Labour has been accused of turning to the underhand tactic of “push polling” on immigration by asking voters a series of apparently innocuous questions on the highly sensitive issue.
Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative MP who co-founded the YouGov polling company, said an advertisement for a public meeting involving the shadow immigration minister, David Hanson, had “the smell of push polling”.
Zahawi spoke after Labour published an advertisement for a meeting in Crewe on Wednesday with Hanson and the party’s local prospective parliamentary candidate, Dr Adrian Heald, which features four pointed questions about immigration.
The questions asked were:
• Does immigration benefit or cost the economy?
• Is there an increase in pressure on public services?
• To what extent does immigration change our communities and what do local people think about these changes?
• How does a community like Crewe & Nantwich embrace cultural diversity?
The advertisement concludes with the words: “Labour has set out a new approach to control immigration and control the impacts from immigration from local communities. Britain needs immigration rules that are tough and fair.”
Zahawi told the Guardian that the questions amounted to push polling – the tactic in which a political party uses an apparently innocuous poll to promote its message.
The Tory MP for Stratford-on-Avon said: “Labour clearly are in a panic because they are haemorrhaging support in their heartlands. This has the smell of push polling because it does not give other options. The questions are leading – this is push polling.
“The only party which has a well-thought-through policy on immigration and a long-term economic policy is the Conservative party. The prime minister addressed this in a well-thought and credible policy that has already received a positive response from Europe because many of the wealthier European countries have similar issues.”
Labour has identified immigration as a potent issue the party must address amid signs that voters across the spectrum are flocking to Ukip to punish the two main parties on their track record.
Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has acknowledged that the last Labour government was wrong to decline to impose seven-year transitional controls on the eight east European countries, led by Poland, which joined the EU in 2004.
He announced last month that he would introduce an immigration reform bill as prime minister that would offer “clear, credible and concrete” measures. These include measures to prevent agencies from hiring workers only from abroad and tougher border controls to count migrants in and out of the country.
The Tories admit that they are struggling after David Cameron admitted that he would fail to deliver his “no ifs, no buts” pledge to cut net migration to tens of thousands. The prime minister moved to set out what Downing Street describes as a realistic set of measures last Friday to reduce the number of highly skilled workers from east European countries coming to Britain to perform low-skilled jobs by announcing plans to curb access to in-work benefits for EU migrants for four years.
Labour lost Crewe and Nantwich to the Tories in a famous byelection in 2008 in which Labour aides tried to mock the privileged background of the Tory candidate, Edward Timpson, by dressing up in tails. Timpson held on to the seat with a 6,046 majority.
Ukip, which is emerging as a presence in the area, believes it is eating into the Labour vote. Richard Lee, who will be contesting the Crewe and Nantwich seat at the general election, recently came second to Labour in a council byelection in the party’s stronghold of Crewe West. Kevin Hickson won the seat for Labour with 720 votes. Lee came second with 386 votes in the party’s first attempt to contest the seat.
Eyebrows have been raised at the Labour advertisement – suggesting that the party is responding directly to Ukip on immigration – because 96.3% of the population of Crewe and Nantwich is white, according to the 2011 census. Just 5% of the population of Cheshire East was not born in Britain compared with 8% of the population of the UK as a whole.
A Labour spokesperson said: “For the Tories to criticise politicians meeting and listening to people’s concerns at a public event is baffling and hypocritical, and tells you everything you need to know about David Cameron’s out-of-touch Tory party.”
