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The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started; Starmer said in his first news conference since the Labour Party swept Conservatives from power after 14 years
In a significant development, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that he will scrap his predecessor’s controversial policy to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda as a part of his party’s poll promise. “The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started,” Starmer said in his first news conference since the Labour Party swept Conservatives from power after 14 years. He further said that the Conservative’s proposal never acted as a deterrent, on the other hand, just the opposite.
Starmer told reporters that he was restless for change, but would not commit to how soon Britons would feel improvements in their standards of living or public services.
Starmer in his first remarks as prime minister Friday singled out several of the big items, such as fixing the National Health Service and securing the U.K.’s borders, a reference to a larger global problem of absorbing an influx of migrants fleeing war, poverty as well as drought, heat waves and floods attributed to climate change.
Conservatives struggled to stem the flow of migrants arriving across the English Channel, failing to live up to ex-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to stop the boats.” The controversial Rwanda plan was billed as a solution that would deter migrants from risking their lives on a journey that could end up with them being deported to East Africa. So far, it has cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars and never taken flight.
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Political analysts say that for Starmer also the migration issue would be sticky and solution may be eluding at least in the short and medium term. There are also views that the present administration may have to work through the backdoor to implement a policy to curb incessant migration, which has put ordinary civic life in Britain under great stress.
