On Saturday UK’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was not prepared to continue with the previous government’s Rwanda migrant deportation plan.
‘The Rwanda scheme was buried before it even started. I’m not prepared to continue with publicity stunt that don’t act as a deterrent’, Starmer told reporters at his first news conference after official taking the office.
The newly elected UK Prime Minister started his first full day in office on Saturday with a cabinet meeting, following his Labour party’s decisive election victory that ended 14 years of Conservative rule. Starmer convened the first meeting of his team, with UK’s first woman finance minister, Rachel Reeves, and the new foreign minister, David Lammy.
The Labour leader told his ministers it had been the honour and the privilege of my life to be invited by King Charles III to form the government. ‘We have a huge a amount of work to do, so now we get on with our work’, he said.
Former PM Rishi Sunak has staked his political reputation on his plan to halt the boats, advocating the contentious deportation plan despite opposition from rights groups and judicial rulings.
Notably, immigration has become an ever more central political issue since the United Kingdom left the European Union in 2020, mainly on a undertaking to take back control of the country’s borders. Starmer had previously said that Sunak’s policy was neither a prevention nor value for money.
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