I joined the Liberal Democrats in 2016, when then party leader Tim Farron made clear that the Liberal Democrats would continue to fight for the UK’s place in the EU. A place in the EU that would have preserved freedom of movement and allowed for us to remain a vibrant and multicultural society which recognises that foreign workers strengthen our economy and industries, not weaken them.
I have since stayed in the party, a party which I believe reflects my feeling that immigration is not a bad thing. I have supported and spoken up for calls such as Christine Jardine’s to allow asylum seekers to work whilst awaiting a determination. And so when I saw our mealy mouthed ‘official’ party response to Yvette Cooper’s Reform-inspired xenophobic bullshittery of an immigration policy, I have to admit I felt a little bit sick.
To steal a line from a friend of mine, perhaps someone needs to sit some members of our party leadership down with a dictionary and point at the word ‘Liberal’. We should be criticising Yvette and Labour as a whole for following Reform’s lead and taking an anti-immigrant line which will only further inflame racist tensions in our society.
Ed Davey has been doing much good of late to call out Trump and Farage for their populist politics of hatred. We have an open goal here to make clear that immigration is not a bad thing, and show our true liberal values. We have the opportunity to provide ourselves a clear alternative and antidote to Reform.
In recent weeks, I have been heartened by the support for the Trans Community shown by so many of our MPs in response to the awful Supreme Court judgement. So now I call upon our MPs to show the same level of compassion to those seeking to work in this country and contribute to our vibrant and multicultural society.
Let us keep fighting the politics of hate together, and continue to be the party I joined back in 2016.
* Fraser Graham is a Member of the Scottish Liberal Democrats' Conference Committee, the Scottish Rep to Federal Conference Committee and the Proposective Scottish Parliamentary Candidate for the Kirkcaldy Holyrood Constituency.
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48 Comments
I suspect those with a keen eye can spot the word which the editors kindly asked me to remove from the title…
I did think you were being remarkably cool, polite, and restrained. I’m amazed Lisa didn’t hear the swearing across the pennines when I saw that statement.
Immigration is good. It enriches is culturally and enriches our communities. We should be unequivocal in saying so.
I agree with Fraser and Jennie, but (as of now) I’ve heard nothing from Sir Edward.
I don’t vote SNP, but I do agree with the comments of the First Minister, John Swinney :
The Scotsman
https://www.scotsman.com › News › Politics
1 day ago — John Swinney has branded the UK government’s plans to overhaul immigration and abolish care worker visas as “absolute folly”.
C’mon Ed. Let’s be having you.
I wholeheartedly agree with you Fraser. Absolutely shocking to see the party spokes respond with a statement that seems like it’s trying to pander to xenophobia rather than stand up for liberal values. The parliamentary team should always speak up for liberalism. Charles knew that’s even if it was unpopular it was the right thing to do and, consequently, people liked him for it.
I worked for the UK Borders Agency for 10 years until 2011. One of the reasons I left was the gradual shifting of policy under Labour and the Tories towards cruelty and making life difficult for anyone wanting to come here.
At least then it felt as though one could count on the Lib Dems to provide a voice against this. These days? Labour, Lib Dems, Tories, Reform – all fighting over the same six inches of policy, all desperate to appear harsher-than-thou. On the evidence of this, a plague on all their houses.
An appeal: if you’re discussing what someone has said, please quote the words or give a link to them.
I assume it’s this disappointing statement from Lisa Smart, which is to be found among the press releases on the party website:
“After the previous Conservative Government’s dire mismanagement, our immigration system has been left in tatters and public trust has been shattered. It’s right that the government is taking steps to fix our broken immigration system to ensure it works for our country.
“However, this must be coupled with a clear plan to make it easier to recruit British workers to fill vacancies instead – including implementing our Carer’s Minimum Wage and speeding up reforms to the apprenticeship system – to ensure these changes don’t have unintended consequences for our economy.”
I am also angry & dispirited, we need other Spokespeople to make plain that we welcome Immigrants. Labour Policy isn’t just morally wrong, its utterly stupid & we should be saying that Loud & Clear.
Seriously, what is the point of liberal parliamentarians who can’t be liberal? I’ve been a member and an activist a couple of times – I’ve written on here before and clashed with our Peelite-Whig tendency. I decided the party hierarchy was too socially conservative for my tastes, and this is exactly why. The Labour Party is now less socially progressive than the Republican Party under GWB. If the liberal party isn’t saying so, on the news, in parliament, on the doorstep, in leaflets, then just go home.
@ Jonathan,
Thank you for bringing that to my attention, and I have now put the link in. We published the press release earlier in order to put this article into proper context but I did rather miss the opportunity there.
Thanks, Mark. Feel free to delete that comment – and this one.
I’ve commented on the other threads but thanks Fraser for posting the article – we must not become Starmer-lite on this.
Why is there not a positive message as to the roles that immigrants fill in general – not simply the care sector? It’s not sufficient to take the moral high ground – when dealing with populists it’s also necessary to rebut their views with facts.
If the party and its supporters are going to contend that net immigration of 700,000 per year is sustainable and desirable then they need to make their case to the electorate.
This includes stating where the homes that are going to house the 700,000 migrants are going to be built. In particular how many will be built in Liberal Democrat controlled Councils.
Otherwise the electorate will just think that the party is in favour of 700,000 net immigration per year, just as long as they don’t live near them or their voters.
Starmer should learn a lesson from this party’s 2010-15 experience…When push comes to shove those who believe in the rhetoric of the ‘Right’ will always choose the real thing rather than the imitators..
I was angry and quickly wrote this on my facebook and posted on various Lib Dem groups too. A lot of positive comments, likes and shares including many from non lib dems. Not seen an official Lib Dem statement yet condemning Starmer.
“I am angry about the term “Island of strangers”. very angry.
He is talking about our lovely friends.
Not just friends but people who are there when we need them, that we can laugh,cry and share with.
For us personally not close neighbours but nearby and we treasure them and make up part of our community.
Friends at Church and our wonderful choir.
The NHS, I cannot begin to list all. Friendly faces in corridors, nurses, doctors, surgeons who have saved my life.
Pharmacists.
Political friends and allies.
Even helpers with my phone!
None of them are “strangers” but a welcome and important part of our community and our lives.
I am only speaking for myself here, I would be very surprised indeed if my friends did not have similar lists of the people who are important to them. Certainly not “strangers”.
It’s worth pointing out that it would be entirely possible to be heavily in favour of a quick return to EU membership, and also at the same time label our immigration system as flawed, as quite significant rises in immigration to this country have occurred since we left the EU and have been from non-EU citizens.
(Not that the party took that opportunity, or that I personally feel immigration is bad for the country, although I might suggest unexpectedly rapid immigration could be socially jarring if poorly handled and infrastructure not invested in).
“It’s right that the government is taking steps to fix our broken immigration system” is a pretty daft thing to say when the government… isn’t doing that. And the main things that are broken about our immigration system are that it’s a deeply inhumane mess that costs British taxpayers enormous amounts of money and costs immigrants years of their lives in limbo and arbitrary systems that could pull the plug on their whole lives at any time.
I’m really sad that the party I joined at a similar time to Fraser (a year earlier) seems to be forgetting the reasons why people like us decided its less-than-ten MP rump was worth saving: that we needed a party that treated people as people and put that at the heart of its politics. If we can’t keep that basic sense of liberal humanity because of a panic over its political expediency on the part of the suits at the top of the party, what are we for?
At the last election, some labour-facing liberals were complaining that they felt left behind by the Home Counties-facing strategy. How about next time we put some effort into…….off the top of my head…..erm…..let me see…..Holborn and St Pancras
The problem that Labour (and apparently Ed Davey) fail to grasp is that we don’t have an immigration problem, we have a xenophobia problem.
If leaving the EU to get rid of the east Europeans didn’t satisfy people then neither will getting rid of foreign care workers; they’ll only find someone else to go after next.
@J The latest poll in London shows us and the Greens up five points each (16% and 15% respectively). I suspect much of that swing is in posh Labour areas like Islington where we did little at the General. We are still only on 10% for next year’s Mayoral which suggests a sophisticated electorate that can tell the difference between Starmer and Khan.
Keir Starmer’s speech writers must have been delighted to have come up with “an island of strangers”, an apparently anodyne reworking of Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech, but Jeremy Corbyn immediately called it out for what it was (on Channel Four News last night).
But however wrong it might be to use the fear of foreigners in the immigration debate, the first world plundering of labour from poorer countries is also wrong. If we want to have institutional care of the elderly (which often means abdicating responsibility for our own relatives), we should not be importing cheap labour from abroad. Those enticed here by the money on offer are leaving their own families – in many cases children left in the care of grandparents, who they only see once or twice a year on home visits – and can lead pretty lonely and miserable lives in an alien British culture.
We may not like his language, but Starmer is right to try to wrest control of the immigration debate away from Farage. Using racism and sly asides about paedophiles and terrorists coming here in ‘the boats’ is divisive and dangerous, but if the idea of Farage as prime minister seemed once seemed ludicrous, we’re “not laughing now”.
The migration crisis is in its infancy, and will get a lot worse as the effects of climate change continues to accelerate. Protesting that we Liberals are nice people and welcome foreigners will have to be replaced pragmatism: we can’t accommodate an influx of millions from Africa and other parts of the world, when human life becomes unsustainable in their own countries.
@Andy Daer
” If we want to have institutional care of the elderly (which often means abdicating responsibility for our own relatives)”
What do you mean by ‘abdicating responsibility? e.g. in a situation where the offspring need to be working but at the same time cannot afford to pay anyone else to care for their elderly relative(s)?
Shocked by Starmer and fully share sense of disappointment at the Party reform has to tackled not emulated I’m sure many people are looking for strength of conviction from lib dems
As the son of a stranger who found a new life in the UK free from Nazi persecution, I am utterly appalled that Starmer is descending into the gutter in a futile attempt to appease would-be reform voters.
I am surprised and rather disappointed at the response by Lisa Smart MP, who should, in my view, be roundly condemning Starmer and his government and speaking out for the very real benefits of immigration in our community. Everyone knows that people come to this country to work in the NHS, the care sector and farming and that at present none of those industries can survive without that source of labour.
Anyone would think that there is a risk of LibDem voters leaving us on this issue! The reality is that those who abhor this racist claptrap would vote for us if they actually knew our policy and beliefs. Why are we not shouting it from the rooftops?
Let’s hear it from our leaders. No more muttering in their beer.
Lisa Smart (see her quote in Jonathan Calder’s comment above) rightly says what a mess the previous government made over immigration but she should also have said Keir Starmer is doing no better and his language is terrible and harmful.
Another point that is badly missing from comments is the need to control immigration, since lack of control is what makes people feel against immigration. As Layla Moran said on Question Time last year our policy is to accept and properly assess asylum seekers, turn back those who are not genuine and control economic migration according to our country’s needs. So our policy is not to just let them all in.
Speak out for the contribution made by immigrants; deplore any language that demeans immigrants, but also be clear that immigration at the rates post-Brexit has numerous negatives, some describred by others above. And therefore must be controlled better.
I am myself an immigrant.
@Andy Daer, you rightly mention the negative effect on families of immigrants of importing cheap labour from abroad. The important issue here, especially as we raise the educational standard for immigrants, is the ethics of draining other countries of people who need to contribute to their own country’s development.
This is linked to the bad direction of international aid, which should be about cooperation between ourselves and developing countries so that the latter will need less aid in the future. That should include Fair Trade and Education, which are the more dignified and lasting ways to help poorer people.
If the party and it’s members think that 700-900k a year net migration is healthy and a benefit to this nation , then they need to articulate why and have a plan to accommodate those numbers in regards to housing & associated services. If they cannot , and all they have is outrage at labours proposals then sadly that’s nowhere near enough. Voters are concerned about immigration and have been lied to in the past .
The economic benefits of year on year record inward immigration has well and truly been severed.
David LG: ‘The problem that Labour (and apparently Ed Davey) fail to grasp is that we don’t have an immigration problem, we have a xenophobia problem.’
It’s entirely possible to believe we have both (without believing immigration is inherently wrong and that people who immigrate are in some way immoral or a threat), and also that we have a defunding-of-the-state problem and a lack-of-social-unity problem, and a cowardly-politicians-led-by-soundbites problem. All at once.
“The problem that Labour (and apparently Ed Davey) fail to grasp is that we don’t have an immigration problem, we have a xenophobia problem.”
We have both problems. And the repeated promises to cut immigration, made and then broken by all governments, have been a key factor in fuelling our xenophobia problem.
Why exactly is it supposed to be a good thing for a nation to consistently accept a high net gain of people from overseas – irrespective of their race?
Why is it good for Britain to take the most ambitious people from poor countries, and then pay them a pittance to do jobs which native Britons don’t want to do?
Dave Allen, it needs to also be said that Brexit, touted as the solution to immigration (whether naievely or disingenuously or maliciously) has increased our immigration problems and this could have been seen coming (and was in some quarters).
Higher immigration during the EU period was – to a large extent – a UK choice not an EU policy, and the desperate desire for fast growth post-Brexit has led to increased incoherent in our immigration policy and this was always a likely and probable outcome.
Add to that the increased global instability and displacement of refugees in the era we are living through…
@slamdac, @Greg Hyde and others – it’s perfectly possible to be appalled by Starmer’s inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric without also thinking that ~700k is the “right” level of immigration.
Yet all parties are running scared of having a sensible conversation about the level of immigration that is beneficial to the UK, and how that should be managed.
But accusing the many immigrants who have contributed to this country in countless ways of being “strangers” causing “incalculable damage” is appalling and downright dangerous.
ANYONE claiming that Starmer’s emphasis on immigration were not the same as Powell’s should read Enoch Powell’s actual words…
Referring to ‘The White British Population’ Powell said, “For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.”
Did no one in Downing Street point out that Starmer’s use of the same words was .’Strange’..
Nick, Then you need to come up with something viable to articulate to the voters.
They’ve been sold the economic benefits of inward migration which has bern at record levels , and rightly questioning those benefits.
In March Reeves had to plug a £15 billion funding gap. We’ve had record council tax rises, umpteenth rises in energy bills, soaring rents, overstretched and delapadated local services, huge social housing waiting list.
I’m not condoning Starmers remarks , but being outraged isn’t enough. The current numbers are not sustainable in the long-term.
@Greg Hands – I’m not sure why it’s now *my* responsibility to articulate a viable alternative. That’s surely the job of a liberal political party…
Maybe being outraged isn’t enough, but it’s a start. Because the alternative of *not* being outraged could lead us down a dark path, validating the racists and xenophobes and putting the well-being of a significant minority of the population at risk. It’s the same path that took the US to a place where they snatch people from their homes or off the street and deport them to a brutal foreign prison without due process or a chance to appeal.
@Nick Baird
“I’m not sure why it’s now *my* responsibility to articulate a viable alternative. That’s surely the job of a liberal political party…”
And the Liberal Democrats are ‘the sum of the party’s members’. Their views matter.
And your views matter. You appear to be outraged about the level of immigration. What do you think is the right level (our population is said to be declining at present) and how would you accomodate that level?
@Nonconformistradical – I’m not outraged about the level of immigration. Not sure why you formed that impression.
I’m outraged at Starmer’s recent comments.
“Squalor” “Strangers” – I don’t believe for a single second that Grimond, Thorpe, Steel, Ashdown, Kennedy, Campbell, Cable or Swinson would have stood for that language.
Starmers full quote. Anyone who thinks that millions of voters wouldn’t agree that with is being naive.
“Let me put it this way, nations depend on rules, fair rules,” he said.
“Sometimes they are written down, often they are not, but, either way, they give shape to our values, guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to each other.
“In a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that these rules become even more important without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.”
The problem we in Britain face as Lib Dems is that the accepted old world order of asylum and migration, ultimately established in International law through the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1951 Refugee Convention had their foundations in times when both migration and asylum were much smaller compared to today’s numbers, and very largely made up of people willing to largely “fit in” with the prevailing western ethos and norms.
Indeed most migrants prior to WW2 were of european outlook, often very well educated and probably quite well off and consequently, it was relatively easy for Britain to cope with the effects of migration on the UK while the migrants gradually merged into the mainstream population.
Clearly there were problem areas, usually based around race or religion, but over the years gradually many migrants came to be fully accepted by an ever increasing proportion of the population as both sides adopted the very liberal skill of being willing rub along with each other.
However, with the massive increase in migration over recent decades, the dual aspect of the assimilation process (we change a bit, you change a bit) has largely collapsed on both sides, and fundamental differences remain and indeed grow, particularly in communities that are poor and ghettoised – Indeed this aspect applies equally to white working class areas as well. These result in civil unrest and on occasions riots as in 1981 (Toxteth), 2001 (Oldham), 2022 (Leicester) and most recently 2024 after the Southport Stabbings.
Starmer’s words were dreadful. But, just criticising the words, while saying nothing about how to handle immigration, is dodging the issue.
A good place to start is to ask why the promises to cut migration have failed. I think there are many reasons:
We “need” immigrants – or to be more precise, we like cheap labour – to do jobs which native Britons don’t want to do.
The option of pushing up wages e.g. in care homes, and hence persuading native Britons to take the jobs, is “too difficult”. The easiest political response is therefore to pay lip-service to the idea, run a few small projects along these lines which are nothing like big enough to tackle the problem, and then say “Well we tried…”
Actually, draconian restrictions on immigration will be most likely to work, because then market pressures will force up care home wages. But only after much degradation of care, which will gift votes to opposition politicians.
Government therefore faces huge difficulties. That does not excuse them making a pig’s ear of it.
I think they should try to run a national, rational debate – maybe a citizen’s jury. Ask voters to make the stark choices between high immigration on the one hand, and serious harm to the economy and public services on the other. Don’t let Farage kid people that there is a simple answer.
I very strongly agree with David Allen, except for his mentioning a citizens’ jury as a possible way forward. Having seen the end results of a citizens’ jury in an area I am familiar with, the end results I saw were nice middle class ideas wishing that nice things happened to nice people nicely, while totally ignoring the practical issues like cost. In addition, although held up as an exemplar of what a citizen’s jury should be, it had no mechanism whatsoever to filter out any thoughts before they became formal recommendations.
As a result, one issue on which the panel had received no guidance whatsoever, was included because two individuals of a particular political persuasion pressed for it to be included, despite it being totally inappropriate for a substantial part of the local population.
Overall, my view of citizens’ juries comes down to
1) the vast majority of those volunteering to participate have to be quite comfortable financially in order to be able to spare the time to do it
2) Hence they are predominantly middle class, town people who can largely insulate themselves from the adverse side of any issue
3) They just want nice things to happen and so believe that (like Germany under Angela Merkel) society can cope with immigration at any level, but at no significant cost to anyone.
David Evans – Then someone needs to come up with a more rigorous way of organising a citizens’ jury, one which forces voters to confront hard choices. Peston last night gave some good clues. They found that most people wanted near-zero immigration, and they then found that for all the specific jobs they identified (e.g. care homes, and many more), most people didn’t want fewer immigrants!
Matt (Bristol): “Brexit, touted as the solution to immigration (whether naievely or disingenuously or maliciously) has increased our immigration problems and this could have been seen coming”
Here’s an interesting take on that comment. Tom Newton-Dunn argues persuasively that it wasn’t specifically Brexit that caused the upsurge. It was Boris’s wonderful points-based immigration system, which he took the opportunity to borrow from Australia. He was warned that the Australians had in fact originally devised their scheme to BOOST immigration. Boris ignored the warning. It boosted immigration.
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/05/13/why-boris-johnson-is-not-the-answer/
Indeed David Allen, a more rigorous approach would be a good idea, except one person’s rigorous approach is another person’s unfair constraint on debate, especially if it looks like pushing the debate in a direction which makes it more difficult to get the results the person instinctively favours – And most issues that go to a citizens jury have been long standing and oft debated so most informed people already have a position on the issue.
The key problem from my experience is the inevitable unrepresentative nature of the participants as a whole (e.g. poor people who are working long hours just to survive just can’t do it even if they really wanted to), coupled with the absence of objective data (e.g. what would be the cost to employ 100,000 extra social workers and most importantly how would you source them, when we can’t even agree what a social worker should be paid and know many intermediaries take a very substantial proportion of the fee organisations pay.)
Totally agree Fraser!
It’s not only the right thing to do, but it’s also good politics to make ourselves distinct from reactionary politics.
https://www.libdemvoice.org/how-the-liberal-democrats-can-benefit-from-the-rise-of-reform-uk-77563.html
David Allen, what you mean the system that was very very close to what Farage spent some time advocating for as well? Well, that’s very interesting.