UK opposition leader sets out plans to tackle small boats crossings

British opposition leader Keir Starmer will say on Friday (10 May) a Labour government would hire hundreds of enforcement officials and use counter-terrorism powers to target people-smuggling gangs to stop asylum seekers arriving in England on small boats.

The issue of illegal migration is set to be a major battleground for both Labour and the governing Conservatives in a national election later this year, with some voters angry over the authorities’ failure to stop the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who make the journey across the Channel each year.

In a speech on the south coast of England, Starmer will say he would end the Conservatives’ “talk tough, do nothing culture” and that his policy was tough but pragmatic, compared with the government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

“It’s become a question of whether you can prioritise, at all times, the politics of practical solutions, and reject the politics of performative symbols – the gimmicks and gestures,” he will say, according to extracts of the speech.

Almost eight years after Britain voted to leave the European Union to “take back control” of the country’s borders, public anger over immigration with the small boat arrivals continues to play an important role in British politics.

Starmer, whose party looks set to win the next election according to opinion polls, said his party would create a “Border Security Command” that would bring together staff from the police, the domestic intelligence agency and prosecutors to work with international agencies to stop people smuggling.

Labour said the hundreds of new specialist investigators, intelligence agents and cross-border police officers in this new unit would have the powers to carry out searches and to secure warrants to seize assets before an offence has taken place.

Starmer has previously said his party would abandon the government’s stalled plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda and could seek an EU-wide returns agreement for asylum seekers, possibly accepting quotas of migrants in return for sending back people who arrive illegally.

Labour holds 30-point lead

Britain’s Labour Party has increased its poll lead over Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives to stand 30 points ahead, according to a YouGov poll for the Times newspaper.

The poll, coming ahead of an election later this year, put Labour on 48% and the ruling Conservatives on 18%, the worst reading for Sunak since he became prime minister 18 months ago, according to the Times.

The gap between the two parties was the biggest since October 2022, when Conservative support collapsed in the weeks after the financial meltdown caused by the mini-budget of Sunak’s predecessor Liz Truss.

(Edited by Georgi Gotev)

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