Rishi Sunak has warned migrants threaten to “overwhelm” countries including the UK unless radical action is taken – as he vowed to push for reforms to the global rules on refugees.
The prime minister also said that failing to tackle illegal migration would “destroy the public’s faith” in politicians and “our very systems of government” during a conference organised by the far-right Italian leader Giorgia Meloni.
In his speech in Rome, he warned that “enemy” states were deliberately “driving people to our shores to try and destabilise our societies”.
And he invoked Margaret Thatcher’s “radicalism” as he tried to save his controversial plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, which has come under fire from MPs on all sides of his party.
His comments appeared to echo the harder language on migration of his sacked home secretary Suella Braverman. She was condemned last year for claiming the UK faced an “invasion” on its south coast.
Critics accused him of using her “playbook” and said the Tories were in a “bidding war to see who can make the most toxic contribution to the debate”.
A day after a migrant died while trying to cross the English Channel, Mr Sunak also warned that “if we don’t fix this problem now, the boats will keep coming and more lives will be lost at sea.”
“If that requires us to update our laws and lead an international conversation to amend the post-war frameworks around asylum, we must do that,” he added.
Government sources said this could include a host of post-war agreements such as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Refugee Convention, sentiments that were welcomed by Tory MPs on the right of the party.
In Italy, Mr Sunak also held talks with Ms Meloni and Albania’s prime minister Edi Rama. With the former, he agreed to jointly fund a plan to return migrants in Tunisia, just across the sea from Italy, to their home countries. In his speech, Mr Sunak said no issue required “Thatcher’s radicalism and drive” more than tackling migration.
As he praised the Italian prime minister, he said they were both “determined to break the business model” of these criminal gangs who traffic people in small boats.
The speech was delivered at the Atreju festival hosted by Ms Meloni’s populist Brothers of Italy party and bizarrely named after a character from the 1984 children’s fantasy film The NeverEnding Story.
To applause, Mr Sunak told the crowd that if tackling illegal migration “requires us to update our laws and lead an international conversation to amend the post-war frameworks around asylum, we must do that.
“Because if we don’t fix this problem now, the boats will keep coming and more lives will be lost at sea.”
He added: “Our opponents just want to ignore this issue. They want to put their heads in the sand and hope it goes away. Well, let me tell them, it won’t.”
Mr Sunak said a lack of action would mean “our enemies will see how unable we are to deal with this and so will increasingly use migration as a weapon: deliberately driving people to our shores to try and destabilise our societies.”
Russia has already been accused by Finland of sending migrants to the European Union to destabilise the bloc.
Mr Sunak said: “If we do not tackle this problem, the numbers will only grow. It will overwhelm our countries, and our capacity to help those who need our help most.
“The costs of accommodating these people will anger our citizens, who won’t understand why their money should have to be spent on dealing with the consequences of this evil trade. It will destroy the public’s faith not just in us as politicians but in our very systems of government.”
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael accused Mr Sunak of using Ms Braverman’s “playbook”. He said: “Rishi Sunak is so desperate he’s reaching for the Braverman playbook, using divisive rhetoric to try to cover up his failures on asylum.Infighting within the Conservative Party is now generating a bidding war to see who can make the most toxic contribution to the debate.
“It is also a bit rich to say we need international cooperation when Conservative ministers are trashing the very treaties that we have signed up to to deal with this. Who would want to cooperate with a government that is happy to disregard our legal obligations? Instead of posturing, Rishi Sunak would do better to focus on tackling the asylum backlog that is leaving people in limbo and costing taxpayers billions.”
But Mr Sunak’s comments were welcomed by MPs on the right of the Tory party. Danny Kruger, the leader of the New Conservatives group, said he was “very encouraged by the PM’s speech … suggesting an international agreement to rewrite refugee and human rights rules”.
Earlier this year, Ms Braverman, while she was still home secretary, used a widely disparaged speech in the US to warn that as many as 780 million people would be eligible to claim asylum without radical reform of global refugee rules.
She also faced a ferocious backlash after she singled out gay people to say “simply being gay, a woman or fearful of discrimination” was now effectively enough to qualify.
