Overseas Territories minister Stephen Doughty was asked in an Urgent Question to make a statement on the Rwanda-style deal agreed between the UK and Mauritius to transport any small boat migrants who turn there to St Helena. Or, at least, until Starmer gives that away too…
Doughty made pains to say it was a “contingency” until Mauritius takes over responsibility for dealing with migrants. At which point Labour ceases to care…
“We are hugely grateful to the St. Helena government for their assistance… the UK government has agreed to provide one-off funding of £6.65 million to St. Helena to improve health and education outcomes and upgrade government infrastructure.”
The St. Helena government will be happy with that gratuitious funding. Edward Leigh later asked Doughty the obvious question: Why can’t we deport people who turn up here to St Helena? No answer to that one…
Starmer spoke to Nick Robinson for the Today Programme on Polanski’s criticism of the Golders Green police officers:
“I want everybody just to imagine what it might be like. You’re trying to arrest someone who has already attacked two people and has no regard for life. We know that tasers were fired. I know from my own experience with the police, that there are only two shots in a taser, and once you’ve shot them, there’s nothing left. There’s a guy on the ground, he’s got a rucksack on. And I don’t know what was going through the mind of those officers, but if I was there, I’d be thinking, he’s going to detonate something. He’s going to blow me up and everybody around here. In those circumstances, I think you can quite see why what could have gone through their mind is, we need to do whatever we can to disable this guy…
Now, when I then see Zack Polanski come out and retweet or support a criticism of that, I think it’s disgraceful… He’s not fit to lead any political party.”