FE Team
| Published: June 27, 2024 22:26:02
Britain’s Labour party has been forced to issue a clarification on comments made by its leader Keir Starmer regarding the removal of Bangladeshi migrants from the UK, as reports emerged of outrage among members of the British-Bangladeshi community ahead of next week’s general election, reports UNB.
At a town hall with readers of The Sun, a rightwing tabloid, earlier this week, Starmer said: “At the moment people coming from countries like Bangladesh are not being removed because they’re not being processed.”
He was being asked about Labour’s rejection of the Conservative government policy of deporting migrants who arrive in the UK illegally in small boats to Rwanda. Starmer was trying to explain his policy would be to send illegal migrants back to their countries of origin.
“The number of people being returned to where they came from has dropped off by 44 percent under this government. So on the first few days of government, I’ll tell you what I do, I’ll put the staff back in the returns unit, I’ll make sure I’ve got planes going off, not to Rwanda because that’s an expensive gimmick,” the Labour leader said.
Asked where the migrants would go, Starmer, who is being described as a ‘prime minister in waiting’, replied: “They will go back to the countries where people come from. That’s what used to happen.” He then made the reference to Bangladeshi migrants.
A clip of the interaction described by news website PoliticsHome, that has reportedly been distributed on WhatsApp groups, shows Starmer talking of “people coming from countries like Bangladesh” but does not explicitly specify that he is referring to people without permission to settle in the UK.
At the end of the video, a message reads: “Don’t vote for Labour on 4 July. Vote for Independent candidates.”
