This morning Labour are talking tough on “smashing Channel migrant gangs” to stop the boats, vowing to treat traffickers like terrorists by freezing assets and restricting their movements. While Starmer appears in both The Sun and The Times to sell his migrant deal to voters, the Conservatives are already on the counterattack: not only does the deal junk the Rwanda plan, it opens the door to thousands of EU migrants in exchange for a new borders agreement with Brussels. Starmer is willing to accept a share of asylum seekers in return for the EU taking back migrants who arrive via small boats. Labour insist this is up for negotiation, which is code for ‘yes’…

Stamer told The Times this morning:

“We effectively exited the returns agreement we were in and have never replaced it. The first job is to secure the borders and make sure we are the ones determining who comes to this country.”

The Tories claim this would amount to around 100,000 EU asylum seekers a year, based on a Council of the EU document produced in June which says that distribution of migrants within a sharing agreement should be based “on the size of the population and the economy of the Member State”. The figure could go even higher if the migration crisis worsens. 100,000 more migrants a year, and 100,000 fewer homes built after Labour opposed the scrapping of the EU derived nutrient neutrality laws…