Keir Starmer has decried Reform UK’s “racist” plans to revoke the rights of thousands of people to live in Britain, as a number of cabinet ministers escalated attacks on Nigel Farage on the first day of the Labour party conference.
The prime minister said Farage’s plans to revoke indefinite leave to remain for families who may have spent years working in Britain could “tear this country apart”, though he said he understood that many people tempted to vote for Reform were frustrated at the slow pace of change.
The Guardian understands Labour HQ is to increase its efforts to contact voters who may be considering voting for Reform. MPs and activists will be told to get on an election footing to seek out new data on non-voters in their patches in an effort to avoid the mistakes progressives made that led to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, are also expected to launch muscular attacks on Farage and Reform on Monday in a show of unity from a party that has been under significant pressure since the summer.
Reeves will issue a veiled warning to businesses about the instability they would face and the potential breakdown of trade deals. Mahmood will announce tough new conditions for leave to remain and stress that Labour must be tough on migration or voters will fall for Farage’s “false promises”.
Across the conference, ministers urged party unity and called on members to turn their fire on Farage rather than Starmer’s leadership. Several explicitly criticised the leadership ambitions of the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham. The Scottish deputy leader, Jackie Bailie, said Burnham should “stop this nonsense”, and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, said the party should get behind “the team captain”.
Speaking at a conference fringe event, Burnham said he had “done nothing more than launch a debate” and that he was worried about the party’s perilous position ahead of local elections next year. He called for Labour to end a “climate of fear” in the party and said there should not be demands of “simplistic statements of loyalty” from people who disagreed on policy.
On the opening day of the conference in Liverpool, Starmer said Reform’s proposal to end the main route for immigrants to gain British citizenship was immoral.
Reform has pledged to abolish indefinite leave to remain, which is open to people who have worked and lived in the UK legally for five continuous years and their dependents, threatening tens of thousands of people legally living in the UK with deportation unless they meet strict rules.
Starmer told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “Well, I do think that it is a racist policy. I do think it is immoral. It needs to be called out for what it is.”
Asked if Reform was trying to appeal to racists, he said: “No, I think there are plenty of people who either vote Reform or are thinking of voting Reform who are frustrated. They had 14 years of failure under the Conservatives, they want us to change things. They may have voted Labour a year ago, and they want the change to come more quickly. I actually do understand that.
“It is one thing to say we’re going to remove illegal migrants, people who have no right to be here. I’m up for that. It is a completely different thing to say we are going to reach in to people who are lawfully here and start removing them. They are our neighbours. They’re people who work in our economy. They are part of who we are. It will rip this country apart.”
A number of cabinet ministers have told the Guardian that the party is directing its entire effort into combating Reform and Farage in the belief that the Tories will not stage a recovery before the next election.
Starmer will tell grassroots members that they must go through their data with a fine-toothed comb to revisit long-term non-voters and seek out whether there are significantly higher numbers of likely Reform voters among them.
Darren Jones, whom the prime minister has appointed as his closest ministerial ally in Downing Street, is taking a close interest in the work to improve the party’s ground knowledge, telling members they need to increase their contact with people who do not regularly vote.
Party campaigners normally do not canvas people who say they do not intend to vote, but local parties will be told that taking such an approach could lose Labour the next election. They will be urged to establish contact with non-voters to find out what their main concerns are.
Labour officials believe that many non-voters feel the impact of poor NHS services and the cost of living in their daily lives, and that the party can take the focus away from immigration by homing in on those two former priorities.
Ministers do believe, however, that the party has to show progress in tackling illegal migration, including the issues of small boat Channel crossings and asylum hotels, while bringing down net migration and defending better integration.
Mahmood will say in her speech on Monday that people seeking indefinite leave to remain will have to show they have integrated and contributed to society through national insurance payments and voluntary work, and not relied on benefits.
She will raise the possibility that migrants could live in the UK for a decade and still be denied permission to stay if they fail to meet new standards, while others will be fast-tracked. A consultation will be launched later this year.
A number of cabinet ministers speaking on conference fringes backed Starmer’s decision to call out Farage’s policy as racist. The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, refused to call Farage a racist but said: “That is a racist policy against people who are born abroad, and it’s absolutely right to call it out.”
Starmer’s comments, however, have been seized on by Conservative and Reform politicians. Reform’s head of policy, Zia Yusuf, posted: “Calling people ‘racist’ for having legitimate concerns about immigration. Fresh new thinking from No 10.”
Senior Labour sources have told the Guardian they believe Starmer has struck the right balance by labelling the policy as racist because they believe Farage has gone far beyond what most voters deem acceptable. Polls suggest the majority of voters do not want to see rights revoked from migrants working legally in the UK.
A TUC/Hope Not Hate poll of 48,000 voters commissioned by the Labour donor Dale Vince put Reform six points ahead of Labour on Sunday but also found that most voters said they lived in peaceful, friendly communities and enjoyed friendships with people of other ethnicities, religions and backgrounds. They ranked immigration as only the fourth most important issue facing the country.
Additional reporting by Helena Horton
