Starmer and Cooper are pledging significantly lower numbers, seeing that as what the public most want to hear. The biggest secret in Britain is how much immigration already fell in the last year. Ten days after the white paper, the Office of National Statistics will confirm that net migration is a few hundred thousand below the 728,000 final score of the last government.
Net migration “must come down” more to be “sustainable”, says this white paper, hinting that the precedented range of 200,000 to 300,000 is where ‘normal’ might begin, testing Labour’s refusal to set a target.Half of the public want overall numbers down - but selectively. There is no public majority to reduce any of a dozen work and study roles, according to new Focaldata research for British Future.
Most ‘reducers’ prioritise regaining control over small boats. A quarter think overall numbers matter most.
The dilemmas of control – how to balance the pressures of a rising population with the gains from immigration – have been intensely debated over the past two months. But it was largely a private debate inside government. The Home Office expected special pleading from every sector, so left it to government departments to make the case for external stakeholders.
Universities feared fatal damage to fragile finances from a drive to cut international student numbers. A more modest tweak to post-study work visas – now 18 months, instead of 24 – keeps this selling point in the UK’s pitch to Indian students. The Treasury will explore a levy on international student fees in the budget.
Health secretary Wes Streeting backed the unexpected decision to scrap the bespoke care visa. Most people do not define contribution by salary alone. Care workers are, after nurses and doctors, among the most popular migrants in Britain. Twice as many people would increase rather than reduce the numbers. Care visas accounted for much of the pre-2023 surge and 2024 collapse of the visa numbers. But oversight of when it was used legitimately or fraudulently, exploitatively or outside its purpose, was weak. The public will need reassurance that the government has a workforce plan. Existing care workers can extend to 2028. The care sector might, like any other sector, negotiate some shortage visas during the transition too.
This white paper talks about integration in principle, but its proposals may impede it in practice. New standards for English language could help, with practical back-up. A new ‘earned settlement’ message underpins a three-tier system. The numbers focus means inviting fewer people to stay. That may deliver more ‘churn’ of migration without, by design, trying to enhance the integration of guest-workers. Some people will qualify for settlement in five years, but others in ten. Giving new arrivals more clarity about temporary schemes versus settlement routes may be fair. Making those already here wait five more years would have risks for child poverty and ethnic disparities. A wide review of citizenship policy should identify both the necessary requirements and unnecessary impediments to people becoming British.
Small boats are the big control challenge. Despite Starmer’s rhetoric about the “open borders experiment” of his predecessors, he inherits asylum chaos from a botched experiment in trying to close the borders to asylum. Passing law after law pledging to remove anybody who arrived without permission was a bluff without a real-world plan. Cutting the visas that government does control will not distract from a continued lack of control in the Channel. The best shot at an orderly, humane system is to talk with France and Europe about making managed humanitarian routes, along with enforcement and returns, tools for regaining border control.
Most people are balancers on immigration – if we do not confuse Reform leader Nigel Farage’s core vote with a guide to how most people think. The control challenge is not who can talk toughest, or pitch the lowest number, with or without any plan to deliver.
Fusing control and contribution with compassion would resonate with Britain, if the citizenship agenda which came with it was more proactive than punitive.The public want competence too - but have ceased to expect it. Making promises that can be kept could be the key to taking back control of the immigration politics too.
Sunder KatwalaSunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.
British travel writer Ash Bhardwaj's latest paperback, 'Why We Travel,' offers insights and practical tips for meaningful journeys
SCI-FI DRAMA
British actor Himesh Patel has added to his diverse body of work with the newly released film The Assessment, now available on streaming platform Amazon Prime. He stars opposite Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, Minnie Driver, and Indira Varma in this science fiction drama set in the near future, where parenthood is strictly controlled. The film has received largely positive reviews since premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.
Himesh Patel stars in the futuristic drama 'The Assessment,' now streaming on Amazon Prime
MALAYALAM MAGIC
Fans of Malayalam music can catch multi-talented Indian playback singer and actor Vineeth Sreenivasan in concert this September at Fairfield Hall, London (27) and Forum, Birmingham (28). The son of veteran actor and screenwriter Sreenivasan, he has made his mark as a vocalist, actor, writer, and director. Audiences who enjoy Malayalam cinema are likely to find plenty to savour in these multi-layered shows.
Tickets are on sale now. www.ukeventlife.co.uk
Vineeth Sreenivasan, the versatile Malayalam star, set to perform live in London and Birmingham this September
SILLY LOOKING MOVIE
Priyanka Chopra Jonas may be starring alongside Idris Elba and John Cena in Heads of State, but there are plenty of signs this Hollywood film will be an absolute stinker. First, it is being dumped straight onto streaming platform Amazon Prime on 2 July, instead of getting a global cinema release. Although the platform may claim this is part of a strategy, most big-budget entertainers that go straight to streaming have been terrible.
Another major red flag is the film’s ludicrous plot, which paints the British prime minister and American president as action heroes somehow teaming up to save the world. Although the movie will likely receive terrible reviews, Priyanka looks like she has a fierce role in it.
Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Idris Elba, and John Cena team up in the action-comedy 'Heads of State' on Amazon Prime
BRIDGE HAS BEEN BURNED
After years of deep division, India had slowly begun to rebuild artistic ties with Pakistan, starting with this week’s major cinema release Abir Gulaal, starring Fawad Khan and Vaani Kapoor in the lead roles.
But the recent deadly terrorist attack in Kashmir has once again inflamed tensions – and burned the bridges that had been carefully rebuilt in recent years. There have been calls in India to ban Abir Gulaal, and similar sentiments have been expressed towards forthcoming films featuring Pakistani talent.
This means that, barring existing projects, it may be many more years before any meaningful artistic collaborations take place between the two countries.
The Bollywood-Pakistani artistic bridge faces a setback following recent tensions
ASHNOOR IS IN DEMAND
Her drama serial Suman Indori may have abruptly ended on Colors TV after more than 230 episodes, but that will not stop lead star Ashnoor Kaur. Her brilliant performance in the title role has won her many admirers, from fans to major names in the television industry. Kaur admitted it was heart-wrenching to let go of a character she had played since last year – and to part ways with the creative team. Although she intends to take a break, interesting offers have already started coming in, so audiences will be seeing more of her soon.
Ashnoor Kaur, celebrated for her role in 'Suman Indori,' is already attracting new offers after the show's end
VERY PREDICTABLE CANCELLATION
When the May Bollywood shows headlined by Salman Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Varun Dhawan, Tiger Shroff, Sara Ali Khan, Kriti Sanon, and Disha Patani were announced, I predicted back in March that they would be cancelled. That is exactly what happened, with organisers claiming they were postponing the shows in Manchester and London due to the recent terrorist attack in Kashmir. In my opinion, it was a lack of ticket sales that prompted them to cut their losses.
A similar story played out in 2023 when I had predicted shows headlined by Hrithik Roshan, Sanya Malhotra, Ayushmann Khurrana, Rashmika Mandanna, and others would also be cancelled. On that occasion, organisers used Hrithik’s injury as an excuse for a postponement – but the shows were never rescheduled.
This adds to the growing list of UK concerts headlined by Bollywood stars that have been cancelled over the past 15 years due to lack of interest. When audiences no longer want to see these actors in cinemas, they are not going to pay inflated ticket prices to watch them dance on stage. Whilst there remains strong demand for live music, the era of actors on stage generating excitement is long gone.
Promoters silly enough to hand over large deposits to stars and venues deserve to lose their money – because it is painfully obvious this area of entertainment died a death a very long time ago.
Salman Khan: Another Bollywood concert series in the UK falls through amid poor ticket sales
ACTION HERO DEV
One of last year’s greatest cinematic triumphs was the turbo-charged action entertainer Monkey Man, which actor Dev Patel incredibly wrote, directed, produced, and starred in. The multi-talented British Asian star is now set to similarly mastermind The Peasant – a medieval India-set revenge thriller. The 14th-century adventure will see him play a shepherd who squares off against fearsome warriors after they plunder his community.
Being given the green light to write, direct, and headline another film shows just how much of a power player Patel has become in Hollywood. What makes it even more inspiring is that it will be another distinct, India-set story.
Dev Patel continues his cinematic journey with 'The Peasant,' a medieval revenge thriller
This was the third time in just over a decade that a Farage-led party has topped the polls, having won the 2014 and 2019 European elections with Ukip and the Brexit Party. These are all what academics call “second order elections”, where voters often decide to ‘send a message’ about national politics, rather than focusing on who to elect to the roles on the ballot paper.
Despite the sweeping gains in seats, there were not many first-time Farage voters this spring. About 1.6 million people voted Reform last Thursday (1) – about one in 10 of those eligible to vote, or around a third of the votes cast by the third of the electorate who habitually vote in local as well as national elections.
That only half as many people tend to vote as in a general election helps Reform – skewing the local electorate to be older, less ethnically diverse and more socially conservative than those who come out in a general election. Most of those who voted Reform last week would have been among the five million voters for the Brexit Party in the 2019 European elections, when the Tory vote fell to just nine per cent.
A local election breakthrough raises the stakes more than winning European elections. Few people expected MEPs elected for a get-out-of-Europe party to do much work in Brussels. Reform voters may expect more from those in charge of local government. Six hundred and seventy seven councillors could give Reform a significant local base, but they face a steep learning curve. Reform’s populist appeal involves a largely performative politics. Much of local government is about meeting statutory responsibilities.
“We need to be realistic about what we can and can’t do”, Reform’s David Wimble told the BBC. “Somebody stopped me today and said, ‘when are you going to stop the boats then?’ But this is the county council.”
‘Stop the Boats’ was on Reform’s Kent election leaflets, where Wimble is among six out of 57 new Reform county councillors who have prior experience. His post-election expectation management was directed as much to his colleagues as their voters.
Reform’s new Lincolnshire mayor, Andrea Jenkins, has proposed housing asylum seekers in makeshift tents. Yet Kent County Council has a key frontline responsibility to look after unaccompanied children who claim asylum. Will Farage’s claims about an over-diagnosis of autism see Reform councils deprioritise special educational needs? Reform’s voters will include parents struggling for support.
Politically, these are terrifying results for the Conservatives, finishing fourth in the ballot, with the lowest vote – in opposition to an unpopular government – of either major party since records began, with more losses to the LibDems too. The bookmakers now give Badenoch only a one-infour chance of surviving as leader to a general election, suggesting the party may gamble again on choosing its sixth new leader since 2016.
But there was more hope for Labour from the other side of the world this weekend. Last year was one of anti-incumbency in elections around the world. This year has seen centreleft politicians get re-elected by challenging their national opponents as too close to the spirit of Donald Trump.
The victory of Canada’s Mark Carney has been followed by the surprisingly decisive re-election in Australia of Anthony Albanese. The bespectacled 62-year-old pragmatist, criticised for his lack of rhetorical flourish, is the most Starmer-like politician on the world stage.
Australian opposition leader Peter Dutton lost his own seat, just as Canadian Conservative Pierre Poliviere had last month. Both defeated leaders proposed faster cuts in immigration as key campaign themes, but struggled when pressed over whether their numbers added up.
The Canadian Liberals and Australian Labor party have, like Starmer, proposed to manage net migration levels down from record levels – but took the argument to their opponents for having unworkable and damaging proposals. They won not by echoing their populist opponents but rather by uniting the anti-populist vote.
Could Farage be our next prime minister? Reform can now claim it is far from unthinkable. But that very ‘thinkability’ may prove Farage’s biggest barrier once voters need to choose a government, given his polarising reputation and Brexit’s fading appeal. In five years’ time, might the post-poll inquests even see Farage’s local election breakthrough as Starmer’s secret weapon? Perhaps. But voters do not face that election for four years.
Rather than chasing Farage’s insatiable populist core vote, the prime minister must show how to build a record in government if he wants to try to make the political weather too.
Sunder Katwalawww.easterneye.bizSunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.
Why hasn’t this happened?
The truth is Pakistan is not going to progress so long as the army is in charge. And the tentacles of the army reach deep into Pakistani society.
And to justify its existence, the army has to hold up India as the arch enemy. Anyone can see the status of Kashmir is not going to change. Nevertheless, the Pakistan army chief, General Asim Munir, told a conclave of overseas Pakistanis in Islamabad earlier this month that the country would continue to stand by the Kashmiri people in the “struggle against the Indian occupation”.
“It was our jugular vein, it is our jugular vein, we will not forget it,” he said.
In the same address, the general called upon the people of the country to tell stories to children so that they don’t forget they are “different from Hindus”.
In my experience, Indians and Pakistanis, Hindus and Muslims, get along pretty well in the UK. I know of several happy marriages. I like to think that, as human beings, we are not that different.
The general wants children to grow up drinking hatred of India and Hindus with their mother’s milk.
“You have to tell Pakistan’s story to your children so that they don’t forget that our forefathers thought we were different from Hindus in every possible aspect of life.”
President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (centre) shakes hands with India’s prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1972 in Shimla, as his daughter Benazir Bhutto looks on
Shortly afterwards, on April 22, four gunmen emerged from thick forests and indiscriminately killed 26 people – mostly tourists from outside Kashmir – at a beauty spot near the resort town of Pahalgam. Three dozen others were injured.
If the aim was to disrupt the flourishing tourist economy, the assailants have certainly succeeded. There have been 80 per cent cancellations of hotel and houseboat bookings, so local people will suffer.
Rang De Basanti actor Atul Kulkarni visited Pahalgam after the attacks and shared a picture of a virtually empty Mumbai-Srinagar flight.
“Crew said these (previously) ran full,” he wrote in a post on X. “We need to fill them again.”
It will be a while before families feel confident enough to return.
Who were the gunmen and where did they come from?
We don’t know, since they have melted away. We have seen in numerous attacks in the West that even a lone gunman can cause havoc. But we can judge from the Mumbai massacre of 2008, when 10 young men came from Pakistan and carried out a vicious slaughter in India’s commercial capital. They were probably trained by elements within the Pakistani intelligence services. The same thing may have happened again.
But the connection between these groups and the authorities is nebulous.
Pakistan is ill-served by a certain brand of bellicose politician. Following India’s suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari declared “either our water will flow or their blood will flow”.
He is a bit of a feral kid from a dysfunctional family which has seen more than its share of spilt blood. His grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, said, “Thank god, Pakistan is saved,” after the West Pakistan army carried out a genocide in East Pakistan in 1971.
In 1979, he was hanged by the military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, who was himself blown up by his own people in a Hercules aircraft in 1988.
Bilawal’s mother, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in 2007 in Rawalpindi. It is alleged that Benazir had her brother, Murtaza Bhutto, who was emerging as a political rival, gunned down in the streets of Karachi in 1996. At least, that is what Murtaza’s daughter, Fatima Bhutto, claimed in her book, Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir.
Bilawal, whose father Asif Ali Zardari was president of Pakistan, has added Bhutto to his surname in an attempt to benefit from the family’s political legacy.
A photograph of General Asim Munir
But he is a brash boy, who probably does not understand what war means.
He was slapped down by a senior Muslim leader in India. Asaduddin Owaisi, who heads the All India Majlise-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), said: “Don’t say childish things. His mother was killed by their homegrown terrorists. Does he even know what he is saying?”
The Indian author and Congress MP, Shashi Tharoor, added his voice: “The Pakistanis have to understand that they simply cannot kill Indians with impunity. We have no designs on Pakistan, but if they do something, they must be prepared for a response. If blood is going to flow, it will possibly flow more on their side than ours.”
While I was in India recently, I don’t think Pakistan cropped up even once in conversations. Most people just want to get on with achieving a better standard of living. If things had gone right, the two countries would have settled down to a relationship between friendly neighbours. Bilateral trade would have added to prosperity on both sides of the border. Today, India refuses to travel to Pakistan to play cricket.
Instead, nearly eight decades after Partition, there is talk one again of military conflict.
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, said his government will “identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers. We will pursue them to the ends of the earth. Terrorism will not go unpunished. Every effort will be made to ensure that justice is done.”
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari
Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif responded: “The recent tragedy in Pahalgam is yet another example of this perpetual blame game, which must come to a grinding halt. Continuing with its role as a responsible country, Pakistan is open to participating in any neutral, transparent and credible investigation.”
He also said: “Water is a vital national interest of Pakistan, our lifeline…. Let there be no doubt at all its availability will be safeguarded at all costs and under all circumstances.
“Therefore, any attempt to stop, reduce or divert the flow of water belonging to Pakistan under the Indus Waters Treaty would be responded to with full force and might. Nobody should remain under any kind of false impression and confusion.
He added: “As founder of the nation, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah rightly said, Kashmir is the jugular vein of Pakistan. Unfortunately, this globally recognised dispute remains unresolved despite multiple UN resolutions.
“Let there be no doubt, Pakistan shall continue to support the right of self-determination of the Kashmiri people till they achieve their rights through their great struggle and sacrifices.”
Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani high commissioner in London, said: “The notion of limited war waged under the nuclear threshold is fraught with untold risks. Such a scenario should be avoided at all costs. Even though there is little appetite for this by the Indian side, a backchannel must be re-established without delay to avoid any miscalculation, manage the crisis and prevent it from spinning out of control. The alternative is too terrifying to contemplate.”
Fatima Bhutto
In London a Pakistani diplomat was caught on camera making a threatening throat-slitting gesture towards the Indian protesters from the balcony of the high commission building in central London. He should be recalled immediately.
And an Indian origin man, Ankit Love, 41, was arrested and charged with smashing the windows of the Pakistani diplomatic mission.
These are just the kind of events that must be avoided.
The underlying problem remains unchanged. How do the people of Pakistan escape the clutches of the army?
