Sir Keir Starmer on Tuesday vowed a new approach on illegal immigration after Tory criticism that he has no plan B to the Government’s troubled Rwanda scheme.
The opposition leader used a speech on the fourth anniversary of the 2019 election to position Labour as ready to lead a “decade of national renewal”, in contrast to the “psychodrama” engulfing Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives over Rwanda.
“We cannot let the Tories take this country down with them, we cannot let them kick the hope out of our future,” he told an audience at the Silverstone race track, promising to rev up reform over at least two terms of Labour rule.
But Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden accused Sir Keir of “planning to try and block our plans to stop the boats” and of lacking “the principles needed to lead Britain”.
Ministers also say his "national renewal" plan is fatally undermined by his "flip-flop" approach to issues such as housing, after Labour voted down a Government move to relax waterway pollution restrictions on new building.
The 2019 election saw Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour slump to its worst defeat since 1935, but polls now point to a stunning turnaround that leaves Sir Keir in reach of the keys to No10.
“We have changed the Labour Party fundamentally. So it's a party that is ready to serve, ready to stand for the country, has got a plan for the future,” he told BBC Breakfast.
“Compare that, four years on, with a Conservative Party that is fighting amongst themselves self-indulgently, people positioning themselves for some future leadership race, instead of concentrating on the issues that the country is facing.”
The Labour leader reiterated his intention to scrap the Prime Minister’s controversial Rwanda deportation scheme, calling it a “gimmick” and "political performance art”, in favour of more bilateral returns agreements.
He noted that 90 per cent of illegal entrants from Albania were now being returned home thanks to a deal with Tirana, and said deals with countries such as India were possible.
Sir Keir said it was “nonsense” for the Tories to claim that a Labour Government would take in 100,000 people annually as part of a migrants quota agreement with the European Union.
“That's just completely made up,” he told the BBC. Bilateral deals do not “actually involve us taking anyone from those countries. It does involve us dispatching people quickly to the countries that they came from”.
The Labour leader said he would use the millions saved from ditching the Rwanda plan on more law enforcement to “smash the vile criminal gangs” trafficking people across the Channel, and on clearing the 160,000 backlog of asylum claims.
“It’s not about wave machines, or armoured jet skis, or schemes like Rwanda you know will never work. It’s about doing the basics better. The mundane stuff. The bureaucratic stuff. Busting the backlogs,” Sir Keir said in his speech.
“Stopping the boats means stopping the gimmicks, and if they can’t find a way to do that, if they can’t find a way to focus on the job, fix our problems without breaking international law, unlike every government before them, then it’s time to stand aside and let the Labour Party do it for them.”
The Prime Minister's spokesman pushed back at the criticism, stressing that Channel boat crossings were down by one-third this year.
"We are speeding up and indeed we have sped up asylum processing already," he told reporters.
"On border security, we have made huge progress in stemming the flow of migrants," he added, pointing to deals with France and Turkey as well as Albania.
As Sir Keir was speaking, news emerged that an asylum seeker had died on board the Bibby Stockholm barge off Dorset.
He expressed condolences to the person's family, as rights groups and charities blamed the Government for the death.
Taking media questions after his speech at Silverstone, Sir Keir denied Labour was staging a pre-election lap of honour given its commanding lead in the polls.
"We lost the election, four years ago today, very badly. For us to get from where we landed to a Labour-majority government will take a bigger swing than Tony Blair got in 1997," he said.
"That's a huge challenge. And I am therefore not complacent in the slightest. We have to earn every single vote - we have to earn back the votes we lost, we have to earn the votes that we never got in the first place. And that is a fight every step of the way."
