KEIR Starmer has suggested he didn't read through his highly-contentious "island of strangers" speech on immigration in advance.
Speaking to the Observer, the Prime Minister said he should have held the speech "up to the light a bit more" before delivering it to the nation.
Starmer was widely compared to Enoch Powell after he said Britain risked becoming an "island of strangers" if measures were not implemented to curb migration.
It was criticised for echoing Powell's 1968 declaration that Brits had "found themselves made strangers in their own country".
The CEO of Scottish Care, Donald Macaskill, told The National the speech had "echoes of Powell at his worst".
Starmer said he "deeply regrets" using the phrase, telling the paper that he was not "in the best state to make a big speech" after his family home had been targeted in a firebomb attack days before.
“It’s fair to say I wasn’t in the best state to make a big speech,” he said.
“I was really, really worried. I almost said: ‘I won’t do the bloody press conference.’ Vic [Starmer's wife] was really shaken up as, in truth, was I.
"It was just a case of reading the words out and getting through it somehow."
He went on: "I wouldn’t have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as an echo of Powell.
“I had no idea – and my speechwriters didn’t know either.
"I’ll give you the honest truth: I deeply regret using it.”
He then said he should have read through the speech properly and “held it up to the light a bit more”.
The Prime Minister also admitted there were “problems with the language” in his foreword to the policy document that said the record high numbers of immigrants entering the UK under the last government had done “incalculable damage” to the country.
At the time of the speech, Starmer said he "completely rejected" any comparison to Powell.
Powell (below) was sacked from the Conservative frontbench as a result of making his 1968 speech and it outraged his senior colleagues at the time.
In the speech, Starmer also said the Labour Government would “take back control of our borders” and close the book on a “squalid chapter” for politics and the economy.
The UK Government is set to close the care worker visa route as part of new restrictions which aim to cut the number of low-skilled foreign workers by about 50,000 this year.
Under white paper proposals, migrants will have to spend 10 years in the UK before being able to apply for citizenship, but so-called “high-contributing” individuals such as doctors and nurses could be fast-tracked through the system.
Language requirements will be increased for all immigration routes to ensure a higher level of English.
