LONDON – Newly elected British Premier, Keir Starmer has confirmed that the much-debated Rwanda deportation plan against asylum seekers has been shut.
Addressing the first press conference on Saturday after winning the elections, Starmer said he would not continue with the Conservative government’s policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
“The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started. It’s never been a deterrent,” Starmer told newsmen as rights advocates welcomed the move.
“I’m not prepared to continue with gimmicks that don’t act as a deterrent,” he told reporters, describing the plan as a “problem that we are inheriting”.
A brief history of the plan is that the authorities in the UK started detaining asylum seekers in May after which the lawmakers approved the controversial law in April, declaring Rwanda a safe third country for deportation.
The legislation had also bypassed an earlier UK Supreme Court ruling that said the scheme was unlawful on human rights grounds though then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had pushed for the policy.
Sunak had faced criticism for the policy as tens of thousands of asylum seekers fleeing wars and poverty have reached the UK by crossing the English Channel in small boats managed by people-smuggling gangs.
“No ifs, no buts. These flights are going to Rwanda,” Sunak had asserted when the government faced flak.
Despite the rising immigration numbers, Starmer seems to have a different opinion on the issue; interestingly, not a single flight has taken off for Rwanda.
“Everyone has worked out, particularly the gangs that run this, that the chance of ever going to Rwanda was so slim – less than 1 percent,” the newly elected premier told reporters.
Though pro-immigration groups welcomed the announcement, the Conservative party has voiced concerns including Suella Braverman, a possible contender to replace Sunak as party leader.
“Years of hard work, acts of Parliament, millions of pounds been spent on a scheme which had it been delivered properly would have worked,” Braverman said on Saturday.
“There are big problems on the horizon which will be, I’m afraid, caused by Keir Starmer,” she noted while criticizing the new prime minister.
