‘Panicked’ Labour MPs Urge Starmer to Get Tough on Migration to Stave of Farage’s Rising Reform Party

A group of Labour Party MPs have reportedly joined to pressure Prime Minister Keir Starmer to get tough on migration to prevent the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.

There is growing discontent among Labour MPs over Downing Street’s inaction or inability in the face of the Farage party’s surging support.

According to a report from the left-wing Guardian newspaper, a cohort of dozens of Labour MPs from the 89 constituencies in which Reform came in second place in the July general election have formed a pressure group to lobby the government to take a harder line on immigration, the key issue for Reform.

One MP involved in the group told the paper: “There is a major focus now on how to beat Reform. Various groups have been set up and we have been talking to Downing Street about what works. One of our main messages to the leadership is we need to do more on illegal migration especially.”

Despite having vowed to stop the migrant crisis in the English Channel, over 23,000 illegal aliens landed on British shores in the six months after Labour came to power last year, a 29 per cent increase over the same time period in 2023.

Another MP involved in the pressure group demanded that the government “shout louder” about its supposed accomplishments on the illegal immigration front, including having deported 13,500 migrants since coming to power.

However, this pales in comparison to the estimated one million illegals living in the country and is less than half of the number of illegal boat migrants that reached the UK last year alone.

The government, led by former prosecutor Starmer, has pinned its hopes on stemming the tide of illegals by targeting the people smuggling gangs operating on both sides of the Channel and is reportedly preparing to criminalise the handling or supplying of small boats for the purpose of transporting illegals over the waterway from France.

However, Labour, like its Tory predecessor governments, has refused to enact a policy of simply sending migrant boats back to the beaches of France, as has been advocated by Nigel Farage and Reform for years and successfully carried out by former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott with his Operation Sovereign Borders, which all but eliminated illegal boat migration to the former British Dominion from countries like Indonesia.

The failure of Starmer’s government to tackle immigration, alongside other issues such as the continuing economic troubles facing the nation, have been a boon to Farage’s upstart Reform Party.

After winning 14 per cent of the vote in July’s snap general election, the populist-sovereigntist party has surged in the polls and last week topped a major poll for the first time in its history.

The YouGov poll found that 25 per cent of the electorate now backs Reform, compared to 24 per cent for Labour and 21 per cent for the neo-liberal Conservative Party.

Commenting on the political landscape, Mr Farage wrote on the X social media platform on Wednesday: “The Labour Party are panicked. And so they should be.”

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