British Prime Minister Keir Starmer confirmed this Saturday (6) that he would not follow pioneer Rishi Sunak's policy of deporting asylum seekers arriving in small boats from the UK to Rwanda.
“Rwanda's project was dead and buried before it started. It was never an obstacle (to the small boat crossing),” Starmer told a press conference.
The project was scheduled to launch on July 24, but the actual launch depends on election results. Commenting on the fact that the law has not fulfilled its initial aim of reducing the flow of irregular migrants across the English Channel, Starmer said: “I am not prepared to continue with tactics that do not act as a deterrent”.
According to British government figures, more than 7,500 migrants entered the UK via this route in small boats this year until early May. Deporting these migrants is one of the main slogans of the Conservative Party.
The plan was initially created by Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between 2019 and 2022. After his resignation, his successors, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, continued to try to approve the project – which happened in April this year.
