Britain’s migrant crisis could finally capsize Boris Johnson
A KEY figure in Tony Blair’s former inner circle last night branded Labour’s 2004 “open door” immigration policy an act of “treachery” to Labour supporters.
The Red Rose ally blamed the blow-back from angry voters for the 2010 election defeat, the Brexit vote and the collapse of Labour’s impregnable Red Wall.
They claimed Chancellor Gordon Brown triggered a “long tail” of catastrophic setbacks by embracing cheap labour as a key economic policy.
In a jaw-dropping conversation, a top-level insider told me: “This was treachery.
“It led directly to the defeat of the Labour government in 2010, the Brexit vote in 2016 and the Tory invasion of Red Wall seats in 2019.”
As PM in 2010, clod-hopping Brown rubbed salt in by insulting Rochdale widow Gillian Duffy as a “bigoted woman” for daring to raise the issue.
Now recriminations are flowing once again as mass immigration explodes into the dominating issue of British politics.
It threatens to eclipse even the sleaze row engulfing PM Boris Johnson and his bitterly divided Tory party.
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And it has given embattled Labour leader Keir Starmer the traction he was looking for to reposition his own divided party.
Secret talks have been under way since Labour’s annual conference in Brighton to ditch vote-losing baggage which made the party seem unelectable.
In astonishing revelations which can only now be made public, senior figures spelled out plans to take on the unions over public sector and tax reform.
The biggest challenge for Starmer, a human rights lawyer, is to recast the party’s stance on immigration.
The party is also poised to take up the cudgels for parents, children and NHS patients against teacher unions and the public sector “blob”.
Each of these is rich Tory territory — abandoned by the Johnson government.
TV images of ever-increasing migrant landings on UK beaches have turned them into “Blue Wall” issues for Labour.
The recent tax-raising Budget and a looming inflation-fuelled cost-of-living crisis offer more opportunities to win back votes.
Last week’s sleaze scandal has revived long-suppressed public anger over immigration and BoJo’s broken vow to “take back control”.
The Labour insider’s “treachery” claim is echoed not just privately by Blairites, but publicly by Tory MPs who stormed the Red Wall in 2019.
Rother Valley MP Alexander Stafford says the migrant crisis is even more important for his voters than the COP26 climate summit.
PUBLIC ANGER
“The Government must put relentless focus on sorting out the mess in the Channel,” he warns.
“People in my area, not just Tory voters, see the migrant crisis as hugely important.
They voted heavily here to leave the EU and a key part of that was to regain control of our borders.”
Another Red Wall Tory MP insists Boris must prove Britain is “not some sort of hapless giant that can be slapped around”.
For two decades and four elections, immigration has been the issue that dare not speak its name.
Those, like Nigel Farage, who do speak up are instantly smeared as “racist” or “fascist”.
More than three million migrants, legal and illegal, are believed to have settled here since 2000.
Around 23,500 have landed this year and thousands more are expected as Russian and Belarus thugs herd hapless refugees across EU borders.
This time last week, Keir Starmer was trailing in the polls and seen as unelectable.
Today Labour is six points ahead and Boris is floundering.
RICH PICKINGS
Mass immigration has already destroyed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the most powerful leader in Europe.
The issue is reaching boiling point in Poland, Hungary and now France where Emmanuel Macron is challenged on all sides in this year’s presidential race.
TV footage of economic migrants stepping ashore in ever-greater numbers has eclipsed even the mind- boggling earnings of Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Cox.
Yet the two issues are inextricably linked.
It is the once-Labour Red Wall voter, earning less than half an MP’s £82K pay, who is most outraged by rich pickings at Westminster.
Their votes will decide the result of the next general election.
Boris Johnson can no longer take them for granted.
Blown to smithereens
IT is rare but refreshing when someone is exposed.
As in the case of Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, whose privacy claims were blown to smithereens in the High Court last week.
We are not talking about whispers and innuendo.
These are verbatim memos recorded by Meg’s former palace PR man.
Prince Harry’s missus claims she “forgot” issuing the bombshell instructions.
If she is now officially declared a liar, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.
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