Burnham’s immigration U-turn shows the limit of his power

Last week, Shabana Mahmood performed a U-turn on her proposed immigration restrictions. In recognition of the sheer scale of the Boriswave, and the massive cost of granting those migrants and their dependants indefinite leave to remain (ILR), she had planned changes which would delay the date of settlement of an estimated 800,000 people. The Home Office projected this would save the taxpayer from what Mahmood called a “£10bn drain on our public finances”. Now, though, those restrictions are very much looser. The number of people facing a delay to ILR is down to 500,000. The Home Secretary has thus far refused to say how much of that £10bn bill has been reinstated as a result, saying only that the surviving portion of the plan would save “billions”. So why change tack now? Is this perhaps a sign that public concern about rates of immigration and a lack of border control has dissipated? Might the Government now believe that the issue poses less of a threat to its polling and political agenda? I doubt it. Yes, such an about-face could be interpreted that way, but doing so would mean misreading the pressures that led to the change. Instead, this is a question of internal party political issues forcing the new government into a position in which it surely knows it remains vulnerable, but it has no choice but to bend regardless. While Mahmood’s policies had attracted a lot of heat and criticism, it’s important to distinguish where that opposition came from. More of the public supported the plan than opposed it, so this wasn’t a case of a U-turn prompted by a general outcry like, say, Starmer’s changes to the winter fuel allowance.Rather, the problem lay within the Labour Party. Labour and Lib Dem voters were jointly the least supportive of raising the qualifying period for settlement from five to 10 years. Labour voters were evenly split on raising the higher threshold from 10 to 15 years, with net approval at zero, just above Green voters at minus two percentage points. In that sense, the retreat mirrors Andy Burnham’s wider strategy of consolidating his own base and working to win over Green and Lib Dem voters, rather than contesting toe to toe for switchers from Reform and the Conservatives. But there’s more to it than that. While Labour voters were split on the topic, Labour Party members had already shown strong opposition to longer waits for settlement in 2025 polling. Labour MPs, too, were deeply troubled by it. This latter group seem to have been crucial in reversing the government’s position, and it’s easy to see why Burnham was wary of rocking their boat so early. The last two years have been torrid for Labour backbenchers, who were by turns frustrated, disappointed and infuriated by bearing the brunt of Starmer and Reeves’ miscalculations and missteps. Under the previous administration, they eventually came to the conclusion that loyalty was more painful and dangerous than open rebellion. The new Prime Minister, who gained power as a direct result of that discontent, has no intention of forcing a test of loyalty or pushing their patience so early on. In other words, it isn’t that immigration has simmered down as an issue, but that even a triumphant Andy Burnham knows there are limits on what he can safely do with his bruised, and sometimes turbulent, parliamentary party. That undoubtedly staves off any imminent danger of an internal rebellion on a controversial topic, at least now that Mahmood has accepted what must be a galling climbdown without (public) complaint. But it also means accepting the ongoing existence of an unexploded device under the Government’s poll ratings. Immigration could still come back to bite them, and if it does then they will be the party which chose to water down measures that they told the nation were necessary to address it. If you want a measure of why that is risky, just look to the polls. In YouGov’s tracker of the top issues concerning the public, immigration has been jostling with the economy for the top spot since June 2025. The fact that Nigel Farage and Reform UK have suffered a slow puncture in their election polling over recent months is true despite the salience of the topic, not because of any decline in public concern. That said, the Government isn’t flying completely blind. It has two sources of potential hope. The first is that the OBR currently projects that net immigration will fall through the remainder of 2026 and 2027, which if true will hand ministers statistics that they can point to in response to any criticism. The second lies in new research by CT Group, the consultancy founded by Sir Lynton Crosby, erstwhile strategist for the Conservative Party and its Australian allies. Crosby suggests that in Britain and Australia, the issue can be at least partially defused by giving voters back a sense of control over their lives and a positive future for their country. That means economic growth. If we accept that analysis, then by buying himself time with his party and his MPs by kicking the can down the road on immigration, Burnham may yet be able to neutralise much of the issue by generating jobs and growth instead. There’s the rub. Growth – like money to spend – is proving hard to come by. Deliver it, and the Prime Minister may yet get away with his immigration gamble. Fail, and he’ll be left wishing he had let Mahmood get the job done.