General election: Nigel Farage says aim should be ‘zero’ net migration – UK politics live | Politics

Farage claims Tories and Labour ‘not genuinely patriotic’ as he tells Clacton crowd it’s ‘most patriotic town in Britain’

Ben Quinn

Nigel Farage has told crowds of supporters who gathered in Clacton – the Essex constituency where he is to make his eight bid to become an MP – that minds of the young were being “poisoned” in schools as he pledged to stand against what he described as “woke nonsense.”

The newly-appointed leader of Reform UK (he appointed himself) pledged to bring investment and jobs to the area, home to some of the most deprived communities in Britain, and claimed that the Tories and Labour were not “genuinely patriotic.”

Farage recalled canvassing with the area’s former Ukip MP Douglas Carswell – without mentioning the bitter falling out between the two men – and went on to claim that the Conservatives had “betrayed the trust” of Brexit voters.

“These people, unlike you in Clacton are not genuinely patriotic people. They don’t believe in Britain and the British people in the way you do,” said Farage, who described Clacton as “the most patriotic town in Britain”.

Farage returned to a bugbear voiced when he announced his U-turn on standing in the election – that half of young adults do not know what D-Day was – describing it as a source of shame. He went on:

It is as if we are telling our youngsters to be ashamed of our past and not proud of our past and this has happened under Labour and Conservative governments.

We want to put voices in Westminster who truly believe in Britain We don’t want the minds of our kids being poisoned and to tell them that actually hey should be proud of this country.

Green party condemns Farage as ‘a crook and a conman’

Andrew Sparrow

Hi. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Yohannes Lowe.

As Nigel Farage, the new Reform UK leader (and longstanding owner – he is the majority shareholder) holds a campaign event in Claction, the Green party has issued a statement condemning him as

Nate Higgins, the Greens’ democracy and engagement spokesperson, said:

Nigel Farage is not just a dodgy salesman. He is a crook and a conman.

He will package his brand of hate filled politics in a way that is populist and that he thinks he can sell to an electorate who are understandably fed up with mainstream politics.

Frankly though, we’re not buying it.

The latest organisation he latched himself onto, “Reform UK”, is another smokescreen. Set up to take money off people without offering them membership like any other established political party.

Greens can see through these smokescreens and his jovial façade and see the divisive hate that pulsates through his politics.

His politics belong on the extreme fringes not at the heart of Clacton, let alone on prime time TV.

If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on X (Twitter). I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use X; I’ll see something addressed to @AndrewSparrow very quickly. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos (no error is too small to correct). And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.

Expert thinktank highlights problems with Tory and Reform UK migration proposals

Rajeev Syal

Dr Ben Brindle, a researcher at the Migration Observatory, a thinktank at the University of Oxford, has spoken after Rishi Sunak announced his party’s commitment to capping the number of visas in an effort to make migration numbers fall year on year in a future parliament.

In a statement, he has highlighted problems both with the Tory proposal to impose an annual cap on the number of visas issued to migrants (see 8.55am) and with the Reform UK plan to bring net migration down to zero (see 9.19am).

Dr Brindle said:

The impact of visa caps depends on how much they actually constrain migration. If the goal is to significantly reduce migration, it is more efficient from an economic perspective to impose restrictive eligibility criteria rather than to get a cap to do most of the work.

With a visa cap, the bar applicants need to reach can change unpredictably depending on how many other people apply during that period. This makes it harder for employers to plan ahead than a scenario where you have predictable but restrictive criteria for getting visas.

The impacts on public finances in the long run depend on how restrictive the eligibility criteria. The salary thresholds introduced earlier this year mean that-at least outside the health and care sector-workers will already be making net contributions to public finances. If caps further reduced the numbers beyond what is already expected to happen, we can thus expect there to be a fiscal cost.

However, it is possible that numbers will already be relatively low in the private sector due to the policy changes, and that a cap would be set at a level that did not make much difference. In other words, it’s all in the implementation.

It is not likely that restrictions on migration would have a major impact on the labour market in the medium to long term. The impacts of immigration in the labour market tend to be small. The main question marks are over the health and care sectors, which are publicly funded and where the government effectively controls pay and conditions.

These sectors have relied heavily on migration in large part due to limited funding. The impacts of restricting migration here would thus depend on whether the government was willing to use other polices (eg. on pay in the NHS and social care) to help recruit and retain staff.

It is difficult to imagine any scenario in which net migration falls to zero, even under extremely restrictive immigration policies. In practice, this would likely mean eliminating almost all work and study migration, and only admitting small numbers of family members of British citizens, as well as asylum seekers (which recent history has showed the government struggles to reduce even despite substantial policy efforts).

Labour’s Barking candidate Darren Rodwell has been removed from the list of election candidates being approved by the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) this lunchtime, BBC News reports.

In 2022, he apologised after saying he had the “worst tan possible for a black man” at a Black History Month event.

The NEC, the party’s ruling body, which is dominated by supporters of Keir Starmer, will probably make a decision over who will be Labour’s candidate in the seat in the next 48 hours, according to BBC News.

Rajeev Syal

Rajeev Syal is home affairs editor of the Guardian

Commenting on proposals for caps on migration, Adis Sehic, senior research and policy officer at the employment charity Work Rights Centre said:

While ministers and candidates are focusing heavily on the numbers of migrant workers, they would do well to also consider the welfare of people coming to the UK to work and those already here.

It is clear that there are growing problems with the existing visa systems – hundreds of migrant care workers have been left scammed and destitute, while seasonal horticultural workers have reported mistreatment on multiple UK farms. Reform of these visa routes is desperately needed.

Visa caps do nothing to improve the lives of exploited workers, while a cap on family migration will arbitrarily punish British citizens as well as migrants, by separating them from their loved ones.

Seven Labour councillors in Slough have reportedly resigned after accusing the Labour party of institutional racism (the Slough and South Bucks Observer have a report here).

The councillors were Zaffar Ajaib, Sabia Akram, Haqeeq Dar, Mohammed Nazir, Naveeda Qaseem, Waqas Sabah and Jamilia Sabah.

In their resignation statement, posted to X by Taj Ali, co-editor of Tribune magazine, they wrote:

We, the undersigned members and Labour Councillors of the Slough Constituency Labour party, express our profound disillusionment and anger.

For over two years, since our CLP was placed into special measures by the south-east region and the NEC, we have been systematically deprived of our democratic rights. Our ability to form, debate and influence policies has been dismantled.

They cited grievances over the treatment of Faiza Shaheen and Diane Abbott as well as the party’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza.

Shaheen, who was blocked by Labour from standing in Chingford and Woodford Green, shared Ali’s tweet, saying “thank you, and you’re right about the institutional racism”.

Last year, all the Labour councillors (18 at the time) in Slough called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza – a position that was at odds with Keir Starmer’s position.

In a joint statement, they said: “human rights and adherence to international law must prevail”.

Kiran Stacey is a political correspondent based in Westminster

Labour will launch an investigation into the treatment of migrant workers in the British social care sector if it wins the election, the party has announced, after dozens of cases of alleged exploitation were uncovered.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, called the allegations revealed by the Guardian “a disgrace”, accusing the government of turning a blind eye to the problem.

She said Labour would back calls by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) for a full investigation into the experience of people who say they have been left trapped in the UK with debts of up to £20,000 and little or none of the work they were promised.

Cooper said: “The government has turned a blind eye to widespread exploitation of migrant care workers, putting vulnerable people at risk and undermining our immigration system and standards.

“Stories of people being unfairly charged thousands of pounds by agencies and employers who are profiting from overseas recruitment are a total disgrace. There must be a full investigation into these reports to ensure standards are upheld, and exploitative employers are prosecuted.”

She added that the crackdown on exploitation in the care sector would be led by the new enforcement body Labour plans to introduce to oversee new employment rights.

The Guardian last week reported the experiences of more than 30 people who have arrived from India in the past two years to work in the British care sector.

All of them paid thousands of pounds to immigration agents, and in one case to a UK care provider itself, to secure visas to come to the country. But almost all were told when they arrived that there was not enough work to provide the full-time employment they had been promised.

As a result most remain stuck in the UK, struggling to pay off the debts they have incurred. Many have appealed to the Home Office, police and the care regulator, but none has been fully reimbursed.

You can read the full story here:

Keir Starmer has also been asked about immigration by reporters in Bolton. He said it has become “out of control” under the Conservatives and said the Tory announcement for a cap on migration visas (see earlier post at 08.55) was meaningless as they have not given a number. It is a “cap without a cap”, he said.

“Net migration is far too high, this government has lost control. It’s more than twice as high as it was when we were in the EU, that’s the irony of it,” Starmer told the media.

“This prime minister is actually, for all his tough talk, the most liberal prime minister when it comes to immigration, those numbers have gone through the roof.”

But the Labour party leader refused to give a figure for his migration target, only saying he wants it to come down and to focus on tackling skills shortages and bad employment practices.

Last year’s net migration figure of 685,000 has “got to come down,” Starmer told The Sun on Sunday.

Libby Brooks

The Guardian’s Scotland Correspondent, Libby Brooks, has this report on the first leaders’ debate in Scotland last night:

The SNP has accused Scottish Labour of “completely rewriting” Rachel Reeves’s spending plans, as the party leaders took part in the first televised debate of the election campaign.

The clash between the SNP, Scottish Labour, Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Liberal Democrats was screened by STV, without a studio audience, and involved intensive cross-examination of each leader by his political rivals.

With recent polling suggesting that Labour could make significant gains on 4 July, in particular in seats in Glasgow and across the central belt, the SNP leader, John Swinney, told Anas Sarwar that his pledges for more spending on the NHS, schools and renewables projects contradicted the constraints laid out by Reeves.

“You have completely rewritten the Labour finance strategy. You cannot escape the fact that you have signed up to the Tories’ fiscal agenda, the austerity agenda,” said Swinney. “You are locked into that and you will not be able to deliver those commitments.”

On Tuesday Reeves, the shadow chancellor, will visit Edinburgh, where she will unveil plans to boost the country’s financial services industry and promise to “unleash Scotland’s economic firepower to deliver jobs and growth”.

Sarwar, Swinney and the Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross, also clashed over the future of the oil and gas sector, with the SNP and Tories facing off in a number of seats in north-east Scotland most affected by transition plans.

Sarwar accused Swinney of being “on the side of BP and Shell, not nurses” in the middle of a cost of living crisis.

You can read the full story here: