This is the story of two announcements – and the bigger lessons they tell us about the state of our politics.
First, there was a policy announcement by the Liberal Democrats as they gathered in Bournemouth for their annual conference.
Some Lib Dems were already aggrieved they do not get coverage commensurate with their parliamentary strength, given they have 72 MPs. But there is no one outlet or platform choosing to downplay their content – it’s worth analysing why their work does not travel further and wider.
The party’s main overnight policy call was for health warnings on social media apps for under-18s. The reason this was unlikely to garner a huge amount of attention is because it broadly falls in line with existing mainstream political consensus.
Politically, it was a safe thing to call for, tying gently the party’s anti-big tech and by extension anti-Trump agenda, but it was such safe territory that The Times reported this morning that ministerial action in the same area is coming soon.
Perhaps more importantly, the idea of mandatory warnings on social media sites used by teens feels like small beer in the age of massive fiscal and migration challenges. The party conference is its big moment to convince the public it’s about more than stunts and it can pose a coherent alternative: do its announcements rise to such a big moment?
Even more depressing for activists in Bournemouth is that the Liberal Democrat announcement is being eclipsed by Nigel Farage’s immigration statement. This is rightly getting more coverage – although also rightly, much of it focuses on whether this latest plan can possibly work, whether they’ve thought it through and whether their cost estimate is credible (probably not).
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Even typing these words will draw a backlash from the parts of the political spectrum who resent the scale of the coverage a party with five MPs can muster. But just as the Lib Dems might draw lessons from their own failure to get noticed, Labour could do worse than to take note of why Reform leader Mr Farage is again hogging the headlines today.
Reform UK is proposing two things: that it will end Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) as we know it – that’s the right to settle in the UK, with access to benefits, after five years in the country. Within 100 days of entering office, Mr Farage says people would have to apply for five-year visas, qualifying only if they meet a higher salary threshold – closer to £60,000, from just over £40,000.
There are questions about the practical workings of the policy – a vastly bureaucratic and potentially destabilising plan to assess old IRL claims seems at odds with their plans to slash the size of the state. Some rival politicians would query the ethical stance of their latest intervention.
And Labour is loudly saying that Reform’s claim that UK benefits will be restricted to UK citizens will generate savings in the hundreds of billions is based on thinktank research that has since been withdrawn. But that is secondary.
The bigger thing Reform UK has done today is identify and loudly highlight an issue the Labour Party agrees with but does not dare make a big deal of. This allows Reform UK once again to set the terms of the debate in a sensitive area.
Underlying the Reform UK policy is a simple set of figures: That the result of the huge migration surge triggered by Boris Johnson and overseen through the Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak premierships, means those eligible for Indefinite Leave to Remain, five years after their arrival, is about to spike. This poses profound and complex questions for policymakers.
According to the government, last year 172,800 got Indefinite Leave to Remain. From next year there are estimates – not challenged this morning by the government when I checked – that about 270,000 migrants will become eligible to apply to live in the UK permanently. Then, up to 416,000 people will qualify in 2027, and 628,000 in 2028. These are huge numbers.
And here’s the key thing. While in public Labour have been trying to highlight aspects of this announcement that they say have “fallen apart”, privately they acknowledge that this is a problem and they too will come up with solutions in this area – but cannot yet say what.
Labour have already said they will increase the qualifying period for Indefinite Leave to Remain from 5 to 10 years, but it is unclear what will happen to those for whom the clock is already ticking – so, those in this coming wave. More on that is expected soon, but this is uncooked policy and the government is now racing to provide an answer.
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We seem to have politics stuck on repeat. Mr Farage has yet again put up in lights something that Labour privately concede is an issue but as yet have no answer in public. New home secretary Shabana Mahmood knows she has to show she can be quicker off the mark and more punchy than her predecessor – her rival has been first off the mark in this area, however.
But Mr Farage is also tackling the Tories too, punching the bruise by labelling the surge in migration post-2021 as the “Boris-wave”. Understandably, the Tories themselves have been shy to dwell on this. But they have also tried to make it harder for people who arrived post-2021 to get ILR and have vowed to allow those on benefits to be able to apply. But they would draw the line on retrospective ILR claims, which could turn into one of the big dividing lines at the next election. And they are not shouting about a plan which effectively criticises the migration record of the last government.
Mr Farage has come up with a deeply controversial policy. Retrospectively removing people who thought they could live indefinitely in the UK is a major shift in the compact the UK had with migrants already here. But he managed to put his rivals in a tangle this morning.
The two biggest parties give the impression they still have little confidence when dealing with migration. Until they do, can they really take on Mr Farage?
