British Prime Minister Brings In Tougher Policies to Reduce UK Immigration

Starmer said the policies will ’take back control of our borders and close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics, our economy, and our country.’

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announcing new immigration policies in the briefing room at 10 Downing Street in London on May 12, 2025. PA Media

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced on Monday a raft of tougher policies on immigration and promised to reduce the total number migrating to the UK.

Announcing the publication of a white paper, he told reporters at a briefing in Downing Street: “Now, make no mistake, this plan means migration will fall. That’s a promise.”

Starmer’s speech comes only 10 days after Labour suffered a major setback at local elections on May 1 and lost one of its safest seats, in Runcorn, to Reform UK.

On May 2, academic, writer, and pollster Matthew Goodwin told The Epoch Times that the election results marked a “continuation of the post-Brexit realignment,” which he said “the Conservatives squandered after 2019 by imposing mass uncontrolled immigration.”

Starmer, in his speech on Monday, acknowledged voters’ views on immigration and even used the slogan coined by campaigners who wanted the UK to leave the European Union in 2016.

He said the policies he announced, “will finally take back control of our borders and close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics, our economy, and our country.”

“‘Take back control.’ Everyone knows that slogan, and everyone knows what it meant on immigration, or at least that’s what people thought,” Starmer added.

In 2010, then Prime Minister David Cameron, a Conservative, pledged to cut annual net immigration to less than 100,000, but successive Tory governments failed to meet that target despite the Brexit referendum in 2016, in which immigration was clearly a key factor.

Starmer said: “Between 2019 and 2023, even as they were going round our country, telling people with a straight face that they would get immigration down, net migration quadrupled, until in 2023 it reached nearly one million.

“That’s about the population of Birmingham, our second largest city. That’s not control. It’s chaos.”

Starmer acknowledged that immigration was “part of Britain’s national story,” saying immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia made a massive contribution to the progress of the UK after World War II.

“But when people come to our country, they should also commit to integration, to learning our language, and our system should actively distinguish between those that do and those that don’t,” he added.

Starmer said Britain needed “fair rules” that would guide the country’s values and citizens’ responsibilities and obligations toward each other.

‘Island of Strangers’

“Now, 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,” Starmer said.

The UK government’s announcement comes as the European Union and several of its 27 members have taken an increasingly tough stance toward illegal immigration.

Among the concrete measures the UK has unveiled was an announcement by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper on Sunday to change the rules on work visas, which she said would reduce by around 50,000 the number of care workers and other semi-skilled immigrants coming to the UK over the next 12 months.

Speaking to the BBC’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg,” Cooper said it was part of “plans for a substantial reduction in net migration.”

The Home Office, which handles immigration, posted on social media platform X on May 11: “Whilst low-skilled immigration has soared, training for UK workers has been cut—leaving many out of a job and feeling left behind. We must act.

“Visa thresholds will be returned to degree level—boosting productivity, strengthening the UK economy and supporting growth.”

In his speech on Monday, Starmer targeted the Conservative Party in particular and said of the Tories, “It was a choice, a choice made even as they told you, told the country, they were doing the opposite.”

Immigration ‘Experiment Is Over’

“A One Nation experiment in open borders conducted on a country that voted for control. Well, no more. Today, this Labour Government is shutting down the lab. The experiment is over,” he added.

During the question-and-answer session after his speech, he was asked if he could promise that net migration would fall every year from now on, and he replied, “I’m promising it will fall significantly, and I do want to get it down by the end of this Parliament [in 2029], significantly.”

Starmer was asked if he believed Britain needed to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in order to push through changes on immigration, to which he replied, “No, I don’t think that that is necessary.”

Pollsters have suggested that the rise in popularity of Reform UK can be attributed to frustration over the previous Conservative government’s handling of immigration and energy policy.

Reform UK had a popular vote of more than 4 million at last year’s general election, but owing to Britain’s first-past-the-post system, it only gained five MPs.

The leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, responded to Starmer’s speech by posting on X: “Keir Starmer once called all immigration laws racist. So why would anyone believe he actually wants to bring immigration down?

“When I proposed ending the automatic route to British citizenship and introducing a legally binding cap, the government laughed it off.

“Now—nine months into office and after voting against every serious attempt we’ve put forward to cut numbers—Starmer suddenly wants you to think he cares.”

The deputy leader of Reform UK, Richard Tice, told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme on Monday that Starmer has been “listening and learning from Reform.”

Tice said Starmer’s speech was just “warm words” and that “the real question is, will he actually deliver?”

He said, “There’s no target, no number that can be measured against, whereas we’ve got a clear target: net zero immigration.”

The Associated Press and PA Media contributed to this report.