also...risk for Starmer is he may gain (or not lose) more reform/red wall/traditional working class/horrible zenophobic bigot voters...but will then lose the bleeding heart metropolitan liberal elite remainy voters to lib dems or greens. I guess it's where these votes are that matters, and still sweet spot seems to be to the left on economics and to the right on social policy.
I mean, it is by design...we had free movement before brexit, then this got switched off at same time as we had a higher demand for certain jobs due to covid (also factor in allowing asylum seekers from Ukraine and Hong Kong to come here).