Keir Starmer Late to the Party on Farage

The Prime Minister's condemnation of Nigel Farage's racist and immoral mass deportation plans has come far too late for many in his party

It’s taken him an awfully long time to get there but Keir Starmer finally came to the correct position on Nigel Farage’s immoral and racist mass deportation plans.

Asked on the BBC on Sunday about Reform’s plans to strip indefinite leave to remain from hundreds of thousands of people already settled in the UK, the Prime Minister replied that: “I do think that it is a a racist policy. I do think it is immoral. It needs to be called out for what it is.”

This is a big shift from just last week.

Asked back then about Farage’s plans, Starmer’s spokespeople would only say that he thought the plans were “half-baked”, “unworkable”, and “unfunded”, while refusing to make any moral judgement on them whatsoever.

These responses triggered despair among many Labour banckbenchers and ministers, many of whom privately made their dissatisfaction with the Prime Minister clear.

That pressure now appears to have paid off, with Starmer finally coming to the position that the vast majority of people in his own party wanted him to come to many months ago.

So does this mark a real shift in the Government’s strategy, or this another example of Starmer belatedly shutting stable doors, long after the horses have already bolted?