Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government is releasing videos of immigration enforcement raids against businesses employing illegal workers as Nigel Farage’s anti-mass migration Reform Party surges past them in the polls. The raids, targeting businesses including Indian restaurants, nail bars, and carwashes, appear calculated to make Labour appear firmer on illegal immigration.
While Starmer pledged he would “smash the gangs” orchestrating illegal immigration, mainly via small boats, it has increased in the months since he assumed office in July. One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to scrap a long-delayed Conservative plan, prepared at a cost of many millions of pounds, to disincentivize illegal immigration by transferring migrants to Rwanda as a “third safe country.” A similar policy proved highly successful in Australia, and President Donald J. Trump appears to be pursuing a similar policy in the U.S., striking an agreement with Guatemala on taking deportees and with El Salvador on incarcerating criminal aliens—and potentially some U.S. citizens.
Some in Labour are unhappy with Starmer’s efforts to appear at least to be taking action on illegal immigration, with Diane Abbott MP complaining about the party becoming “Reform-lite.”
“The Labour Party can never outdo Reform on anti-immigrant rhetoric, and should not even try. All that happens is that we give legitimacy to the Reform narrative,” she wrote for leftist ex-newspaper The Independent.
Farage believes Labour’s raid videos are evidence Labour is “terrified” of Reform’s poll surge.
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