𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Sir Keir Starmer branded small boats crossing the Channel as “Farage Boats” as he took a swipe at Brexit.

The Prime Minister said the Government was having to recover lost ground over returns caused by leaving the European Union.

He insisted that Nigel Farage had been “wrong” during the Brexit referendum in 2016 that it would make no difference to migration policy if the UK voted leave.

Under the Dublin Convention which applies in the EU, there is a provision to return asylum seekers to the first member state they arrived in.

Sir Keir acknowledged the returns agreement with France had only seen small numbers deported, but said it had been important to prove the policy worked.

He told GB News: “We’ve now done that, but now we need to ramp that up. I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU and he told the country it would make no difference if we left. He was wrong about that.

“These are Farage boats, in many senses, that are coming across the channel.”