The previous Conservative government announced in 2022 a plan to send migrants who arrived in Britain without permission to the East African nation. They said that this would put an end to the arrival of asylum seekers on small boats.
However, due to years of legal challenges, no one was actually sent to Rwanda under the plan.
In his first press conference since becoming Prime Minister, Starmer stated that the Rwanda policy would be scrapped. He reasoned that only about 1% of asylum seekers would have been removed under this policy, and it would have failed to act as a deterrent.
This is his first major policy announcement since his landslide election victory.
“The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started. It’s never been a deterrent,” Starmer said. “I’m not prepared to continue with gimmicks that don’t act as a deterrent.”
On Friday, Starmer won one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern British history, making him the most powerful British leader since former Prime Minister Tony Blair. However, he faces numerous challenges, including the improvement of struggling public services and the revival of a weak economy.
At the press conference held in Downing Street, Starmer was asked if he was willing to make tough decisions and raise taxes if necessary, Starmer said that his government would identify problems and take action in areas such as addressing the overstretched prison system and reducing the long waiting times for the state-run health service.
“We’re going to have to take the tough decisions and take them early, and we will. We will do that with a raw honesty,” he said. “But that is not a sort of prelude to saying there’s some tax decision that we didn’t speak about before.”
Starmer said that he would establish and chair various “mission delivery boards” to focus on so-called missions or priority areas, such as the health service and economic growth.
Controversial policy
The issue of preventing asylum seekers from crossing over from France emerged as a major theme during the six-week election campaign.
While supporters argue that it would dismantle the business model of human traffickers, critics contend that the Rwanda policy is immoral and would ultimately prove ineffective.
The British government has already allocated hundreds of millions of pounds to the Rwandan government for the establishment of accommodations and the hiring of additional officials to process the asylum seekers, funds that cannot be recuperated.
Starmer has said that his administration would establish a Border Security Command. This entity would consolidate staff from the police, the domestic intelligence agency, and prosecutors to collaborate with international agencies in an effort to halt human smuggling.
Sonya Sceats, the CEO of Freedom from Torture, which is among the numerous organizations and charities campaigning against the Rwanda plan, expressed approval of Starmer’s announcement on Saturday.
“We applaud Keir Starmer for moving immediately to close the door on this shameful scheme that played politics with the lives of people fleeing torture and persecution,” she said.
However, figures such as Nigel Farage remain skeptical of Starmer’s broader immigration strategy.
Farage contends that merely tackling smuggling gangs will not resolve the crisis. “And let's face it, Keir Starmer does not have a plan to deal with it,” says Farage.
He suggests that the issue of asylum seekers crossing the Channel will persist without a robust plan. “It doesn’t suggest to me that they’re that confident,” Farage added.
He did, however, say that Starmer has “At least [...] kept a promise, I suppose,” saying how the Tories’ (U.K.’s Conservative Party) plan is “never going to work.”
