Keir Starmer’s Reform-Lite Strategy Has Left Him Marooned on an Island of Strangers

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You can tell who Keir Starmer’s current strategy on immigration is supposed to please by the news organisations his team have hand-picked to talk to about it.

On his visit to Albania this week, which was set up to announce his new policy of deporting failed asylum seekers to offshore “returns hubs”, Starmer’s team invited just one broadcast outlet – the vehemently anti-migrant GB News.

In his interview with the channel, which a recent study found to have an “obsession” with broadcasting “overwhelmingly negative” stories about Muslims, Starmer repeated his claim that Britain risks being turned into an “island of strangers” by immigration.

Other outlets given preferential access by the PM this week included The Sun, whose political editor went on to laud Starmer’s latest plans as being “all good stuff — if Labour can get it through the legion of woke types and hand-wringers on their own backbenches.”

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So how is Starmer’s ‘Blue Labour’ plan to win back right-leaning voters by talking “tough” on immigration going? Well not very well according to new polling by YouGov published today, which finds that Starmer’s ratings are continuing to fall dramatically.

According to the poll, Starmer’s net favourability is down among voters of almost all parties, including current Reform voters, who the Government’s current strategy is apparently designed to win over.

However, while Starmer’s ratings are down just five points from last month among Reform voters, they are down a whopping 34 points among those still clinging onto their vote for Labour.

So not only is Starmer’s current strategy failing to win over the very voters we are told he is now most concerned with appealing to, but it also appears to be absolutely haemorrhaging support among those just about staying loyal to the party.

And it’s not just the electorate which is failing to respond in the way Starmer’s strategists hoped that they would, but the very news organisations they are now giving preferential access to.

GB News, which was also handed an exclusive interview with the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper this week by Government spinners, continues to broadcast almost universally negative coverage about Starmer and his Government.

And while The Sun did offer limited support for Starmer’s rightward turn on migration, it has also devoted most of its political coverage this week to an incredibly misleading story falsely suggesting that David Lammy had somehow “dodged” a taxi fare, when in fact his fare had been paid in full to a taxi driver who had tried to scam the Foreign Secretary out of hundreds of pounds, before being charged with theft.

Other right-wing papers have become even more hostile against Starmer, with the Daily Mail running an unbroken series of front page attacks on the Government’s new migration policies this week.

Meanwhile those news organisations who might otherwise be inclined to support a centre left Government, like the Guardian, have continued to run stories lambasting the Prime Minister’s rightward turn on migration, contributing to growing unease and anger among many Labour MPs, who are becoming increasingly alarmed by the Government’s current political direction.

The result is that it has become very hard to find any prominent non-party voices still standing up for this Government. While previous electorally successful Prime Ministers, like Tony Blair, David Cameron and Boris Johnson, could always rely on a bank of sympathetic commentators and outriders willing to go on the airwaves and defend their record, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find any similarly well-known voices still willing to stand up for the PM and his Government.

A telling moment came this week when my former colleague Ian Dunt, who has until very recently been a prominent defender of Starmer in print and on air, appeared to give up his support, citing the PM’s authoritarian and populist descent on migration.

Such things may not bother Starmer’s spinners very much, given that the only news outlets they seem to care about these days are GB News, The Telegraph, and The Sun.

But at a time when polls suggest that Labour’s remaining core vote is becoming increasingly disillusioned by the Prime Minister, Starmer could soon find himself washed up on a very lonely island, with neither friend nor foe still willing to offer him refuge from the storm.