LONDON — Britain’s chief finance minister Rachel Reeves wants the brightest and best to know she isn’t Donald Trump. The problem for her is they fear Nigel Farage might be.  

Plans to reduce or abolish “top global talent” visa fees, along with a targeted advertising campaign to promote Britain’s existing talent routes, are on the table as the Labour government moves to capitalize on the U.S. president’s bombshell plan to impose a $100,000 fee on the H-1B visa favored by Silicon Valley tech firms to hire foreign engineers and researchers.

“While President Trump announced late last week that it will make it harder to bring talent to the U.S., we want to make it easier to bring talent to the U.K.,” Reeves said Tuesday at the opening of a new office for British finance startup Revolut in London. 

Reeves is next week expected to set out how she plans to double the number of high skilled foreign worker visas to around 18,000 a year.

Britain’s center-left government is walking a tricky tightrope on its migration policy as it faces a rising political threat from Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party. That’s prompted pledges to cut overall migration figures while preserving Britain’s status as an attractive destination for talent — which industry leaders argue would be a pro-growth move at a time when Reeves is trying to kick-start the U.K.’s faltering economy. 

But it comes as Reform is pledging to abolish the main route for immigrants to gain British citizenship — indefinite leave to remain. While Farage is not closing off access to visas for entrepreneurs and wealth creators, and insists he wants to add routes, the lack of detail in his policy is adding to the uncertainty for employers, and individuals, deciding where to go, and eyeing his large poll lead.

In the works 

Trump’s shock visa announcement has turbocharged efforts by Labour to proactively spot and lure top individuals to the country using the trade department’s international network. 

A Global Talent Taskforce, co-chaired by Keir Starmer’s business adviser Varun Chandra, was set up in June to look at the barriers faced by foreign experts looking to move to the U.K.

The taskforce was already exploring plans to abolish fees for visas for “top global talent,” according to a report in the Financial Times, but since Trump’s announcement — which sparked panic in both the U.S. and India, which is the largest source of IT workers on H-1B visas — the taskforce has been reaching out to trade groups and think tanks for ideas.  

It’s considering a targeted advertising campaign to encourage applicants to apply in the belief that the U.K.’s visa routes are competitive but lack awareness, according to one person involved in discussions with the Global Talent Taskforce, who said events in the U.S. had expedited discussions around visa reform in No. 10 Downing Street. 

It has also rejuvenated the lobbying effort from some of London’s most promising startups. Fintech firm Cleo and AI firm Synthesia immediately issued clarion calls for H-1B visa holders to pick the U.K. as their next destination. 

The Startup Coalition, which lobbies on behalf of U.K.-based startups, has written to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood urging an “immediate expansion” of a £54 million Global Talent Fund announced earlier this year to fund relocation and visa costs for top foreign talent to move to the U.K., as well as expedited processing and one-to-one casework support for H-1B visa holders thinking of moving to the U.K.  

David Lawrence, co-founder of the Centre for British Progress, said the U.K. doesn’t need to create new visa routes to poach American’s “disillusioned high-flyers,” but could instead raise awareness of existing routes, broadening eligibility and increasing the number of institutions that can sponsor applicants. 

In May, the government said it would “improve access” to the U.K.’s Global Talent visa and review the High Potential Individual and Innovator Founder visas. 

Alison Noble, foreign secretary of the Royal Society, said she was heartened by reports that “ministers are looking seriously at the barriers to the U.K. attracting the talent and skills the research and innovation sector needs to thrive.” 

The Royal Society and other groups have long complained that the cost of moving to the U.K., including visa costs and an annual surcharge for accessing Britain’s National Health Service, is higher than comparative countries in Europe. Its outgoing president, Adrian Smith, told U.K. lawmakers this month that this was “insane” and a symptom of a lack of joined-up thinking in government. 

“With others looking to increase barriers, the U.K. should be removing them,” Noble said.  

The long shadow of Farage 

Any efforts to make it easier for foreigners to move to the U.K. may be blunted by noises-off from Farage, who has long spoken of his admiration for Trump, and who says he has been inspired by the MAGA movement.   

The leader of Reform UK only has five MPs, and a general election is still four years away — but his party is 11 points ahead of the ruling Labour Party in the opinion polls. 

On Monday — just as British startups were clamoring for the government to seize the opening created by Trump’s bombshell — Farage announced that his party would overhaul the U.K.’s immigration system by scrapping the “indefinite leave to remain” category entirely, including for people already settled in the U.K. 

Farage said his party would replace it with rolling visas for a smaller group of high-skilled workers, and “continue and add to” immigration routes for entrepreneurs and “genuine wealth creators” — though provided little in the way of detail. 

Luke Sullivan, a former political secretary to Starmer, now a director at consultancy Headland, said Reform’s indefinite leave to remain announcement demonstrated the “complex” policy area is “fraught with political and economic trade-offs.”

The top talent Reeves is hoping to attract is listening. 

Even without being implemented, Reform’s proposals would “have a negative impact on the attractiveness of the U.K. as a destination for the world’s brightest and best researchers because people may worry their right to be in the country could be taken away,” Alicia Greated, executive director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, said. 

“Retrospective changes of this sort would be extremely damaging to U.K. R&D and the wider economy, as well as individuals and their families,” she added. 

Eamonn Ives, research director at The Entrepreneurs’ Network, a London-based think tank that advises on entrepreneur-friendly policies, agreed that international talent needs certainty.

“Instead of jeopardizing the residency status of immigrants already here, we should be doing all we can to welcome the world’s brightest and best,” he said.

“That means having pathways in place to enable international talent to come here, and then giving them the certainty they need to settle down and start building lucrative companies,” he added.