A survey of UK Labour Party voters found that a majority think that the government should work to reduce immigration into Britain, putting further pressure on fledgling Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The JL Partners polling firm asked over 1,000 voters of the left-wing Labour Party to put themselves on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 representing a desire for significant reduction of migration and 100 for more migration into the country.
The survey found that 57 per cent put themselves below 50, meaning that they favoured cutting immigration, compared to just 27 per cent who supported more foreigners entering the country, The Sun reports.
While those surveyed put Prime Minister Starmer’s position at 43 out of 100, the average Labour voter scored themselves at 37, meaning that his own base is to the right of the government on immigration.
The poll also found that around one in four Labour Party voters would consider defecting and voting for Brexit leader Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
While the Farage-led party holds many traditionally conservative policy positions, Reform UK has made its mission to target voters in working-class Labour Party strongholds, many of whom voted for Brexit over a desire to reduce immigration.
Indeed, in last month’s election, Farage’s upstart Reform party outperformed the Tories to come in second-place to the Labour Party in 98 seats, suggesting that the relatively new party’s message is resonating in the so-called “Red Wall” areas of the country.
The latest survey comes as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper promised to deport more than 14,000 illegal immigrants over the next half year.
The promise has been met with derision, as it pales in comparison to the number of illegal aliens currently in the country, tens of thousands of whom are likely to be granted asylum by the new left-wing government.
Former Border Force chief Tony Smith said of Cooper’s deportation push: “We were doing 45,000 on my watch in 2013 so I think these are all sort of baby steps in the right direction to say the right things [but] we haven’t got a solution for stopping the boats… that’s the problem. This does not solve the problem.”
Nigel Farage also agreed that the government needs to address the thousands of boat migrants illegally crossing the English Channel, telling GB News this week: “You can put a thousand new enforcement officers in place, but if the European Court of Human Rights stops you deporting people, what difference does it make?
“A country is not a country without controlling its borders. And you’ll never do that with that activist foreign court in Strasbourg, which, remember, stopped that plane taking off to Rwanda back in 2022. We are clear; that is the first step.”
Speaking from his parliamentary constituency in Clacton, the new MP added: “People are unhappy, and they feel that in the Brexit referendum and in voting for Boris, they voted for all of this to be brought under control, and they frankly have been ignored.
“And that’s why they voted for me here. That’s why they voted Reform.”
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