Short of adding a grateful note of thanks to Nigel Farage to its White Paper on migration next week, it’s hard to think how much more the Government could do to acknowledge the effect of Reform on its policy proposals. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has announced measures to reduce abuses of the asylum system as part of the plans. So applicants from countries whose citizens have a record of overstaying their visas, notably Pakistan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, may find their visa applications refused if they conform to a pattern of those who claim asylum after being admitted to the UK on a work or study visa – a low engagement with their university course could be one indicator.
Yvette isn’t talking enormous figures here, but of the 40,000 asylum claims lodged last year by people who had held a UK visa, 16,000 were originally foreign students, 11,500 had a work visa, 9,500 had a visitor visa and the remaining 7 per cent had other forms of leave. And 40,000 is even more than the number of people coming on small boats, which everyone gets so worked up about. And that emphasis on people overstaying their visas and on abuses of the asylum system is, I surmise, the result of one thing: Reform’s inroads into Labour’s home territory which we saw last week. This isn’t a genius insight but a statement of the obvious. Any Labour bigwig with sense, and that means Wes Streeting, is admitting that the party has a Reform problem.
