I am disappointed with the way the Labour government is heading.

Instead of trying to improve the country, they seem to be going the far-right rhetoric way of blaming immigration and ignoring minority rights.

I felt the need to write my MP Georgia Gould again.

---

Subject: Labour's Stance on Immigration: I am neither a stranger, nor the subject of an experiment

Dear Georgia Gould MP,

What does the Labour Party stand for? Progressive policies to make this country better for its people? Or pandering to far-right Reform-like policies that blame all of this country's problems on immigrants, like myself?

Yesterday, Kier Starmer proclaimed that people like me, who moved to the UK from abroad, did "incalculable damage" to this country.

I had hoped that with Labour coming in after the last election, this sort of anti-immigrant rhetoric would be gone. I expected this from the Tories, and to a greater extend from Reform, but never from your party.

But I am no longer surprised by it.

I was willing to give Labour the benefit of the doubt, but after nearly a year in "power", I haven't seen any positive things that the government has done with its large majority.

Your large majority could easily be used to improve our (economic and cooperative) relations with the EU, fix the wealth and income imbalances by a better (and simpler) tax system with fewer loopholes, or improve the rights of minorities, including LGBTQIA+ rights.

Instead, you seem to prefer a miniscule (and pointless) trade deal with the US, taking benefits away from disabled people, and shitting on the LGBTQIA+ community with this ridiculous stance on who can use which toilet.

And now you've come to blame immigrants.

Like myself, and more than half of the population in Brent 1, were born outside of this country. Are we really the people that do "incalculable damage", or rather, was the "incalculable damage" caused by 14 years of Tory mismanagement, which your government promised to fix?

Are these quotes not really quite the same as Theresa May's nasty party's "citizens of nowhere"?

Is this really what the Labour party stands for?

I also don't understand what you are trying to achieve with pandering to the far-right. You won't win the Reform voters, and you'll end up losing support to actual progressive parties like the Greens and the Liberal Democrats. Morgan McSweeney's approach is not going to do you any favours. If Reform ends up winning the next election, that is going to be on you.

It also isn't going to help growing the country. You will know that immigration is what makes the care system at least sort of work; you will know that the building industry can't hire enough labourers to build enough houses to meet your housing targets, and you will know that economic growth will happen by a comprehensive reset of economic relations with the European Union.

As a Dutch-born naturalised citizen of the UK, I will vote against any party in Westminster that engages in anti-immigrant or anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric on principle, before even considering other policy pledges. And campaign against ones who do.

I bet am not alone in this.

Yours sincerely,

Derick Rethans

---

Please write to your own MP if you share similar concerns, and feel free to copy parts of this letter and adapt them to your own examples. You can find out how to contact your elected officials on WriteToThem.