How far-right rhetoric on migration went mainstream

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, what is fuelling the rise in anti-migrant sentiment in the UK?

0:20There was a story of a group of schoolchildren at a scout camp in Wales who were racially abused online, accused of being illegal migrants. A Welsh police force is investigating after a scout group received racist abuse after being mistaken for migrants. On August 6th, a bus travelling from Scotland carrying the scouts to Cefilly was targeted by members of the public. There was MP Rupert Lowe mistaking a crew of charity rowers for migrants on a dinghy and furiously reporting them to the authorities. The independent MP posted a photo on X showing a boat near Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, warning that if people on board were illegal migrants, he would be using every tool to get them deported.

1:02There was the failed would-be mayor of Peterborough spreading false claims that a church group on a trip to the seaside was actually a busload of migrants. And then there was Shadow Chancellor Robert Jenrick staking out Calais beaches at dawn. It's not long before a man warns me to leave the camp. And moments later, bottles are thrown at me. declaring that he didn't want, quote, men from backward countries who broke into Britain illegally, quote, to share a neighbourhood with his children.

1:37A visceral rage has gripped Britain in recent weeks. The political fever around small boat crossings on the Channel means almost half the country now believe there are more illegal immigrants in the UK than legal ones. To be clear, that is very, very wrong. From The Guardian, I'm Narsheen Iqbal. Today in Focus, how did we get here?

2:07Maya Goodfellow, you're a writer and academic and the author of Hostile Environment, How Immigrants Became Scapegoats. So you're very familiar with the language used and the arguments had about immigration in the UK. In the last few weeks, we've seen anti-migrant riots in Ballymena. We've seen mass protests outside hotels, housing asylum seekers with more planned across the country. And just this level of public unrest that feels alarming. How would you describe the current mood and what's been happening?

2:41Dr Maya Goodfellow:So I think what we've been seeing is demonstrations being organised outside of asylum hotels often, not exclusively but that is happening often in places like Epping and people talking about the supposed problems that asylum seekers and migrants are bringing to the areas in which they're being put up in these hotels and so there's a real strong backlash against these people being put in hotels and being allowed so-called allowed into the country And you need to go home. A stark message from anti-migrant protesters. Their anger, palpable. And their target, a hotel housing asylum seekers in Bournemouth on England's south coast.

3:27We don't know who's in there. It could be a bunch of tourists. What makes them more dangerous? We don't know where they're from. Don't know who they are. Undocumented males. All of a certain age. Been invited.

3:39Dr Maya Goodfellow:Yeah, I think it is alarming and I don't think we should underestimate the impact that these kinds of protests, A, kind of have on the public mood, but also on the very people who are being protested against, if you like. So the people who are trying to seek asylum in the UK, who are often in these hotels, their accommodation is very poor, their experience usually isn't very good, and they've made very dangerous journeys, often having to leave their homes to get here. So it is important to recognise as well that there are often counter-protests. So yes, these protests are real, there's a sentiment there that is very, very real in terms of an anti-migrant sentiment.

4:13Dr Maya Goodfellow:But there are counter-protests of people who do not agree with this kind of rhetoric that we've seen. We're seeing the very dangerous situation, which is kind of a tinder keg that's been, you know, the fans are being flamed by people like Nigel Farage. And it's right, yeah, the refugees are not the ones to blame. But there is this very, very tense and quite scary atmosphere, I think, of anti-immigration hostility. And for the people who've come to this country and arrived to this country so recently, it must be incredibly scary to be experiencing that. There is so much disinformation that is spread online, but what do we know about what people are sharing on their screens?

4:53What are they seeing?

4:54Dr Maya Goodfellow:I think one of the things that people are really focusing on is this idea of criminality and safety. and the idea that in particular young British women are not safe because there are supposedly lots of male asylum seekers being housed in different parts of the country. And you're right to be scared. You're scared because up to a quarter of sex offences in this country are committed by foreign nationals. You're scared of asylum seekers attacking our women and our girls, our mums and our daughters. I think there's a real problem with that narrative, not to downplay when there are instances of violence or abuse, but by focusing on the asylum part instead of the gender violence part, it feels like one's being amped up over the other.

5:39Dr Maya Goodfellow:This idea that it is supposedly male asylum seekers who are more likely to commit these crimes. There is not evidence that asylum seekers are more likely to engage in criminality or to engage in any kind of sexual assault or sexual violence, but this is a narrative that is not only being shared online, but has been stoked for quite some time by mainstream politicians, even if very subtly. There is this idea that people who come to this country are of a so-called different culture and are of a different type than people who are born in Britain. And this is a really racialised narrative that buys into a lot of these ideas around criminality.

6:15Dr Maya Goodfellow:And so I think that's a big part of this, people believing that they are not safe in their local areas.

6:27Maya, as all this has been happening, we've seen a real shift in the way that politicians talk about migrants and about immigration. How is the Labour government specifically talking about this issue?

6:38Dr Maya Goodfellow:I mean, the Labour government are consistently talking about asylum and immigration and conflating these two things as well, as if it is a problem, as if it's something that needs to be stopped and reduced. And so they have this real securitised approach, both in terms of policy and in terms of rhetoric. So whilst they dropped the Rishi Sunak line of stop the boats, they basically subbed that out for smash the gangs, which is really playing into the same kind of ideas. I'm absolutely determined that we're going to stop people crossing the channel in small boats. That is being run by gangs who are making a huge amount of money from the vile trade of people smuggling and getting them into those boats.

7:25And I was chief prosecutor for five years, and one of the things that I learned then was, if you're going to smash a gang that was driven by money, follow the money.

7:35Dr Maya Goodfellow:And so there is this kind of fixation on people who are making these very dangerous journeys is casting them as if they are so-called illegal immigrants. People who are arriving on small boats, illegal crossings, should be returned and the money, the thousands of pounds that they have spent given to criminal people smugglers, that money should be lost and that we should instead be transferring people who have applied legally, who have gone through security checks. The language is one thing, but what about policy? What have Labour done since they've come into government or what have they announced?

8:08Dr Maya Goodfellow:Yeah, so they have done, unfortunately, quite a bit. They did drop the Rwanda scheme, which was welcome. But they have actually broadly continued down the same road that the Tories were going down some of the policies that they were pursuing. So they're really kind of interested in amping up border security. So having what they call a more counter-terrorism approach that is trying to stop people from making these journeys across the channel, which we know doesn't work. It just makes them more dangerous. they have announced this one-in-one-out policy with the French government, which essentially means someone who comes into the country via a small boat, most likely, will be returned to France and they will take someone whose claim has a greater chance of success.

8:59Dr Maya Goodfellow:And, you know, that might sound to some people like it's not that bad, but actually it's incredibly complicated to do a scheme like that. This is rush hour for those desperate to board the morning boat to Britain. But the asylum seekers hoping to ride this tide are up against a forceful political current. The policy means for those arriving, increased detentions can be expected. But deportations are unclear. There remain questions over just how much this policy can change. When it comes to the policy, they're so interested in making it so that the routes to getting here and then the routes to actually being able to claim refugee status are more difficult.

9:43Dr Maya Goodfellow:And so one of the things that they've done is if you come by so-called unlawful means, the government plans is that you will be disqualified from passing the good character test because you've come through this kind of irregular route. It does seem, even anecdotally, there is a shift. Not just some of the stuff we've seen from government, but from parties on the right as well. I mean, look at Robert Jenrick saying, I don't want my young daughters to share a neighbourhood with men who broke into this country illegally and about whom we know next to nothing. You've got reform saying that women across the UK are at risk of sexual assault and rape because of small boat migrants arriving from, quote, predominantly Muslim countries.

10:22I don't feel safe. And as a mother, I no longer feel that our children live in a safe, beautiful haven of Britain that I grew up in. This stuff seemed beyond the pale and unsayable just a decade ago. What have you made of this rhetoric in recent months?

10:39Dr Maya Goodfellow:I mean, I think it is pretty terrifying. When I listen to mainstream radio, like in the morning when I'm getting ready, and I hear news presenters interviewing politicians and talking about illegal immigrants, it's kind of almost impossible to challenge. And even if you challenge it, you're then kind of cast as being way out there, totally out of line with the British public. The Sun this morning is claiming that migrants are getting the kind of discounts that go or should go only to low earning families here in Britain. Is it right or not right that local councils provide for people who've come on small boats and are in hotels in their area these kind of benefits?

11:21So we as a government are looking to crack down on those coming here on small boats illegally.

11:26Dr Maya Goodfellow:And so there is a real normalisation of talking about people who are seeking asylum and also migrants more broadly as criminal elements, as people who can't be trusted, as people who are dangerous. And I think it's really scary that this is where we're headed with very little resistance. So it does just feel like actually a broad part of the British media and political class is now repeating the very framing that we would maybe have seen a bit more resistance to a few years ago. I mean, though it is technically illegal to enter the UK without a visa, previously refugees were protected from that law if they claimed asylum.

12:10Now, under legislation brought in in the late Tory years, that protection was stripped away. So the broader point, of course, is that by describing these people as illegal immigrants, you then shape the conversation in a certain way, whereas you could just call them what they are and have always been people seeking asylum. How do you think some of these ideas have gone from existing from the fringes to becoming mainstream talking points?

12:37Dr Maya Goodfellow:I think that the far right have a significant role to play there and actually the kind of success of someone like Nigel Farage and the kind of the doors that have been opened for him and the space that's been given to primarily him, but also people like him, both in the media and in the kind of political environment. One of the things that often gets said in British political debate about immigration is that when immigration is too high, you have a backlash against it from the public. But what that always misses, always is ignored, is the conversation that's going on in which that supposed backlash is being born in, which is also toxic rhetoric and anti-immigration views being really widely spread.

13:22Dr Maya Goodfellow:and I do think that we should be looking at the right and what the right are doing in the way that the far right and the right are playing into this and really using it but we should also be focusing our attention on what the government are saying what people to the left of the government are saying and that is sometimes very bad sometimes it's the the rhetoric is is just as is negative it's demonizing

13:55Maya, what do you think has shifted in the time since Nigel Farage first entered public consciousness in which he was seen as someone not to be taken too seriously to now being talked up as a future prime minister? I mean, something has dramatically shifted and there is also this appeasement of right-wing ideas in mainstream politics. Where do you root that? How has it got to this point?

14:20Dr Maya Goodfellow:Nigel Farage and the kind of what he represents, I mean that has been years in the making. Brexit really helped, right? The whole Brexit campaign really, really helped to mainstream that to suggest that he was kind of representative of a big portion of public opinion. Whichever way you cut this, immigration is the number one issue in British politics. It has been for some years. so people are very upset they're very unhappy they're seeing the impact on local schools they're seeing the impact on gp services they're seeing the impact on housing or the inability of young people to get on the housing ladder so that's why it's the number one issue and i think we should never downplay the way that race and racism helps to fuel a lot of this debate but i also think it would be a mistake to not recognize that the country more broadly is falling apart if anyone anyone who uses public services or who i don't know takes public transport whatever it is goes to a local gp you can see it you can feel it i can feel it that i do think plays a role in the being politicians being able to tap into this kind of anger and like i say it's not to downplay the racism that is also embedded in that um to say that it's only economic because it's not It's obviously more complicated than that.

15:37Dr Maya Goodfellow:But it means that when you even get middle class people who are saying they don't like immigration, they feel like they're speaking to something that is like actually going on in the country, which is things are falling apart. Things are getting worse. Schools are getting worse. And that is true. That bit's true. But why does immigration become that scapegoat for a sense of decline, for the lack of opportunity, for austerity, social housing, schools, NHS and so on? I think because it gives people a real figure to look at. so one of the things is it creates this like this is who's to blame whereas you do have that kind of response on the left sometimes of like the millionaires and the billionaires but they aren't the people who live next door to you they are not the people who are just around the corner or the people who you where you can go and stand outside the hotel and shout abuse at and so it's like this feeling that you can get by directing your anger to something tangible and real And so immigration is such a, depressingly, such a useful tool for politicians and others who want to engage in this kind of anti-migrant politics.

16:35Dr Maya Goodfellow:And because these are real people and they are there and you can see them, then your GP waiting surgery, you can hear people talking a different language on the bus or whatever it is, it's real. whereas the millionaire, the billionaire, whoever, the government minister making the decision to, I don't know, give a contract to one of his friends, they're removed from you and you kind of don't expect them to behave any differently and you can't really do much about it is how it feels and so it becomes a very useful kind of... The easy target. Yeah, I think so. Coming up, how can we talk differently about immigration?

17:20Mai, you wrote for The Guardian that there are no legitimate concerns about migration, but clearly there is a big swathe of the public who think otherwise. Small boat crossings are at the highest ever peak. 50 ,000 people have made that perilous journey since Labour took power a year ago. Now, they, of course, represent a tiny fraction of overall net migration to the UK, which peaked under the Tories at around 860 ,000 and is now half that under Labour according to the ONS. These figures, I guess, you know, they sound big, but what do you make of them? As soon as you talk about numbers, you have a problem

17:57Dr Maya Goodfellow:because I accept that numbers are going to be talked about, but the late, great cultural theorist Stuart Hall once said, in the 1970s, he said, the moment you talk about numbers, it's always going to be too many. It's always going to be too many. And so I'm not saying we don't have the discussion. I think where things are at now, maybe we do need to point out that, you know, 72 % of people who are fleeing their home country are actually in neighbouring countries. They don't come to the UK. We have a tiny proportion of the world's refugees. We don't have, like, significantly high numbers, if you even compare to other European countries.

18:34Dr Maya Goodfellow:I do think if we're going to talk about the numbers, if we're going to talk about the reality of what immigration is in Britain, is I don't believe that people's right to be here and to move here should be dependent on what their economic contribution is. But there is a reality where we have an ageing population. We have skills shortages, not because people aren't, just because people aren't being trained up. Like that is part of the issue, but that's not because of immigration. And so the reason immigration figures are high is because the country needs workers. So it's to fill these gaps, as we've seen in social care, in health care.

19:09Dr Maya Goodfellow:Yeah, and really what should be happening, where our conversation should be is how can we make the terms and conditions on which people are doing that better? So people don't have to have like temporary visas, which often happens, aren't in low paid work, like increase the level of care work pay. So that even if it is people coming from abroad doing it, they're still paid a fair wage. You know, there is a problem there in terms of how our economy is functioning because we have an economy that's so reliant on the service sector. But to suggest immigration is the problem there is incorrect. and to ignore that actually the country does need people to come in and then to treat them badly when they do, I think is mad policy.

19:46Why can't or won't Labour push back against this framing? Why are they echoing all the negative perceptions about immigration? I think the Labour government believe that it is politically unfeasible

19:57Dr Maya Goodfellow:and not possible to push back against it. I think they may be, they have in their head this kind of fictional voter that they're trying to win over. Why do you say fictional? Well, I think some of it's true, some of it's not. And so they had this idea of like this kind of, this idea of a white working class person who has particular views, thinks in a particular way, lives in a particular part of the country, usually the North. It's like very socially conservative, essentially. And so I think that they have this idea that immigration is one of the things that they cannot really move the dial on.

20:32Dr Maya Goodfellow:And so they have to meet the public where they are. and I think it is right to recognize that there is widespread anti-immigration feeling in Britain as historically has been the case. It's true, I wouldn't downplay that. I think it's wrong to suggest you can't change that and to say when you have this huge majority that you're not going to try and shift the dial I think is a real dereliction of duty and very dangerous and unfortunately in line with some of the other things that they're doing of not being willing to push back against what has essentially been the status quo in Britain for some time.

21:03Dr Maya Goodfellow:I'd prefer that we just saw like some even just some like left politicians just get into an argument with someone about it just see what they actually think as opposed to couching it yeah well what could Labour be saying and doing instead in your view if you're writing that policy what I would want to see from the government is they're probably never going to say and do what I would I would like them to do but even just pushing back against some of the criminality language the idea that people who are coming are criminals who need to be kind of contained and they get a problem for british society you know there's a lot of focus on kia starmer using the asylum of the strangers phrase yes that was bad but actually if you look at everything else he said in that speech and everything he's been saying on his x account it's really it's like toned down so it's not so inflammatory as that but it's it's really bad so he had very recently he had just a series of tweets about immigration and one of them was if you come to this country illegally you will face detention and return if you come to this country and commit a crime we will deport you as soon as possible that might sound reasonable to people but what it really suggests to the public is that there's a major problem of people coming here so-called illegally and there's a major problem of people coming here committing crimes and the government is putting out videos of people like deportation raids and people in detention centers which again like if you go and look at some of that some of those videos it just conjures up this idea that the country is got this major problem and the government is buying into that and Maya in the meantime what impact does all this extreme rhetoric have on people and on communities that aren't white who are just going about their daily lives in Britain yeah I think anyone who like lived through last last summer will have gotten texts and will have gotten messages of people wanting them not to go are in particular areas if they're not white and I think it does create this kind of feeling of hostility and fear and there is still a conflation you know we're often told that immigration and race are separate debates and they're not part of the same kind of discussion and I think that's that's misleading I think it's shifted over time but there is this idea of if you look like you are an immigrant you're more likely to be seen as not British and an immigrant than someone who isn't going to be racialized as white.