Gordon Brown tackled immigration yesterday. Photo credit: Downing Street

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s speech on immigration yesterday, in which he reiterated Labour’s commitment to the points-based system and denigrated the Conservatives’ “quota” plan as arbitrary, has garnered predictably mixed reviews from the British press.

In its report on the speech today, The Times lead its story with Brown’s claim that migrants who do not honour British values aren’t welcome in the UK and his pledge to do more to allay the concerns of the British “mainstream majority.” The paper also highlighted criticism from a statistical watchdog group that Brown exaggerated a fall in net immigrant numbers. But The Times, notably, did not mention immigration in any of its leading editorials, leaving the other papers to pick up the slack. And pick it up they did.

It was revealing, The Guardian claimed in a leading editorial, how cautiously Brown approached the subject of immigration – but it was also perhaps the only sensible approach, and much better than the alternatives: “saying nothing at all, or boasting of a tough approach that is not sustained by policy.” Voters do want leaders to address the issue of immigration, but entering into a game of strident one-upmanship can only shove those voters into the arms of the far-right. Politicians must therefore speak honestly, but softly, about the issue of immigration and don’t promise policy they can’t deliver.

The Independent, in its leading editorial, also highlighted the concerns that any too strident talk about immigration – like Brown’s infamous “British jobs for British workers” line, that’s now become a British National Party tagline – will help the BNP or UKIP hijack the conversation. Overall, the Prime Minister did a “creditable job” in addressing immigration yesterday. But The Independent, like The Times’s reported, wasn’t comfortable with Brown’s exaggerated numbers: Not being completely clear or honest about the Government’s plans or even immigration figures undermined his “firm, humane and principled” speech, the paper claimed.

The Telegraph trashed the speech and Labour’s record on immigration but put the fire to Conservatives as well to come up with a credible plan for immigration reform. The paper concluded its leading editorial on the speech on a slightly ominous and obliquely xenophobic note: Conservatives need to come up with some solutions fast “if an irreversible change in the very nature of our country is to be averted.”

Still others praised Brown if not for the content of his speech, at least for bringing the subject up: Self-identified Conservative Tim Montgomerie wrote in The Guardian today, “I don’t believe in Brown’s promise to control immigration. I’m not willing to vote on the basis that things will be any different at the fourth time of trying. I do applaud, however, the connection he is making between controlled immigration and fairness in society.”