Thread by @edenhofer_jacob

Inspired by this excellent Substack post, I want to share some thoughts on the limits of moderate accommodation and the logic of the second best. Specifically, here is what I think is the *strongest* argument for the anti-accommodation view looks like -- which doesn't necessarily

mean that I fully subscribe to it.
Moderate accommodation on immigration would, in principle, be feasible if Labour enjoyed credibility—or at least a lower valence disadvantage —on the issue. In such a case, voters could interpret a moderate policy
dysfunctionalprogramming.substack.com/p/on-the-immig…

adjustment as a sincere, competence-driven recalibration rather than an opportunistic manoeuvre. Yet in the British context, the credibility conditions for this equilibrium are absent. Decades of unmet promises have produced a persistent valence deficit: no government has even

remotely achieved its stated immigration targets, and each has systematically overshot them. This record has entrenched public scepticism about the capacity of mainstream parties, including Labour, to deliver on immigration control.

Under these circumstances, “moderate

accommodation” becomes ineffective. Because voter trust in mainstream actors is low, small or incremental shifts are unlikely to be interpreted as genuine responsiveness. Instead, they are discounted as purely tactical or opportunistic_ moves. The party thus faces a familiar

pooling problem: voters cannot distinguish between a genuinely responsive type and one that merely trims its sails to opinion. In signalling terms, the equilibrium is one of informational noise, where both types look alike and voters rationally ignore small changes.

To escape

this credibility trap, a party would have to “over-signal” its responsiveness. That is, it would need to move further than a perfectly informed, vote-maximising logic would dictate, accepting a short-term spatial cost to demonstrate genuine commitment. Overshooting then becomes

a costly signal: only a party truly intent on changing course would bear the internal and electoral pain of such a move. The Conservatives’ Rwanda policy can be read precisely in this light—an attempt to re-establish credibility on immigration through a visibly costly,

ymbolically charged intervention that signals resolve even at high legal, financial, and reputational cost. Yet this dynamic cuts both ways. For a mainstream party like Labour, already facing internal heterogeneity and a liberal activist base, such an overshoot would be

politically and organisationally costly.
What is empirically more plausible is a strategy of moderate rhetorical accommodation: adopting a tougher communicative tone while keeping policy largely intact. However, this form of accommodation has a perverse side effect.

It raises the salience of immigration endogenously—placing greater emphasis on an issue where Labour has a valence disadvantage relative to Reform and, to some extent, the Conservatives. In effect, rhetorical accommodation amplifies the importance of a domain on which Labour is

not trusted, without meaningfully narrowing the programmatic gap. The likely result is asymmetric: salience rises, aiding the issue owner, while Labour’s perceived credibility remains stagnant.

If genuine, programmatic accommodation requires an _extreme_ shift to overcome

voters’ distrust, the question then becomes whether Labour could plausibly execute such a shift, setting aside for a moment the normative question of whether it should.
Three constraints make this doubtful.
1. Intra-party cohesion: Labour’s parliamentary party remains divided

on immigration, and its leadership must balance between electorally cautious frontbenchers and a more liberal backbench and membership base.
2. Activists: the activist core, essential for campaigning, tends to be socially liberal and would likely resist or disengage in response

to a harsh immigration turn.
3. Electoral defection among progressives (though urban concentration might make mean this constraint doesn't bind)
Together, these forces likely make an extreme form of accommodation—necessary for credibility—strategically infeasible.
Assuming this

diagnosis holds, the logical question is what the second-best strategy might be. The _theorem of the second best (Lipsey & Lancaster, 1956) teaches that when one optimal condition cannot be satisfied, pursuing the remaining ones does not necessarily move the system closer to the

first-best outcome; indeed, it may require deliberate deviation elsewhere. In this context, if credible accommodation is unattainable because of structural and valence constraints, Labour’s second-best strategy need not approximate it. Under certain assumptions, it could even

involve _moving in the opposite direction_—that is, adopting a more explicitly liberal position.

This counterintuitive possibility emerges under a few conditions.
First, if Labour cannot credibly compete on restrictive policy, it may seek to differentiate rather than emulate—

reframing immigration in the way Kustov suggests.
Second, if the issue remains salient regardless of Labour’s stance, then investing in a liberal, competence-based frame could reduce the perceived hypocrisy gap and strengthen the party’s valence on

https://x.com/akoustov/status/1917269438040068574

delivery and consistency.
Third, if the median voter on cultural issues is relatively conservative but multidimensional (valuing the NHS, cost of living), a more liberal stance could help reposition the party on overall credibility rather than on immigration per se.

In sum, once the preconditions for successful accommodation are violated, there is no guarantee that moderate accommodation improves outcomes. The logic of the second best implies that, under deep credibility deficits and internal constraints, even divergence—a more openly

liberal stance paired with a disciplined economic and competence frame—**can** dominate half-hearted, unconvincing, and largely rhetorical accommodation. The argument is not that such a strategy is normatively preferable or certainly the second best; my aim was to make the

strongest argument for what I think is a widely held position that is often not justified particularly well in public discourse. Critical thoughts very welcome. Where do you disagree? Why? What did I get wrong?

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