Starmer’s Made Himself A Stranger On His Own Island

When I first heard Keir Starmer claim Britain is becoming an ‘island of strangers’ thanks to immigration, my mind immediately – and I mean immediately – flipped to Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech, regarded as one of the most racist speeches in modern British history.

My mind was in knots. Surely Labour-lefty Keir Starmer can’t have said that. I must have a screw loose to be comparing him to an extreme nationalist like Enoch Powell.

It turns out Starmer did actually allow that line to leave his lips – and I wasn’t the only one comparing Labour’s PM to Enoch Powell.

I still cannot quite believe Keir Starmer said that.

So buckle up. This one’s going to be juicy.

An island of what?

Strangers? Did that really get signed off by Starmer’s speechwriters?

It’s true, I’ve written many times for Europinion stressing the need to curb illegal immigration. But never have I claimed Britain is an ‘island of strangers’ owing to diversity.

Immigration, in a controlled fashion, can make our country stronger. 1 in 5 doctors, nurses and social carers are immigrants. Migration, if controlled, feeds the UK’s rich multiculturalism and vibrant communities.

My main bugbear is the severe quantity of immigrants – particularly illegal immigrants – crossing the Channel, only for Britain to roll out a red carpet leading straight to a plush hotel room complete with breakfast or an allowance of almost £50 per person per week.

This nonsense was costing us £8 million every day in 2023.

Where’s your free hotel room? Where’s mine? We’re paying the tax for it and getting nothing back.

That’s my problem – and I think that’s most people’s problem. For Keir Starmer to suggest that Britain as a whole is nothing more than an ‘island of strangers’ is downright offensive.

How dare he seemingly call all immigrants ‘strangers’ just because they’re from a different country? And to think, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has gone and backed him!

What a mess. Starmer’s Powellist (Powellite? Powellian?) rhetoric could not be more incendiary or more misplaced for a vast chunk of his own MPs and voters, making it all the more baffling.

Starmer: impersonating Farage in a red frock

But that’s Starmer’s problem.

He doesn’t know what he stands for. He just automatically moulds to whatever he thinks will cage him the most votes at the next election. So it’s quite obvious where this ‘island of strangers’ nonsense came from.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK swept the country in May’s local elections, winning 677 council seats. Meanwhile, Labour lost 188 seats from their already-paltry collection – giving them a total of just 99 out of some 1,650 councillors.

Naturally, Starmer will be looking across the floor at Farage, wondering how he can win back Labour voters who fled to Reform UK.

And I expect he’s taken a look at YouGov polling from 2024, which shows 86% of Reform UK backers believed migrants coming into the UK should all be immediately removed and prevented from ever returning. Meanwhile, 78% believed multiculturalism has made the UK worse.

It’s almost as if Starmer’s speechwriters copied and pasted this information into ChatGPT and asked it to come up with some political soundbites. As a test, I have just done this and I got ‘Secure. Fair. British.’ which, to be honest, would’ve been better. But then again, anything would’ve been better than an ‘island of strangers’.

Keir’s changed his tune – just to win more votes

And that’s what people dislike about Starmer. He repeatedly changes his tune on issue after issue after issue – shapeshifting uncomfortably into a mould that simply does not fit him.

It is hypocrisy of the grandest order.

Starmer promised not to raise taxes. Starmer promised to end austerity. Starmer has previously trumpeted open borders.

And what did we get? Higher taxes. Cuts to disability benefits and pension credit. And now, we’re being hoodwinked again by slippery Starmer, who has suddenly decided to take a hard line on immigration.

I lament this because I love Great Britain – and none of this under Starmer’s Labour government is good for Great Britain.

But I lament it for another reason. Keir Starmer was elected because many people didn’t vote Conservative. He did not rise to power because people voted for Labour.

You don’t believe me? Look at the facts. 9.7 million voted for Starmer in 2024. Nearly 14 million voted for Boris Johnson in 2019. Almost 10.3 million voted for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in 2019 for goodness’ sake – and he lost by a landslide.

And yet, Starmer won a huge majority with the Conservatives’ worst election result in history.

So he had very little support to begin with. And now, Keir Starmer’s just made himself even more of a stranger on his own island.

Image: Flickr/Number 10 (Simon Dawson)

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