Starmer denies immigration remarks mirror 1960s rhetoric

PRIME MINISTER Keir Starmer "completely rejects" suggestions that his remarks on immigration echoed an inflammatory speech from the 1960s, his spokesman said following a backlash.

Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, was criticised for claiming on Monday (12) that Britain risks becoming an "island of strangers" if his centre-left Labour government fails to cut net migration.

Asked about similar language used in the late Conservative MP Enoch Powell's notorious "rivers of blood" speech from 1968, Starmer's official spokesman said: "We completely reject that comparison."

The spokesman added that Starmer "absolutely stands behind the argument he was making that migrants make a massive contribution to our country, but migration needs to be controlled".

Starmer unveiled tough new immigration policies that included cutting overseas care workers, doubling the length of time before migrants can qualify for settlement and new powers to deport foreign criminals.

The speech was widely seen as an attempt to fend off rising support for anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage's hard-right Reform UK party, which made gains in local elections this month.

But some of the language Starmer used angered several of his own Labour MPs, including Nadia Whittome, who accused him of mimicking "the scaremongering of the far right".

John McDonnell, Labour's former finance spokesman who was suspended from the party last year for voting to scrap a cap on child benefits, said Starmer's word "shockingly echoes the divisive language" of Powell.

Powell sparked national controversy and was dropped from then Tory leader Edward Heath's top team when he said that British people could find themselves "strangers in their own country" as a result of migration. Powell died in 1998.

Home secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC the speeches were "completely different" since Starmer had "almost in the same breath... talked about the diverse country that we are, and that being part of our strength".

(AFP)