Next year, Britain will experience emigration. What can Burnham do about it?

Andy Burnham’s decision to retain Shabana Mahmood as his home secretary is a signal of continuity with the Starmer government on immigration. The vibes of immigration politics are particularly divisive for Labour MPs. Place too little emphasis on control and you risk handing the initiative to Farage. Go too tough and you risk alienating voters who are being drawn to other progressive options, particularly the Greens.

Burnham hopes that if he engages more tactfully with the parliamentary party, then he can help bring a greater sense of clarity among Labour MPs. Yet the case for change is not only about these political cross-pressures. It is also about the real policy challenges faced by the new government.

Burnham inherits a stalemated stand-off over the government’s controversial reforms to the immigrant settlement rules. Labour’s 2024 manifesto said nothing at all on this topic. But proposals to double and triple the length of time it takes for an immigrant to achieve permanent status have sparked a major backbench revolt, particularly over applying those rules to care workers and others already in the UK.

Mahmood appeared to have reluctantly accepted the case for compromise. That could mean keeping settlement at five years, with some restrictions on access to benefits.

Burnham has pledged to “place the care of people at the heart of everything I do.” A system where people faced a 15 year wait to achieve settled status, during which time they could potentially lose their legal right to be in Britain at all, was a recipe for chaos and cruelty rather than control.

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Labour also pledged to reduce net migration to sustainable levels – but without yet defining what that means. It inherited net migration at 800,000. It halved in 2024, halved again in 2025 to 171,000, and is set to halve again in 2026 to the lowest level this century. Net emigration is likely in 2027. Yet these dramatic falls did not change the government’s argument about the need to keep cutting – and only one in six voters are yet aware that numbers began falling at all.

Burnham’s government needs a proper plan – with the home secretary presenting an annual immigration budget in parliament. That should set a speed limit on the pace of change, with no return to record levels, while defending the immigration it wants to keep too, including setting a floor to avoid the damage that sustained net emigration would cause.

John Healey as chancellor will need to account for the fiscal impacts of lower immigration. The OBR model is premised on net migration averaging 235,000 for the rest of the parliament. That is almost 100,000 too high – making tight public finances £13bn tighter. The government needs to stabilise net migration, rather than enter an unwinnable auction to eliminate it.

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Public concern about immigration has been primarily about the visible lack of control of boats in the channel. Small boat arrivals are down 45% this year. It is a Europe-wide fall, rather than one attributable to UK policy. 20,000 arrivals rather than 40,000 make little difference to the public politics – visible arrivals get reported more than invisible downward trends.

The government is committed to a new safe route – and a community sponsorship programme. The question is whether to start small – until boat crossings are down – or to see a more ambitious project as a crucial tool of control, by offering a larger UK controlled route as the basis of an agreement with Europe on returns.

Control through cooperation can work, just as the performative and polarising “control theatre” of Rwanda-style schemes has failed.

That is how the Burnham government can fuse control with compassion. Bridging Labour’s divides depends on making a clear distinction between, on the one hand the social democratic case for controlling immigration fairly, and on the other, the politics of remigration and racism of the authoritarian populist new right.