Keir Starmer criticises government's Rwanda plan as a 'gimmick' ahead of crunch vote

'It won't work, it'll cost a fortune - £290 million already without a single person having gone,' the Labour leader told his supporters of the government's Rwanda Bill

Sir Keir Starmer has issued a scathing criticism of the government's Rwanda deportation plan ahead of MPs voting on the legislation on Tuesday.

The Labour leader said small boat crossings across the English Channel must be stopped, but insisted that "gimmicks" will not achieve that goal.

He made the comments as part of a keynote speech on Tuesday to mark the four-year anniversary of the 2019 election.

A Commons vote on the government's controversial policy to put illegal migrants arriving to the UK on flights to Rwanda will be held on Tuesday evening.

"We will oppose the scheme this evening for a number of reasons. It won't work, it'll cost a fortune - £290 million already without a single person having gone - and it's against our values," Sir Keir said.

"That does not mean that we don't recognise the challenge that there is with people crossing in small boats across the Channel. 

"We have to stop that, we have a duty to stop that. But stopping that means not gimmicks, but rolling our sleeves up with a practical plan that will actually work."

Sir Keir said his party, were it to form a government at the next general election, would instead consider an off-shoring scheme where asylum claims are processed elsewhere.

He added he would look at "any scheme that might work", saying: "Other countries around the world do have schemes where they divert people on the way and process them elsewhere."

Elsewhere, Sir Keir used his speech to insist that "everything" he has done since becoming Labour leader has been to "reconnect" his party to the "Labour bargain that we serve working people".

'Everything I've done as leader, every fight I've had has been to reconnect us to that purpose'

He said: "Cast your mind back to the last election, four years ago today. December 12 2019: the worst defeat for Labour since 1935.

"Working people up and down our country looked at my party, looked at how we'd lost our way, not just under Jeremy Corbyn but for a while, and they said: 'No, not this time. You don't listen to us anymore. You're not in our corner. You don't fight for our cause'.

"And they were right, weren't they?

"We'd taken a leave of absence from our job description. Reneged on an old partnership, the Labour bargain that we serve working people as they drive our country forward.

"And everything I've done as leader, every fight I've had has been to reconnect us to that purpose."

He painted Labour as the party of business and service, telling voters they would find a party "that will conserve as well as reform".

"And a Labour Party that has broken new ground in our relationship with business, that gets the value of private enterprise, understands working people want success as well as support, that borders must be secured, economic stability the foundation for everything," he added.

Sir Keir also vowed to make it "once again a party of service, not protest, focused on credible solutions to your challenges, not empty gestures, not grandstanding political theatre or the moralising self-indulgence of those who think politics is a sermon about themselves".

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