Keir Starmer has opened another front in his war on Reform by blaming Brexit for the Channel migrant crisis – saying the UK is being assailed by ‘Farage boats’.
The PM made the claim about the impact of cutting ties with the EU as he scrambled to claw back Nigel Farage’s huge poll lead.
But he also went into retreat after brutal barbs in his Labour conference speech, stressing the Reform leader is not a racist.
The PM described Mr Farage as ‘formidable’ as he denied that the swipes put safety at risk.
With Labour facing meltdown in the polls, Sir Keir levelled a series of highly personal jibes at his rival – who responded by warning that the personal safety of Reform politicians had been put at risk.
Deputy PM David Lammy went even further by making an outlandish slur about Mr Farage having ‘flirted with the Hitler Youth’, a suggestion he was quickly forced to withdraw. The concerns raised by Reform were dismissed by Labour MPs as ‘snowflake’.
Sir Keir signalled the aggressive new tactics on Sunday when he described Reform’s policy of scrapping ‘indefinite leave to remain’ immigration status as ‘racist’.
In the aftermath of a dramatic few days of politics:
- The PM backed a comeback for Angela Rayner just weeks after she was forced to quit over underpaid tax;
- Sir Keir suggested he is ready to overhaul human rights laws insisting the courts must get tougher on asylum claims;
- The premier tried to turn the tables on the Channel crisis by saying Brexit meant there was no longer any returns deal with the EU.
In a round of interviews after his big speech, Sir Keir told GB News that Mr Farage had been ‘wrong’ during the Brexit referendum in 2016 to saying leaving the EU would make no difference to migration policy.
Under the Dublin Convention which applies in the EU, there is a provision to return asylum seekers to the first member state they arrived in – although critics argue it has never worked.
Sir Keir acknowledged the returns agreement with France had only seen small numbers deported, but said it had been important to prove the policy worked.
He said: ‘We’ve now done that, but now we need to ramp that up. I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU and he told the country it would make no difference if we left. He was wrong about that.
‘These are Farage boats, in many senses, that are coming across the channel.’
Pressed on whether he believed Mr Farage was racist, Sir Keir said: ‘No, nor do I think Reform voters are racist.
‘They’re concerned about things like our borders, they’re frustrated about the pace of change,’ he told Sky News.
‘I’m not for a moment suggesting that they are racist.’
He insisted he had been talking about a ‘particular policy’, claiming Reform’s plans would see migrants who live in the UK lawfully deported. He said ‘that to me would tear our country apart’.
The Labour leader, who described Mr Farage as a ‘formidable politician’, declined to say whether he believed his opponent was courting racists with the policy, but said minorities in the UK felt a ‘shiver down their throat’.
Sir Keir told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he hadn’t called Mr Farage racist, insisting he had been referring to the policy.
The PM also declined to say US president Donald Trump’s claims that London wants to ‘go to Sharia Law’ were ‘racist’, instead tagging them ‘nonsense’.
In his conference speech, Sir Keir described Mr Farage as an ‘enemy of national renewal’, saying his immigration policies would destroy communities.
The PM targeted Reform’s plans to prevent migrants claiming benefits in this country, which would involve deporting some people previously given leave to remain if they are not deemed to be contributing enough to the economy.
Sir Keir claimed that ‘snake oil salesman’ Mr Farage ‘doesn’t like Britain’ and was interested only in stoking ‘the politics of grievance’.
‘When was the last time you heard Nigel Farage say anything positive about Britain’s future?’ he said.
‘He can’t. He doesn’t like Britain, wants you to doubt it just as much as he does. And so he resorts to grievance.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Mr Farage vowed to take revenge at the ballot box, pledging to ‘teach Keir Starmer a lesson’ in next May’s elections.
He said the string of slurs that have come his way since the conference began on Sunday were the mark of a man who was ‘unfit to be Prime Minister’.
Mr Farage accused the PM of resorting to a ‘desperate last throw of the dice’ in his keynote speech in Liverpool because ‘the Government are incapable of beating us on our arguments’.
‘As a result, Keir Starmer has decided to descend into the gutter – and bring all his Cabinet with him,’ he added.
Last night Mr Lammy rowed back on claims he made to the BBC that the Reform leader had ‘flirted with Hitler Youth’.
The statement appeared to reference allegations that emerged in 2013 that Mr Farage sang Nazi songs as a schoolboy.
Mr Farage denied the allegations at the time, which stemmed from a 1981 letter reportedly written by his teacher claiming the schoolboy and others marched through a village ‘shouting Hitler Youth songs’.
Asked about Sir Keir Starmer’s claim that they were ‘Farage boats’, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said: ‘What he’s pointing out is that we used to have a – very imperfect – Dublin agreement, which allowed at least some returns.
‘As a consequence of leaving the European Union: no Dublin agreement, no agreement at all, not even an imperfect one.
‘And we’re having to rebuild from that position and reach new returns agreements with other countries.
‘We’ve done a lot of good work with France recently. We want to do good work with other countries too, but we’re having to rebuild from that position that we inherited.’
