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Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to send failed asylum seekers abroad shows post-Brexit Britain is in “a very dark place”, Albania’s prime minister has warned.
In a blistering attack, Edi Rama said the prime minister was “looking for places to dump migrants” – a plan that would have been inconceivable a decade ago.
He said Brexit had ushered in a shift in public discourse, which means the “totally unacceptable, totally ridiculous, totally shameful” are now normalised.
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Sir Keir Starmer met Edi Rama in Albania last month (PA Wire)
And, in an interview with The Guardian, Mr Rama said: “It’s one of those things that 10 years ago would simply have not been imaginable… that Britain would look for places to dump immigrants.
“The fact that today it’s not just imaginable, it’s happening, is not because of Keir Starmer or Rishi Sunak doing something outrageous; it’s because of the country being in a very dark place.”
The socialist Albanian PM added: “Eighty per cent of the things that are said, or are written, or are accepted as a normal part of the discourse in today’s Britain are things that [before Brexit] would have been totally unacceptable, totally ridiculous, totally shameful.”
Mr Rama’s interview comes a month after Sir Keir said Britain was in talks with a handful of countries over “return hubs” for failed asylum seekers as part of the government’s crackdown on small boats crossing the English Channel.
The PM announced the plans while visiting Albania’s capital, Tirana, but suffered a setback as Mr Rama insisted his country would not host one of the UK’s planned hubs.
But, insisting his comments were not a dig at Sir Keir, he said his British counterpart is a “very decent and delightful person” and that he has rejected similar plans under Mr Sunak and Boris Johnson in the past.
Albania currently operates a similar returns hub programme with Italy.
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Edi Rama said he is loyal to his agreement with Italian PM Giorgia Meloni (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
Countries thought to be under consideration by the UK include Serbia, Bosnia and North Macedonia.
Downing Street said its objective is to remove people who have exhausted all routes to staying in the UK and have no lawful basis to remain here.
“We have seen people in the past arriving from safe countries but then using stalling tactics such as losing their paperwork or starting a family to frustrate that removal,” Sir Keir’s spokesman said at the time.
The prime minister admitted return hubs would not in themselves halt the boats but he said that, combined with other measures designed to tackle smuggling gangs and return those with no right to be in the UK, it would “allow us to bear down on this vile trade and make sure that we stop those people crossing the Channel”.