Sir Keir Starmer, the newly elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has reportedly scrapped a plan put forward by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson to send migrants arriving illegally on boats to Rwanda for processing. The policy was intended to address the migrant crisis in the English Channel and had been criticized as an attempt to avoid legal scrutiny from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which has blocked similar attempts to remove migrants from UK territory before.
In a move that reflects Brexit leader Nigel Farage’s claims about Sunak’s motivations for calling an election, Starmer’s Labour government has rejected the notion of withdrawing from the ECHR. Instead, Starmer has suggested seeking closer ties with the EU on immigration issues and potentially taking in a quota of EU migrants per year in exchange for a returns policy to allow the UK to send illegals back to the bloc.
The scrapping of the Rwanda plan means that the UK government would likely have to forfeit the £270 million already sent to Kigali, but would not have to pay the next two installments of £50 million in 2025 and 2026. Labour’s proposed strategy to address the migrant crisis includes increasing enforcement against people smuggling gangs operating on both sides of the English Channel and targeting unscrupulous business owners in Britain who hire illegals.