Immigration, in the run-up to the 1997 election, was not an issue Labour was keen to discuss. Critical of the impact of Conservative measures, it was nevertheless convinced that immigration was an issue on which it could only lose votes. Labour did, moreover, agree with the Conservatives that tough immigration controls were essential for good race relations. Its intention was simply to mitigate some of their harshest effects. Labour's manifesto commitment was thus modest, affirming the importance of ‘firm control’ while promising to remove certain ‘arbitrary and unfair’ results: just six lines addressed the issue which would later preoccupy the Prime Minister, asylum, promising ‘swift and fair’ decisions to tackle the backlog and crack down on fraud. There was no mention of labour migration where Labour was fundamentally to change the parameters of policy and debate. In contrast to other major policy areas, Labour thus came to power with no vision, no policy goals, no anticipated ‘third way’.

The Conservatives' legacy was a backlog of 52,000 asylum cases and a tabloid press convinced that the vast majority were ‘bogus’, drawn to Britain, in the language of Michael Howard, because it was a ‘soft touch’. For the public, immigration was not a salient issue in the 1997 election, just 3% rating it among the top three concerns facing Britain. The opportunity to give the backlog cases the right to stay, when the mistakes of the previous administration could have been blamed, was nevertheless rejected.