Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to immigration is too London-centric and risks driving Labour supporters into the arms of Ukip, Carwyn Jones, the first minister of Wales, has said.

Jones, the most powerful Labour politician in government, disagreed with the position of Corbyn and his shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, who have both defended freedom of movement between the UK and the rest of the EU.



Asked for his views on Corbyn’s immigration policy, Jones told the Guardian: “The danger is that’s a very London-centric position. That is not the way people see it outside London. London is very different: it is a cosmopolitan city and has high levels of immigration. It has that history. It is not the way many other parts of the UK are.



“People see it very differently in Labour-supporting areas of the north of England, for example. We have to be very careful that we don’t drive our supporters into the arms of Ukip. When I was on the doorstep in June, a lot of people said: ‘We’re voting out, Mr Jones, but, don’t worry, we’re still Labour.’ What I don’t want is for those people to jump to voting Ukip.”

He said it was hard for Ukip’s Welsh leader, Neil Hamilton, a former Tory minister involved in the 1990s cash-for-questions scandal, to “claim to be a working-class hero”.



But he cautioned: “We have to be careful not to push people in a direction they do not want to go in but feel they have to because of the position that we have taken.”



Pressed on whether he would like Labour’s immigration policy to change, Jones said: “It does not reflect the UK. It reflects one unusual, large city in the UK. We have to make sure there are more authentic voices around the UK within the party who people feel are addressing them in their own language and using their own accents.”

Jones, who is pushing for the UK government to give Wales more of a say in the Brexit process, said gaining as “full and fair access” to the single market as possible must be the first priority in negotiations, but concerns about immigration should be addressed as well. He suggested one policy option for Theresa May could be to allow people to come to the UK if they have a job.



Wales voted for Brexit – but not for Welsh people to suffer | Mick Antoniw Read more

“There has to be compromise,” he said. “If you accept access to the single market is the most important thing, you have to think about a different way of dealing with migration. There is no doubt in my mind that for many people the current system of freedom of movement is a problem. You can’t ignore it and say we won’t worry.



“Do we look at alternatives, for example, like freedom of movement if you’ve got a job? I think a lot of people would find that reasonable. People who voted Brexit on the issue of migration would say that sounds fair enough to us. People who don’t like immigrants are never going to be satisfied but there are ways of keeping elements of free movement that might be enough to enable us to have access to the single market.”



Jones’s intervention highlights the deep split at the heart of Labour on the subject of immigration.

Abbott recently told the Guardian that Labour needed to “hold the line” in defence of free movement as the Conservatives pushed for tighter controls during EU negotiations.

However, a number of Labour MPs, especially those with seats in the north of England where there is a growing Ukip presence, are arguing that the party needs to back changes to free movement.

A number of backbenchers, including Stephen Kinnock, Rachel Reeves and most recently Andy Burnham, have suggested the party must advocate controls on immigration as Britain leaves the EU.

Burnham said in the House of Commons on Wednesday that supporting free movement was, “undermining the cohesion of our communities and the safety of our streets”.

But the Labour peer Spencer Livermore used a strongly worded article in Prospect magazine, the publication aimed at centrist Labour members, to warn his colleagues against colluding in the “dangerous fantasy” that Britain could limit immigration without damaging the economy.

He said he believed Labour should be arguing strongly that Britain must remain in the single market – which will mean accepting free movement.

“During the referendum campaign, the Labour party made it clear that simultaneously having cake and eating it was merely another Boris Johnson fantasy.

“Yet now, I regret to say, there are leading figures in our own party who are willing to collude in this fantasy. People who should – and I suspect do – know better, have become complicit in creating a fiction that our economy can remain within the single market, while at the same time cutting immigration and ending freedom of movement,” he said.

Lord Livermore, a former Labour election chief and adviser to Gordon Brown, told the Guardian he had become increasingly concerned about what he called the “extreme” pronouncements from some of his colleagues.

“It just feels like the direction of travel at the moment is all in one direction, and Labour is lurching too far towards an anti-immigration position that hasn’t necessarily been thought through.”



He said halting the free movement of people from the rest of the EU would not solve the economic and social problems – pressure on public services, low wages, unaffordable housing – that led to the referendum result. “You could end free movement and those problems would still be there.”

In his Progress article, Livermore argued that accepting anti-immigration arguments would be bad for the economy: “As a party we have had far too little to say to Labour voters for far too long. Our challenge is a crisis of relevance, not a race to the extremes. We must find an agenda relevant to the voters we need to convince, not imitate solutions that will make the country worse off. The truth is, if Labour becomes an anti-immigration party it will be the far right that benefits, not us.”

In an attempt to find consensus across the parties and country, Yvette Cooper, the chair of the Commons home affairs committee, launched a major inquiry on immigration to look at the type of system the UK could adopt.

