abandon progressives.

This is also supported by individual level data, which shows Labour losing more voters to the Greens than to Reform. The rise of Reform in traditional Labour areas does not mean that Labour voters in those places are all shifting to Reform. That’s an ecological fallacy (cf. @tabouchadi.bsky.social)

A point I believe you have set out very cogently on your excellent substack before!

I’m not sure anyone academic or otherwise could plausibly argue that the 2019 Con electoral strategy was bad - it delivered a majority and exactly the majority they were aiming for (consolidating the Leave vote). The problem for 2024 was they didn’t try to deliver what they promised those voters.

Sorry just coming back to this starting point - this was clearly the Con strategy for 2019 (“Get Brexit Done”) and to a lesser extent 2017 (“Brexit Means Brexit” from “Hostile Environment” PM) - and it worked just fine as electoral strategy in 2019 (less so in 2017 but Cons still won)

One thing that puzzles me is the massive variation in the polling numbers for the Greens (much wider than other parties)

In past 2 weeks UK polling has had them between 9% to 18%

What accounts for this?
@psurridge.bsky.social @robfordmancs.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @jwfurlong.bsky.social

Yes but in DK this whole trade off is less hazardous because you have PR for national elections, Soc Dems can lose votes to their left & yet still remain in govt. risk for Lab is a DK style fragmentation of the left delivers a Reform majority under FPP. No equiv risk exists on DK as PR prevents this

Plenty more in this excellent thread about how the whole argument re immigration levels is based on an outdated and wrong sense of where those immigration levels actually are - they’re much lower than everyone in politics seems to assume and set to go lower still even if nothing else changes

Govt can't have a serious policy on immigration if it won't say what a sustainable level might be, nor process of how it decides that

Delivering net emigration by mistake in 2026 while insisting they must drive numbers much lower shows lack of any immig planning process as much as 2019-24 spike did

If somebody asked Home Sec: "what would you like net migration to be this year (2026) + do you have any idea of what its heading to on current policy

- prob say: can't predict
- has no target of what is sustainable

- Yet political message is: has come down, but too high + much higher than we want

Treasury plans depend on net migration being much higher than current policy will deliver or current Home Secretary willing to accept.

Something will have to give. Will Labour deliver tax rises and spending cuts just before an election to keep net imm close to zero? Or let imm rise to avert this?

James projections for the next three rounds from 205k are these very eye-catching figures

Dec 2025: net immigration of 184,000
June 2026: net immigration of 47,000
Dec 2026: negative net migration (net emigration) of 62,000

bsky.app/profile/jame...

There may be an astonishingly low net migration figure for 2026. The government has not seemed to notice or anticipate this - because it is using vibes-based soundbites.

It may be a temporary trough. James Bowes has done detailed work on this
bsky.app/profile/jame...

Net migration in 2025 will be v close to the 2012 level: the lowest level this century outside the pandemic. (161k in 2012, 157k in year to Sept 2012)

It was 140k in 1998, after spiking from 48k in 1997

But 2026 net migration will be well below anything from 1998-2025 outside pandemic

The Home Secretary has the vibe that it is "still pretty high"

"Comfortably over 200,000" is a stretch for the year to June 2025 figure of 205k + is out-of-date given actual facts on falling visas, as well as projections for 2026.

She compares it to net migration target 2010-19 govt always missed

Net migration in 2025 was about 160,000.

That headline 2025 net migration figure will come out in May: it will clearly be significantly below the 205k for the year to June 2025 (est range: 130-180k) as 2025 visa data is now published.

But the 2026 figure is likely to show negative net migration.

Yes and it’s an odd paradox that they have become more hostile to such voters even as that voters have become more central to their actually existing election coalition (Labour are nowhere with pensioners, and were the most popular choice of younger working voters)

Zero

Yes their obsession with a romanticised Lord Glasman fantasy older working class man is leading them to ignore the many demographic and ideological chunks of the electorate who are nearer to them now than he is

So, to be clear, I’m not saying it’s imperative for Labour to adopt Green stances on Gaza/immigration etc, definitely not. But it likely *is* imperative they abandon Reform adjacent rhetoric on immigration (which has now become a real problem for them). Gaza harder -not clear what they can do

I think three things can be true: (1) Labour trying to out Green greens (on some issues, with some groups) is v hard (2) Labour trying to appeal to Reform is even harder and more futile (3) Labour ministers actively setting themselves up as deliberately hostile to Green leaning voters is mad

Given Mahmood seems committed to this approach as a matter of principle, and given Starmer looks unwilling to sack her, have to wonder if immigration proves the flash point which triggers a leadership crisis

As I was saying. You cannot make policy without the support of MPs and you can’t expect the support of MPs when your publicly declared strategy is “antagonise people like you and the people who voted for you”

bsky.app/profile/catn...

I'm not even sure that's true - the majority of reform voters have never voted Labour, or at least not for a long time: bsky.app/profile/prof... More Labour voters have gone Green or LD - even just on basic maths, trying to get those "back" makes more sense!

“Multi-party politics is here to stay - and given our electoral system, which is built on the premise of two-party politics, that means a lot more volatility, a lot more uncertainty.”

Looking ahead to May, @robfordmancs.bsky.social predicts “a patchwork quilt of political fragmentation.”

Yes -either sooner, by forcing a change of leader and hence a new Home Sec, or later by voting Labour (and indeed Mahmood personally) out of office. Suspect the leadership change route is more likely