Keir Starmer is wrong: You don’t beat the far right by becoming them

If the British prime minister's speech on immigration was a response to the rising threat of Reform, it is a strategy that will not work electorally and could actually boost the success of the far right

British prime minister Keir Starmer's speech and the white paper that it unveiled are but the latest indication of the rightward direction of travel within UK politics, led by mainstream and far-right parties alike.

As British prime minister Keir Starmer vowed to “finally take back control of our borders” in a landmark speech on immigration on May 12, it felt a little like déjà vu.

Some nine years earlier, we had heard those exact words repeated over and over in the build-up to the Brexit referendum from former prime minister Boris Johnson and the Leave campaign. It was a refrain also used by Nigel Farage and UKIP.