MP: ‘Labour seen as party of migrants, minorities, and people on benefits’

Jonathan Hinder has suggested that “too many working-class people see Labour as the party of immigrants, minorities, those on benefits”, asserting that the party urgently needs to “correct course” or risk losing connection with working class voters.

The Labour MP was speaking in central London at an event put on by the organisation Civic Future, titled “The immigration Overton window”.

The MP, who represents Pendle and Clitheroe in Lancashire, said too many voters felt the party is “not for them anymore”. He argued that there is “nothing economically left-wing” about high levels of immigration, and suggested Labour had the right priorities on immigration but had not yet done enough to bring down net migration levels.

Hinder also said that there is “less and less integration” in the UK, arguing that “we’ve been asleep at the wheel as a country”. There are “in many cases more parallel lives being lived” because of a lack of integration, he claimed.

‘I don’t think anything should be off table’ over ECHR

Hinder, described by the event’s chair as “one of the leaders of the Blue Labour group in parliament”, stated that Britain needed “to drastically reduce immigration, very quickly, and that might mean sometimes prioritising democratic decisions over international legal constraints”.

Speaking about the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which has often faced criticism from the right for judgments stopping deportations, Hinder said: “I think it’s quite clear that it’s not working”.

He added that “as lots of people have said more eloquently than me, the people who signed that originally would be astonished” by “crazy judgements” and “huge judicial over-reach”.

He said the ECHR needed significant change and that he didn’t think “anything should be off the table”. “It just is not good enough for the government to say we can’t do this, even though we know this is what you the voters want.”

He further argued that the UK “has allowed entire sectors of our economy to become structurally dependent on migration, and the state has walked away from actually planning for the skills that we need in those sectors”.

‘I’m not that disappointed’ if lower migration means some universities go bust

“A lot of liberal commentators and academics will say we don’t have enough of [insert profession here] to build the houses we need – the need for which is partly due to huge immigration. So immigration needs to stay high so that we can have the people over to build those houses. It’s a circular, absurd argument.”

He went on to tell the audience that “the state needs to take a much more active role in shaping the economy and having the skills there for those sectors that we really need.”

The MP also argued that “you’ll have people from a very powerful higher education lobby who say, well, we need foreign students to service these universities, which are popping out degrees of dubious quality, of dubious value to the economy”.

He said he was “happy to be bold and say I don’t think we should have anywhere near as many universities and university places”.

He added that if people from the higher education sector said, “if we don’t have these people coming from abroad” universities “are going to go bust”, he would say “OK, I’m not that disappointed”.

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Labour may return to the ‘creative thinking’ that spurred Rwanda plan

Asked by an audience member about the Rwanda scheme, he said that the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, put forward by the last Conservative government, was “chaotic”, but added: “Do we need a deterrent in these circumstances? Yes you do. And I think that is being actively discussed at the moment.”

Hinder said he understood people’s reservations but “that kind of creative thinking is probably going to return very quickly when the government realises it is extremely difficult to take out criminal gangs and [not have others] appear in their place”.

Hinder did signal his approval of the his party’s priorities on immigration, however. “I’m obviously a Labour backbencher, so I should rattle through what the government’s priorities are –essentially to bring down net migration, reduces reliance on overseas labour, tackle and clear the asylum backlog, increased removals.

“Can anyone disagree with that? I think there’s a pretty strong consensus in the country that’s that’s what we want to see. But I think we are yet to see interventions which are going to see those objectives hit.”

Hinder was first elected at the 2024 general election, having previously been in the police service. He was speaking alongside Danish journalist Joachim Olsen.

Olsen was formerly a member of the Danish parliament for the Liberal Alliance party. He stressed that “the debate you’re having now is the debate we had maybe twenty years ago”, arguing that Denmark had moved successfully from a more to a less liberal immigration system.

Labour’s sister party in Denmark is the Social Democrats, who currently lead the government under Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.

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