Rwanda migrant plan ‘dead and buried’
Newly elected UK prime minister Keir Starmer on Saturday began his first full day in charge declaring the ousted Tories’ plan to deport migrants to Rwanda “dead and buried” and pledging growth as his government’s “number one mission”.
The Labour leader on Friday won a landslide election victory bringing to a close 14 years of Conservative rule.
He said he was “restless for change” and that his party had received a “mandate to do politics differently”.
Starmer started the day with a first meeting of his cabinet including Britain’s first woman finance minister Rachel Reeves and new foreign minister David Lammy.
“We have a huge amount of work to do, so now we get on with our work,” he told his top team to applause and smiles around the cabinet table.
At a news conference afterwards he said he would not be proceeding with former Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak’s controversial scheme to tackle rising small boat arrivals on England’s southern coast by deporting migrants to Rwanda.
“The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started... I’m not prepared to continue with gimmicks that don’t act as a deterrent,” he told reporters at his 10 Downing Street office.
Starmer spent his first hours in Downing Street on Friday appointing his ministerial team, hours after securing his centre-left party’s return to power with a whopping 174-seat majority in the UK parliament.
Notable lower-ranking appointments included Patrick Vallance, chief scientific government adviser during the Covid-19 pandemic, who has been made a science minister.
James Timpson, whose shoe repair company employs ex-offenders, was also made a prisons minister.
Starmer said both new ministers were people “associated with change” and illustrated his determination to deliver concrete improvements to people’s lives.
Work on “driving growth” had already begun, he said, adding that he had told his ministers “exactly what I expect of them in terms of standards, delivery, and the trust that the country has put in them”.
Flag-waving crowds of cheering Labour activists on Friday welcomed Starmer to Downing Street hours after his victory.
But daunting challenges await his government, including a stagnating economy, creaking public services and households suffering from a years-long cost-of-living crisis.
World leaders lined up to congratulate the new British premier.