Starmer’s migration speech ‘completely different’ to Enoch Powell’s, says Yvette Cooper

The location secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said the premier minister’s words were “completely different” to those utilized by Enoch Powell successful his infamous rivers of humor speech, amid disapproval wrong the enactment of the rhetoric utilized to motorboat the government’s migration crackdown.

A fig of MPs criticised Keir Starmer erstwhile helium said the UK risked becoming “an land of strangers” if steps were not taken to code integration. Speaking connected Tuesday, Cooper said that Starmer had besides praised the publication of migrants.

“I don’t deliberation it’s close to marque those comparisons, I deliberation it’s wholly different,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “The premier curate said yesterday, I deliberation astir successful the aforesaid breath, helium talked astir the divers state that we are and that being portion of our strength.

“Everybody ever gets caught up successful focusing connected antithetic phrases … if you look astatine what the premier curate said yesterday, helium talked astir radical who came aft the warfare to enactment successful the UK, to physique immoderate of our services and however important that was. But helium besides talked astir however migration has to beryllium decently controlled and managed, and it hasn’t been. I really deliberation it’s OK to person some those views.”

The achromatic insubstantial launched connected Monday includes measures to ban caller recruitment from abroad for attraction roles, arsenic portion of a wider effort to trim ineligible migration and prioritise UK-based workers.

It besides plans to rise overseas workers’ skills requirements to grade level, rise the standards of English language required for each types of visa including dependents, and summation the clip it takes to summation citizenship from 5 years to arsenic galore arsenic 10.

Migrants who show a “contribution” to the system and nine done their taxation returns, who enactment for the NHS and different nationalist services, who person engineering jobs oregon who bash outstanding voluntary work volition beryllium entitled to fast-track their imperishable residency.

The rhetoric utilized by Starmer was likened by immoderate critics to the connection of Powell successful 1968, and the premier curate was accused of pandering to the populist close by insisting helium intended to “take backmost power of our borders” and extremity a “squalid chapter” of rising inward migration.

Some MPs claimed that his words had echoed Powell’s notorious “rivers of blood” speech, which imagined a aboriginal multicultural Britain wherever the achromatic colonisation “found themselves made strangers successful their ain country”. Starmer told the Guardian: “Migrants marque a monolithic publication to the UK, and I would ne'er denigrate that.”

Several Labour MPs questioned whether Starmer’s policies were fuelling racism. Sarah Owen, the Labour seat of the women and equalities committee, who is of Malaysian-Chinese heritage, said: “Chasing the process of the close risks taking our state down a precise acheronian path.

“The champion mode to debar becoming an ‘island of strangers’ is investing successful communities to thrive – not pitting radical against each other.”

Cooper besides defended the determination to extremity the societal attraction visa – which has led to warnings from the assemblage about terrible unit shortages. She said the instauration of the visa nether the Conservatives had led to “jobs that often either didn’t beryllium oregon the modular of those jobs was truly dodgy, that didn’t conscionable due standards”.

She said 40,000 attraction workers who had arrived connected visas had ended up being displaced erstwhile companies were struck off. “Our statement is that attraction companies should beryllium recruiting from those pools of displaced workers. They tin besides widen existing visas.”

On Tuesday, 1 of the starring MPs successful Labour’s “red wall” group, Jake Richards, said the premier curate was close to pass astir issues of integration. “The premier curate is perfectly close to pass of the hazard of becoming an ‘island of strangers’,” the MP for Rother Valley tweeted. “Millions of radical crossed the state person akin concerns. This taxable indispensable beryllium cardinal to missions crossed immigration, employment, enactment and tackling neighbourhood deprivation etc.”