No 10 defends Starmer's immigration rhetoric

Downing Street has robustly defended Keir Starmer's language on immigration after it was likened to that used by Enoch Powell.

- Peter Walker Jessica Elgot

No 10 rejected the comparison but said Starmer would not shy away from direct talk about immigration.

MPs criticised Starmer for his rhetoric when introducing a policy paper on immigration on Monday, particularly his warning that the UK risked becoming "an island of strangers", a near-direct echo of language used by Powell in his infamous 1968 "rivers of blood" speech.

Asked about the controversy yesterday, Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, said he would not have used the phrase but defended Starmer's broader approach.

Alf Dubs, the Labour peer who arrived in the UK as a child refugee fleeing the Nazis, also expressed alarm. "I'm unhappy that we have senior politicians who use language which is reminiscent of Powell, and I'm sorry that Keir Starmer used some of the phrases that you've just quoted," Dubs told LBC. "It's not the sort of person he is, and I don't think it's what he actually believes in." Asked about Starmer's words in the Senedd, the Welsh Labour leader, Eluned Morgan, said: "I'm not going to use divisive language when it comes to immigration, that's not the value we have in Welsh Labour."

A Downing Street source pushed back against the criticism of Starmer's speech, in which he also argued that the Conservatives' approach to immigration had done "incalculable" damage to the country.