Keir Starmer has admitted for the first time that he would not return people to Afghanistan, after a bitter exchange in Wednesday night’s debate where Rishi Sunak mocked him for planning to “sit down with the ayatollahs” to negotiate return agreements.
Starmer has repeatedly said he plans to negotiate returns agreements with safe countries in order to clear the asylum backlog, which has worsened due to the government’s recent legislation which does not allow asylum seekers to be processed while it waits to start deportations to Rwanda.
Asked on Thursday whether he could rule out sending people back to Afghanistan, Starmer said: “There are some things that are not sensible for the asylum policy. That was a throwaway comment from the prime minister himself who had no answer to that question.
“But leaving those claims unprocessed is not the answer to that. Of course there will be countries, Afghanistan for example, where you can’t return people – people who perhaps helped us by interpreting for our troops in Afghanistan and put themselves at risk. People who in my constituency were fleeing war in Afghanistan and found we weren’t able to get them out on those flights.
“Of course, in relation to their particular cases they’re not going to be returned to Afghanistan. But what we can’t do is stay with this absurd situation where there’s just a growing and growing number to which the prime minister has got absolutely no answer. It is absurd and reckless, the position he’s taken this country.”
Starmer, who was speaking on a campaign visit to a college in Burton upon Trent, has also been criticised for comments he made in a Sun debate last week which caused a backlash in the British Bangladeshi community.
He said he had not intended comments about a returns agreement with Bangladesh to cause any anxiety in the community. “My first trip as a Labour MP was to Bangladesh where I saw for myself the strength of the county, hospitality and warmth of the country,” he said.
“The reference in the debate the other day was an example of a country that is considered safe as far as asylum concerns and one of the countries that actually has a returns agreement with us. I certainly wasn’t intending to cause any concern or offence to any Bangladeshi community here.”
Speaking to reporters at the visit, the Labour leader appeared to contradict claims from his own activists that the party was pulling resources out of Clacton in the fight against Nigel Farage, including telling its own candidate there to go elsewhere.
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Starmer said the campaign would continue and there was no strategy to give the Tories space to defeat Farage. “We’re not backing down in Clacton, we’re not backing down anywhere across the country,” he said. “We have to fight in Clacton of course we do. We’ve got an excellent candidate there, he actually works for me, he’s fantastic.
“So I’m very supportive of both him and the campaign that he’s running. He’s doing something incredible which is being that positive candidate in difficult circumstances.”