Rishi Sunak is “completely wrong” to say nobody wants a general election and won’t call one now “because he thinks he’ll lose”, Sir Keir Starmer has said.
Sir Keir challenged the prime minister to re-think his position and go to the polls.
Referencing Mr Sunak’s speech at the Tory conference last week, Sir Keir told Beth Rigby: “He said something that I agree with, which is that the last few years have been the wrong decisions and we need change.
“I say, spot on, let the country decide the change that it needs. That can be done through a general election.”
Asked why he wasn’t putting his plans to the country in a general election to secure a mandate – given he lost the Tory leadership race to Liz Truss last summer before being selected by MPs to replace her – Mr Sunak replied: “Because that’s not what the country wants.”
Sir Keir has said his cabinet is primed for one to happen as soon as Mayand used his speech at the annual party conference to outline his vision for two terms in power, promising a “decade of national renewal” with plans to “rebuild Britain”.
This includes plans to clear the NHS backlog – however, in his interview with Beth Rigby, Sir Keir went further than he has previously by committing to reducing health waiting lists by five million by the end of his first term as prime minister, matching what it was when Labour was last in power.
He also rejected the suggestion the address was lacking in policy ideas, saying the aim of it was to “create an emotional connection with the future and speak to the country”.
Sir Keir said he has wanted to do that for four years but knew he must change the party first after the turbulent era under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, which ended with the worst election defeat in decades.
“I think we’ve earned the right to a hearing with the country and we’re now inviting people to join us on this,” Sir Keir said.
The Archbishop of York has told Sky News the UK should resist Reform’s “kneejerk” plan for the mass deportation of migrants, telling Nigel Farage he is not offering any “long-term solution”.
Stephen Cottrell said in an interview with Trevor Phillips he has “every sympathy” with people who are concerned about asylum seekers coming to the country illegally.
But he criticised the plan announced by Reform on Tuesday to deport 600,000 people, which would be enabled by striking deals with the Taliban and Iran, saying it will not “solve the problem”.
Mr Cottrell is currently acting head of the Church of England while a new Archbishop of Canterbury is chosen.
Image: Pic: Jacob King/PA Wire
Image: The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell in 2020.
File pic: PA
Phillips asked him: “What’s your response to the people who are saying the policy should be ‘you land here, unlawfully, you get locked up and you get deported straight away. No ifs, no buts’?”
Mr Cottrell said he would tell them “you haven’t solved the problem”, adding: “You’ve just put it somewhere else and you’ve done nothing to address the issue of what brings people to this country.
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“And so if you think that’s the answer, you will discover in due course that all you have done is made the problem worse.
“Don’t misunderstand me, I have every sympathy with those who find this difficult, every sympathy – as I do with those living in poverty.
“But… we should actively resist the kind of isolationist, short term kneejerk ‘send them home’.”
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What do public make of Reform’s plans?
Image: Nigel Farage at the launch of Reform UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers. Pic: PA
Asked if that was his message to the Reform leader, he said: “Well, it is. I mean, Mr Farage is saying the things he’s saying, but he is not offering any long-term solution to the big issues which are convulsing our world, which lead to this. And, I see no other way.”
Mr Farage, the MP for Clacton, was asked at a news conference this week what he would say if Christian leaders opposed his plan.
“Whoever the Christian leaders are at any given point in time, I think over the last decades, quite a few of them have been rather out of touch, perhaps with their own flock,” he said.
“We believe that what we’re offering is right and proper, and we believe for a political party that was founded around the slogan of family, community, country that we are doing right by all of those things, with these plans we put forward today.”
Sky News has approached Mr Farage for comment.
Farage won’t be greeting this as good news of the gospel – nor will govt ministers
When Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell told journalists that “We don’t do God”, many took it as a statement of ideology.
In fact it was the caution of a canny operator who knows that the most dangerous opponent in politics is a religious leader licensed to challenge your very morality.
Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, currently the effective head of the worldwide Anglican communion, could not have been clearer in his denunciation of what he calls the Reform party’s “isolationist, short term, kneejerk ‘send them home'” approach to asylum and immigration.
I sense that having ruled himself out of the race for next Archbishop of Canterbury, Reverend Cottrell feels free to preach a liberal doctrine.
Unusually, in our interview he pinpoints a political leader as, in effect, failing to demonstrate Christian charity.
Nigel Farage, who describes himself as a practising Christian, won’t be greeting this as the good news of the gospel.
But government ministers will also be feeling nervous.
Battered for allowing record numbers of cross- Channel migrants, and facing legal battles on asylum hotels that may go all the way to the Supreme Court, Labour has tried to head off the Reform challenge with tougher language on border control.
The last thing the prime minister needs right now is to make an enemy of the Almighty – or at least of his representatives on Earth.