Starmer in ‘racism’ row with Bangladeshis over illegal migrants comment

Cllr Sabina Akhtar, the deputy leader of the Labour group on Tower Hamlets council in east London, has resigned from the party

Sir Keir Starmer was embroiled in a row with Bangladeshi community leaders on Thursday over his comments on dealing with illegal migrants from that country.

The row was caused after Sir Keir gave Bangladesh as an example of a safe country to which asylum seekers could be returned if they were found to have no right to remain in the UK.

It escalated with a clip on X, formerly Twitter, which Labour said had been edited to make it look as though Sir Keir was suggesting the repatriation of British Bangladeshis.

One local council party leader has since resigned while two former MPs said there was “concern” and “upset” over the Labour leader’s comments.

Cllr Akhtar accused the Labour leader of 'singling out my community and insulting my Bangladeshi identity'

Sir Keir was forced to explain his comments, which aides said had been taken out of context, and paid tribute to the “massive contribution” by Bangladeshis to the UK economy and culture.

Conservative officials also questioned why the Labour leader had singled out Bangladeshis when they accounted for eight of the 31,079 migrants who had arrived in the UK illegally via small boats in the year to March 2024.

Cllr Sabina Akhtar, the deputy leader of the Labour group on Tower Hamlets council in east London, resigned from the party. She said: “I can not be proud of the party any more when the leader of the party singles out my community and insults my Bangladeshi identity.”

Rushanara Ali said there has been upset following the release of a clip of the Labour Party leader - Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg

Rushanara Ali, the first British Bangladeshi to be elected to the Commons and MP for Bethnal Green and Bow until Parliament was dissolved last month, said: “There has been considerable concern and upset following the release of a clip of the Labour Party leader.”

Ms Ali said she had been “in close contact with his [Sir Keir’s] team to relay the concerns in our community”. She added that she would “always work hard to ensure the interests and concerns of the British Bangladeshi community are at the heart of policy in a future Labour government”.

‘Scapegoating’ migrants

In a video posted on Twitter, Apsana Begum, Labour’s candidate in Tower Hamlets’ other parliamentary constituency, Poplar and Limehouse, said: “I will never ever stand by and let migrant communities be scapegoated.

“It is totally unacceptable for politicians, for any party, to use dog whistle racism against Bangladeshis or any other migrant community.”

According to the 2021 census, more than a third of Tower Hamlets’ population were of Bangladeshi ethnicity.

The row stemmed from Sir Keir’s responses to questions from an audience of Sun readers on Monday, when he said the number of people returned to where they came from had fallen by 44 per cent under the Conservative government.

He pledged to “put the staff back in the returns unit” in “the first few days” of a Labour government.

“I’ll make sure that we’ve got planes going off – not to Rwanda, that’s an expensive gimmick – they will go back to the countries where people come from. That’s what used to happen,” he added.

Pressed by the event host, Sun political editor Harry Cole, on which countries he is talking about, Sir Keir responded: “At the moment people coming from countries like Bangladesh are not being removed, because they’re not being processed.”

In May, the Government signed an agreement with Bangladesh “to speed up the removal of migrants with no right to be in the country”.

In 2023, according to Home Office statistics, 12 failed asylum seekers were deported to Bangladesh, while 66 went back voluntarily.

Sir Keir said he had not meant to offend the Bangladeshi community. “I certainly wasn’t intending to cause any concern or offence to any Bangladeshi community here,” he said.

“In relation to Bangladesh, let me say just how much I value the relationship and the contribution that we have with the Bangladeshi community in Britain.”

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