Yvette Cooper steered well clear of repeating Keir Starmer’s controversial claim that “Britain risks becoming an island of strangers,” during a tense round of interviews this morning, and it didn’t go unnoticed.
The phrase, which Starmer used earlier in the week while launching his government’s tougher immigration policy, sparked immediate backlash, with many drawing uncomfortable parallels to Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 speech. Powell warned at the time that rising immigration would leave white Britons feeling like “strangers in their own land” — rhetoric long condemned as inflammatory, reported HuffPost.
So when LBC host Nick Ferrari put the same phrase to the home secretary, asking: “Do you think we live in an island of strangers?” Cooper didn’t take the bait.
“I think our country has benefitted over very many years through generations through people coming to the UK, being part of our communities and working in our public services,” she replied, carefully sidestepping the label. She added that migration does need to be “controlled and managed,” and said it’s important that the numbers come down.
Ferrari pressed again: “So we are living in a partial island of strangers, then?”
Still avoiding the term, Cooper responded vaguely: “I think, er, we are a country –” before Ferrari jumped in again: “Either we are or we aren’t. Are we or are we not an island of strangers?”
“No,” she finally said, before pivoting back to Labour’s priorities on training workers in the UK and bringing net migration down.
Over on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Cooper was grilled further about whether Starmer’s phrase was an intentional echo of Powell’s language.
Presenter Nick Robinson asked bluntly: “Did he know, did you know, this was an echo of Enoch Powell’s speech from 1968 that people would ‘find themselves made strangers in their own country’?”
Cooper said comparisons to Powell were “not right,” arguing that Starmer also spoke of the UK’s diversity being a strength.
When asked if the choice of language made her uncomfortable, she said: “No, I think we do have to be able to have a serious conversation about policies.”
Pressed on Labour’s plans, Cooper refused to give a specific target for reducing net migration, which currently stands at around 700,000 per year. She argued that setting arbitrary figures — as the previous Tory government did — “undermines the credibility of the whole system.”
For now, the phrase “island of strangers” may stick with Starmer, but his home secretary clearly wants no part in repeating it.
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