Quotes of the day 23rd May 2025

Former Labour and Trade union staffer Dan Hodges on Sir Keir Starmer's claim that Labour has halved migration. 

"Sorry, this is just a straightforward lie. Labour hasn't halved migration and Keir Starmer knows it.This is a product of decisions taken before he entered office."















I don't often use or allow allegations of lying on this blog because it is the most over-used insult in modern politics and the misuse of the word "lie" by applying it to any statement the person is using it disagrees with has reduced its impact when used against genuine lies.

But the tweet above from the PM is at the very least seriously disingenuous.

The reduction, in "today's stats" which Starmer was quoting, referred to a fall in migration as between the calendar years ending December 2023 and December 2024 as the ONS tweet below shows.

So the first part of the fall actually took place during the Conservatives' last six months in office, and the rest can credibly be argued to be the impact of decisions made by James Cleverley as home secretary which were still filtering through.

Here is what James Cleverley himself had to say on the subject, with the ONS headline tweet:






















The ONS also wrote:










In other words, the reduction in net migration had noting to do with the actions of the Labour government, and it is very difficult indeed to believe that the Prime Minister did not realise this.

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