Sir Keir Starmer has blamed the Channel migrant crisis on Brexit and dubbed migrant dinghies “Farage boats”.
It is the latest swipe at the Reform UK leader, who Sir Keir criticised repeatedly in his speech at Labour’s annual party conference in Liverpool, which ends today.
Sir Keir told GB News: “I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU and he told the country it would make no difference if we left.
“He was wrong about that. These are Farage boats coming across the Channel.”
Sir Keir’s remarks appeared to refer to the Dublin Convention, which allows EU members to return asylum seekers to the first member state that they arrived in. During Britain’s final years in the treaty, it accepted more asylum seekers than it transferred.
