The backlash against Keir Starmer’s immigration speech

0:04Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, we'd love it if you'd give us a follow and a rating. Today, the backlash against Keir Starmer is growing, including from MPs in London, after he claimed that Britain risks becoming an island of strangers if immigration levels are not cut. It comes after the Prime Minister said Britain would finally take back control of its borders, as he published a white paper designed to bring down net migration significantly by the next election. Let me put it this way. Nations depend on rules, fair rules. Sometimes they're written down, often they're not.

0:48But either way they give shape to our values, guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to each other. Now in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.

1:24That was the Prime Minister speaking yesterday, and the London Standards Chief Political Correspondent Rachel Burford joins me now. Rachel, first of all, can you outline what Starmer has announced in his immigration reforms? Yesterday, we saw the Prime Minister outline Labour's new immigration crackdown designed to bring down the rising number of people coming from abroad to live, work and study in this country. There was a lot of announcements, some of which had been trailed before and some hadn't but essentially the main bulk was to do with there'll be faster deportations tightened rules around citizenship there's new sort of ways to stop people overstaying their visas when they come here Downing Street is reviewing how the right to family life contasion article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights is being applied in immigration cases that has famously been used by foreign criminals who are facing deportation to say they should be allowed to stay in the country.

2:24And there'll be a crackdown on foreign students as well. So they tried to limit the number of people coming here on student visas. One of the biggest and most controversial announcements was around cutting the number of people coming from abroad that work as care workers in the UK. Care workers will no longer be recruited from overseas, which has been sort of quite a shock to the care sector, who do rely very heavily on foreign workers. We saw last year there were changes under the previous government to care worker visas and that did significantly bring down the number of people coming to the UK to take on those jobs.

2:59They're going to be cut even further and it's going to be much much harder for people to come over here to do those kind of jobs we will not be giving out from 2028 care worker visas to people wishing to come to do those jobs. Kirstama's speech was obviously very interesting and has been quite controversial and has actually gained a lot of criticism over the last day. Because he used this phrase, he said that unless migration is brought down, Britain risks becoming an island of strangers. And some have argued that that echoes a speech made by Enoch Powell in 1968, where he said that Britons have found themselves made strangers in their own country because of rising immigration levels.

3:38So there has been quite a bit of backlash from some sectors, and even some of his own MPs today. Do you think the Prime Minister was aware of this divisive rhetoric? And is he just pandering to the far right? The Prime Minister completely rejects those comparisons and absolutely stands behind the argument he was making. So he does not think that he was in any way referencing Enoch Powell in that speech. His spokesmen's emphasised that Keir Starmer said migrants have made massive contributions to Britain. And he did. He said that, you know, Britain was rebuilt after the Second World War by, you know, people coming here to help, particularly in the NHS, and that they continue.

4:18Migrants continue to make a huge contribution to British society today. The Prime Minister is saying that he was trying to emphasize that the people that come here should integrate into British society. and you know there have been as well as all the other policies I mentioned earlier there is going to be more emphasis on migrants that come here having to have a good level of English when they do come here not just people working here but also their family members that may come with them as well you know we saw the local elections a couple of weeks ago reform did extremely well in those local elections and the issue of immigration is something that the public are very much focused on You know, the Prime Minister has faced a backlash from some of his own MPs about the migration reforms he unveiled.

5:03You know, we've seen some London MPs, Bel Ribeiro, Adi, the MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill. You know, she stressed that these migrants are not strangers. They are our friends and neighbours and family members. It's shameful they're being scapegoated. The word she used, we've seen former Chancellor John MacDonald, who's the MP for Hayes, emphasising that, you know, he lives in one of the most diverse communities in the country. and we get along together pretty well with every section of the community making its contribution and so this has not gone down particularly well perhaps with London MPs who do represent very diverse communities and live in very diverse constituencies.

5:40Outside of London there has been and outside of big cities there has been sort of less frustration perhaps with the Prime Minister's words. You know, we saw reforms, you know, sweep a lot of council seats at the local elections a couple of weeks ago. And I think what's interesting as well, Luke Trill, who's the UK director of More and Common, this polling company, said that Sakhir's line that we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together, was actually a powerful one that chimes with the worry that his polling company is seeing in focus groups. You know, when he's been talking to these focus groups.

6:17People are saying that the pace and scale of immigration and lack of integration expectations is undermining identity and community in this country. Labour were elected in their manifesto. They said they were going to bring immigration down and they were elected on a promise to bring immigration down. So now they have introduced these big sweeping reforms to immigration, they shouldn't perhaps be so much of a surprise. Other ministers, including Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, have defended the Prime Minister. Aside from this controversy, do you think Starmer's tougher migration measures will actually work?

6:52It's hard to say. I mean, obviously, we're still seeing a lot of people coming over on small boats, especially now the weather is quite good. And these are people that are often fleeing sort of war-torn countries that they cannot be sent back to. We've seen that changes to visas and work visas and study visas do bring down the amount of people coming here. But you've got sort of sectors, you know, the university sector saying that foreign students actually contribute billions of pounds a year to the British economy. You know, care workers do very hard jobs, often for lower pay, that care homes find it very difficult to get British people into those jobs.

7:28Some may argue that, you know, carers should be paid a lot more money, and maybe then British citizens would want to take on those roles. But this is going to be quite a shock for some sectors. And there has been some arguing that what we're going to do is lose sort of you know if we're not getting as many foreign students over here what we're going to do is lose the best and brightest will not want to come to this country because they may not feel welcome and also because it's much much harder to do so than it is to perhaps other European countries. Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two the latest from the trial of P Diddy who is accused of running a sprawling sex trafficking operation.

8:08We'll see you back here in just a moment. Welcome back. Sean Diddy Coombs, known as P. Diddy, is a name you'll be familiar with as the 90s music mogul, R &B singer, rapper, and at the height of his fame, he was worth almost£1 billion. He founded Bad Boy Records and is credited with discovering artists including Mary Jo Blige, Usher and the Notorious B.I.G. But right now, he's on trial in New York. Joining me now is the London Standards courts correspondent Tristan Kirk. Tristan, P. Diddy was arrested last year and the charges held against him are horrendous and pretty staggering. What are the crimes he's being accused of?

8:52This is the start of the trial in New York of Sean Diddy Combs. He was accused of sex trafficking, forcing women into prostitution and racketeering. The essence of this case is that he is accused over the course of 20 years of forcing women into sexual acts that they didn't want to do, of bribery, kidnapping, arson, obstructions of justice. This is a case that's sentenced around his private life and activities that he's accused of doing with women, particularly at parties, which were known as break-offs. So the trial is due to look at those parties, the activities within them, and whether Coombs was somebody who was controlling and forcing people to do things against their will.

9:46Now, his former partner, Cassie Ventura, is set to be a star prosecution witness. Can you tell us more about this CCTV video footage, which forms a key part of the prosecution case. The case against Coombs began to come out into the public eye last year when a video emerged of his former partner Cassie Ventura from 2016. And in the video, the rapper was seen chasing after her in a hotel and eventually catching up to her and then inflicting some pretty serious violence towards her. That brought into the public domain the first inkling of a case against the rapper. She then brought a civil lawsuit, which was quickly settled for fairly huge sums of money.

10:34But what had also been sparked was a criminal case. And in this trial in New York, Cassie Ventura, who's an R &B singer in her own right, is due to be a star witness in the prosecution. She's going to be describing aspects of their private life together over several years. She says that she was forced to have sex with male prostitutes during these parties organised by Coombs. She says that she was subjected to some horrifically degrading activities during those parties. And that forms really a centrepiece of the case that prosecutors are bringing against Coombs, that he was involved in sex trafficking and using prostitutes for these notorious parties.

11:20And he's denying the charges against him. Is that right? He does deny all of the charge against him, which is a racketeering conspiracy, which is an American charge, which sort of covers the whole span of the allegations and the idea that he was committing crimes and getting people to cover them up. He also denies charges of sex trafficking and also transportation to engage in prostitution. His counsel at the start of the trial responded to the prosecutor's opening statement. The prosecutor set out all of the allegations against Coombs, what is said to have gone on in these parties and what women are said to have been subjected to.

12:04Coombs's barrister then stood up and said that, yes, he admits violence to women. I mean, he admits pretty horrible behavior in relationships. And I think that he pretty much had to admit to that because of the notorious video featuring him attacking his then girlfriend, Miss Ventura. But his counsel say that although he admits being a pretty unpleasant person, that doesn't amount in legal terms to a conspiracy to sex traffic and involving prostitution. So he says that although the jury might not like him, they shouldn't find him guilty of the offences of which he's accused. So how long will this trial play out and when can we expect to hear a verdict?

12:51Well, this is a trial that's set down for around about two months. So it's going to go on for quite some time. This week, we'll probably hear from Cassie Ventura, which is going to be the centrepiece of the prosecution's case, as I say. There's a second woman, at least, at the moment, known by the alias, Jane, who is due to give evidence, similarly saying that she was forced into things at these freak-off parties and describing the private life that she had with Coombs. Coombs. And so the prosecution will probably take a few weeks to outline their case against him. And then he'll be given an opportunity to refute the charges and potentially to give evidence himself, which means that all in the trial, if it lasts for two months, we might be looking at a verdict in July.

13:47And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk and please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. This podcast returns tomorrow at 4pm. We'll see you then.