Left-wing activists who call for open border migration are wrong, says Starmer

Left-wing activists who call for open border migration are wrong, Sir Keir Starmer said as he pledged to “dramatically reduce” the number of small boat crossings by cracking down on people smugglers.

The Labour leader warned those within the party who still supported free movement for migrants that it would lead to chaos as he set out his plans to tackle illegal migration at an event in Dover.

Sir Keir was flanked by Natalie Elphicke, the Tory MP who defected to his party on Wednesday.

He also committed to scrapping Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda flights “straight away” after taking power, opening talks with the EU on a migrant returns agreement and remaining in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) even if it was not reformed.

Sir Keir refused to set a timescale for stopping the boats or to put a “false number” on the scale of any decrease in crossings that he hoped for, but he said he aimed to reduce it “materially” and would “like it to come down completely”.

Some 211 people arrived on small boats on Thursday, taking the total this year past 9,000 – a 35 per cent increase from this time last year and 16 per cent more than in 2022.

Sir Keir claimed his plan for a new border security command to coordinate efforts to smash people smuggling gangs, combined with a rigorous approach to returning failed asylum claimants, would be a more effective deterrent to small boat crossings than the Rwanda scheme.

Accepting that his immigration plans would be “fiercely resisted”, he told Left-wing activists who believed “people should be able to move across the globe, wherever, whenever and however they want” that it would “lead to chaos” and did “nothing to advance global justice”.

But he also criticised those on the Right who wanted the British state to “act with impunity, to tear up rules on a whim because ultimately, they do not want us to take in any asylum seekers whatsoever”.

Asked whether a Labour government would stop the Rwanda flights on day one of taking power, Sir Keir said: “There will be no flights scheduled or taking off after the general election if Labour wins that general election.

“I think the scheme is a gimmick. I’m not flogging a dead horse, I’m not prepared to do government by gimmick. I want to start on day one, not with flights taking off [but] absolutely investing my political capital in law enforcement.”

He said he would negotiate with the EU to replace the Dublin returns agreement, axed under Brexit, under which European countries would take back migrants from the UK if they had crossed their borders and the UK would agree to take some back to reunite families.

“The Dublin agreement – that needs to be replaced in some shape or form, I would accept that so there can be returns,” he said.

But he ruled out any UK participation in a wider scheme where northern states shared the burden of taking migrants with southern European countries or paying them a compensatory sum.

He dismissed calls to reform the ECHR, saying: “I think it’s a mistake to think it’s the international instruments such as the ECHR that are the problem. I don’t. By the end of the year, there will be 100,000 people who have arrived whose claims cannot be processed.

“That means they can’t be returned. That’s not the ECHR that says that. That’s because the Government is not processing the claims.”

Labour has said it will consider the asylum claims of more than 90,000 migrants who entered the UK illegally if it won the election. They are currently “in limbo” because their asylum claims are judged inadmissible under legislation introduced by the Government.

Sir Keir admitted that a Labour government would have nowhere to send thousands of migrants who have arrived from Afghanistan and Syria, for example, because of the lack of a returns arrangement with the two war-torn countries.

Afghans have made up the largest nationality of migrants crossing the Channel over the past 18 months, while Syrians are also in the top 10 nationalities.

Under the plans outlined on Friday, Labour would establish a new border security command led by a former police, military or intelligence chief and modelled on an approach to counter-terrorism operations that Sir Keir said had already proven successful.

The new command would bring together officers from agencies including MI5, Immigration Enforcement and the National Crime Agency, focused on stopping people smugglers.

James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, said Labour had “no plan to stop the boats” and would “create a haven for criminal gangs”. He said: “Labour’s announcement would make the UK the asylum capital of the world.”