he said sort of cryptic things, migration is too high, yes, i think 700,000 were there it s too big, but today, for the first time in this campaign, he s been clear about a commitment to get the numbers down, which that is a different thing to saying i think it s too high, why? should the next general election be around that time, people like you and me will say you made a commitment in the last general election, how have you delivered against it? i also think it s significant because of the politics of it and the politics of it are pretty obvious and we should bill it out anyway. this is keir starmer, yet again, as he has every day since, though, it was a bit different at the start, he is trying to basically bash voters over the head with a message that he is moving the labour party way to the right of where it was in 2019 and 2017 general elections when their approach to immigration would ve been quite different to this. that is the message here. we can see this is the mess
Our Political Editor nick watt reports. For the moment, our unlikely Prime Minister reigned supreme, a by election win in an area that had been beyond the reach of the tories since the interwar years leaves theresa may surveying a Political Landscape with few credible opponents. Theresa may once likened herself to Queen Elizabeth the first, a woman who thrived in a male dominated world by knowing her mind. But shes never seen herself as a glory on a figure but shes never seen herself as a gloriana like figure and she is one of the least assuming occupants of number ten. Shes more Likejohn Major than Margaret Thatcher in her imperial pomp and, just Likejohn Major, who secured the highest number of votes of any tory leader, theresa may is not the slightest bit complacent and knows that around every corner there are bear traps. Theresa may has been shrewd in her position, she has a huge amount of authority and the Conservative Party believes shes an election winner. Those three things giv
things down anyway. in that respect labour seem to have set themselves a target they will hit. they say they will do that by training more brits to fill the skills gaps. that is offset with later conversations you had with victoria atkins who talked about social care and staffing there. i was very struck that shami chakrabarti, a member ofjeremy corbyn s shadow cabinet, on the left of the party, was quite supportive of that approach. she said, yes, if this reduction in immigration is fuelled by upscaling, to use that awful word, she used it, by the way, then that is a good thing. it is very different for us older people, it is very different to the kind of language that labour used a while ago if you go back to the 2010 election. labour was sort of a bit panicked into suddenly saying more about immigration because for ages it was we don t talk about that because of movement under the eu.