Sir Keir Starmer has said he “deeply regrets” claiming the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” in an immigration speech that drew comparisons to the language of Enoch Powell.
The Prime Minister said he had not been in the “best state” to give the press conference, in which he insisted on the need for tighter border controls, as he reeled from an alleged arson attack on his family home.
He said he had considered pulling out of the speech after the fire at the property in Kentish Town left him and his wife Lady Victoria Starmer “really shaken up.”
The Prime Minister ended up going through with the conference as planned on May 12, hours after the blaze.
In it, he warned Britain risked becoming “an island of strangers” without tougher immigration controls – rhetoric that sparked an immediate backlash and was denounced by critics, including within Labour ranks, as divisive.
At the time, Downing Street doubled down on the remarks and said Sir Keir “completely rejects” suggestions he had echoed Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech that was blamed for inflaming racial tensions in the 1960s.
But in an interview for the Observer the Prime Minister struck a more conciliatory tone, saying the language “wasn’t right”.
“I wouldn’t have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as an echo of Powell,” he said.
“I had no idea – and my speechwriters didn’t know either. But that particular phrase – no – it wasn’t right. I’ll give you the honest truth: I deeply regret using it.”
He added: “It’s fair to say I wasn’t in the best state to make a big speech… I was really, really worried. I almost said: ‘I won’t do the bloody press conference.’
“Vic was really shaken up as, in truth, was I. It was just a case of reading the words out and getting through it somehow… so I could get back to them.”
Critics drew parallels between the phrase and a passage from Powell’s 1968 speech in which he claimed white Britons were at risk of becoming “strangers in their own country”.
The Prime Minister stressed he was not seeking to use the alleged arson attack as an excuse and does not blame his advisers, saying he should have read through the speech properly and “held it up to the light a bit more”.
He also backed down on language in his foreword to the policy document linked to the speech, which said record high numbers of migrants entering the UK under the last government had done “incalculable damage”.
Sir Keir insisted the issue needed addressing because the party “became too distant from working-class people on things like immigration”, but said “this wasn’t the way to do it in this current environment”.
