Ed Miliband urged to harden stance on immigration after slim byelection win

Ed Miliband urged to harden stance on immigration after slim byelection win

Ed Miliband was under renewed pressure on Friday night to harden Labour’s policy on immigration after the party’s perilously narrow win in the Heywood and Middleton byelection.

The slender 617-vote margin in a safe Labour seat revealed deep unease across the party that a Ukip surge could deprive it of a swath of northern marginal seats at next year’s general election.

Labour officials, urging calm in the face of the result as well as Ukip’s dramatic capture of its first seat from the Tories in Clacton, acknowledged Miliband would do more to highlight the party’s policies on immigration in the future.

Miliband admitted that disillusionment with Westminster politics, building for a long time, had led some traditional Labour communities to choose Ukip, adding in a direct message to Ukip supporters: “It is not prejudiced to worry about immigration.” But he said he would not make any false promises and resisted any immediate changes to a policy that he said had already been changed in 2010.