Ideological continuity in British Prime Ministers’ discourse on migration from Tony Blair to Keir Starmer: a critical discourse analysis

In this study, I investigate ideological continuity in British PMs’ discourse on migration from Tony Blair to Keir Starmer. I apply a critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework, drawing on insights from political ideology theory. In prior research, scholars often focused on policy outcomes or isolated speeches. However, this study systematically traces how governing rationalities persist across successive administrations and shape both public perception and policy legitimacy. Building on Wodak’s DHA while incorporating insights from Fairclough’s and Van Dijk’s approaches, the analysis examines a purposively constructed corpus of official speeches and statements, spanning New Labour, Conservative, and post-Brexit Labour governments. Key analytical categories include DHA strategies of nomination and predication in the construction of migrants, argumentation through inclusion and exclusion strategies, perspectivisation in securitization, and humanitarian and economic framing, alongside policy legitimation. The findings reveal that, rather than sharp partisan divides, PMs’ discourse consistently delineates a morally prioritized national ‘we’ from a regulated and conditional ‘they’, while securitization, selective humanitarianism, and economic rationalization remain persistent features. Shifts in emphasis occur in response to crises or structural pressures, but they do not disrupt core ideological assumptions. By illuminating these discursive continuities, this study contributes to political communication and migration scholarship by demonstrating how PMs’ discursive practices both reproduce and adapt governing rationalities across time rather than merely reflecting them. Thereby, it offers a more theoretically grounded and historically sensitive account of the interplay between ideology, policy, and public perception in the British context.