Keir Starmer vows to scrap Rwanda scheme on first day as PM as he blasts gimmick

Keir Starmer has vowed to cancel the Rwanda scheme on day one if he becomes PM as he slammed the Tories for making the borders like a “sieve”.

The Labour leader pledged to end the dangerous Channel crossings as he warned “nobody should be making that perilous journey”. Instead of “throwing good money after bad” by continuing the costly deportation flights to Rwanda, he said he would spend the cash on smashing the smuggling gangs so people cannot get here in the first place.

Mr Starmer delivered his speech in Dover, where local MP Natalie Elphicke this week defected from the Tories as she accused Rishi Sunak’s Government of “failing to keep our borders safe and secure”. Her switch to Labour has triggered a backlash from some of its MPs and members, who have questioned whether she is suitable to represent the party.

But Mr Starmer said his “changed Labour Party ought to be a place where reasonably-minded people, whichever way they voted in the past, feel that they can join… and change the country for the better”. “I’m very pleased to be able to extend that invitation not just to Labour voters, but people who voted for other parties in the past,” he added.

In contrast, he said the Conservative Party is “on its last legs, out of road and out of ideas”, with no one understanding why the PM is “clinging on by his fingernails” to power.

Mr Starmer dismissed the Government’s Rwanda scheme as an “absolute waste of money”, which he said will not act as a deterrent as just 1% of small boat arrivals will be deported at a cost of around £500million. “It is a gimmick. I am not going to flog a dead horse,” he said. “We are going to get rid of the policy straight away. I am not going to continue a policy I don’t think is going to work that is going to cost a fortune.”

The Labour leader said it would not be “compassionate” to turn a blind eye to the Channel crossings as he outlined his plan for a new unit including MI5 agents, which will be tasked with taking on the smuggling gangs. Mr Starmer said asylum claims would be processed “quickly and humanely”, but that those not entitled to be here would be removed “without squeamishness or cruelty” by working with other countries, including those in the EU.

“Until we are busting the Home Office backlog, arriving at decisions quickly, without a fuss, so that we can return people who have no right to be here, then yes, Britain will be seen as a soft touch,” he continued.

Mr Starmer recalled a visit to a camp in Calais in 2016 where he said he had met children the same age as his son and daughter living in tents in freezing and muddy conditions. He said it was a “desperate situation”, adding: “I came away from that day profoundly depressed and I would defy anyone to go into those camps and come away with any other reaction. That camp represented a monumental failure, across nations. People had been brutally let down, by governments of course. Not just in terms of the truly awful conditions but also because the failure of our asylum system had encouraged a false hope.”

The first deportation flight is expected to take off for Rwanda next month – more than two years after it was first promised by Boris Johnson.