The Albanian prime minister has criticised the UK home secretary, Suella Braverman, calling the singling out of migrants from his country a “disgraceful” moment for British politics.
Edi Rama, who is in Britain for talks with Rishi Sunak, said Braverman’s comments last year about “Albanian criminals” crossing the Channel in small boats, could themselves be considered a crime.
“Unfortunately, we have seen ourselves and our community being singled out in this country for purposes of politics. It has been a very, very disgraceful moment for British politics,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Braverman’s remarks were a “low point”, he said, adding political will to overcome the souring of relations remained.
“What has been [said] by members of the cabinet, starting with the home secretary, [is] the singling out of our community, which is not something you do in our civilisation, and is something that does not represent Britain at all,” he said. “We will always refuse to have this mix between some criminals and the Albanians as such because giving to the crime an ethnic seal is itself a crime.”
Braverman angered many Albanians with her comments about their citizens in parliament last October. “If Labour were in charge they would be allowing all the Albanian criminals to come to this country, they would be allowing all the small boats to come to the UK, they would open our borders and totally undermine the trust of the British people in controlling our sovereignty,” she told MPs.
The home secretary was also accused of using inflammatory language when she said the south coast of England was being invaded by asylum seekers. At the Conservative party conference she said: “Many of them claim to be trafficked as modern slaves … the truth is that many of them are not modern slaves and their claims of being trafficked are lies.”
Rama, an unconventional centre-left member of the Socialist grouping and prime minister of Albania since 2013, said he was “very satisfied” with Sunak’s conduct. “We have set up a clear path towards tackling together whatever has to be excluded from our relations and from our world of law and justice but at the same time making sure that some rotten apples do not define the Albanian community here and our relations,” he said.
