Sir Keir Starmer is ready to move Channel migrants to military sites to ward off the threat of Nigel Farage after he told his reshuffled Cabinet to ‘go up a gear’.
The Prime Minister has made sweeping changes to his ministerial ranks following Angela Rayner‘s resignation on Friday.
She departed as Deputy PM, Housing Secretary and Labour’s deputy leader after her tearful admission that she didn’t pay enough tax on the purchase of her new flat.
Among his changes, Sir Keir has switched Yvette Cooper from Home Secretary to Foreign Secretary and replaced her in the Home Office with Shabana Mahmood.
The PM has also overseen a clear-out of junior ministers at the Home Office as he puts tackling the small boats crisis at the centre of his plans to combat Reform UK.
Defence Secretary John Healey today signalled Sir Keir is poised to take a harder line on immigration in the wake of Labour’s panicked reshuffle.
He confirmed the Government is looking at plans to move asylum seekers to military sites following a summer of protests outside migrant hotels across the country.
But Mr Healey insisted the PM would not look to remove Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as part of efforts to halt Channel crossings.
Among his changes, Sir Keir Starmer has switched Yvette Cooper from Home Secretary to Foreign Secretary and replaced her in the Home Office with Shabana Mahmood (pictured)
The PM and Ms Mahmood are poised to take a harder line on immigration to ward off the threat of Nigel Farage following a panicked relaunch of his Labour Government
Defence Secretary John Healey revealed Sir Keir had instructed his reshuffled Cabinet to ‘go up a year’ after a ‘really tough’ first year in power
The Defence Secretary said his department is ‘looking at the potential use of military and non-military use sites for temporary accommodation for people who come across on these small boats that may not have a right to be here’.
‘Those are decisions we haven’t taken yet, but it’s work we’re doing at the moment. And we’re doing it jointly with the Home Office,’ he added.
‘I’m looking really hard at it. I’m looking at it with the Home Office. I recognise that the loss of confidence of the public over recent years in Britain’s ability to control it borders needs to be satisfied.
‘We have to deal with this problem with the small boats.’
Mr Healey also revealed Sir Keir had instructed his reshuffled Cabinet to ‘go up a year’ after a ‘really tough’ first year in power.
‘We’re starting to renew, and what Keir Starmer has done is put a new team in place and said to us all, ‘you’ve got to go up a gear to demonstrate that Government can deliver for people’,’ the Defence Secretary said.
The scale of the challenge sacing Ms Mahmood, the former justice secretary, in her new Home Office role was illustrated on Saturday – her first full day in the job.
An estimated 1,000 people arrived in the UK by small boat over the course of the day and French officials said 24 people were rescued while trying to cross the Channel.
Dozens of asylum hotels are expected to close after they became the focal point of several protests in recent months.
Ministers are also close to agreeing a returns deal with Germany, having already secured one with France, the Telegraph reported.
One Government source said ‘nothing is off the table’ for Ms Mahmood as she assumes her new brief, which puts her in charge of borders and asylum policy.
She has previously signalled a willingness to look at human rights reform within domestic law.
A Labour insider told The Sunday Times that Ms Mahmood was likely to want to overhaul the ECHR.
They claimed she would be far more radical than her predecessor, Ms Cooper, and would ‘start with the unthinkable and work backwards’.
But Mr Healey this morning insisted Sir Keir and Ms Mahmood would not look to completely quit the ECHR, warning such a move would leave Britain in the company of countries like Russia and Belarus.
Mr Farage used Reform’s conference in Birmingham this weekend to pledge his party would stop the boats within two weeks of passing new legislation if they win power.
He has vowed to quit the ECHR and deport 600,000 asylum seekers within five years of a Reform government.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is expected to make a similar pledge to leave the ECHR at her party’s conference next month.
As part of Sir Keir’s clear-out of the Home Office, ex-borders minister Angela Eagle and ex-policing minister Diana Johnson were shifted to other departments.
Ex-industry minister Sarah Jones is now policing minister, a brief she held in opposition, as part of Ms Mahmood’s new-look team along with Mike Tapp, the Dover MP from Labour’s 2024 intake, and Alex Norris.
A French police vessel looks on as a dinghy laden with people prepares to cross the English Channel near Gravelines, northern France
Sir Keir said on Saturday: ‘The new ministers will drive forward our growth agenda with a relentless focus.
‘Phase two of this Government is about delivery and this is a Government that will renew Britain and deliver the change people voted for.’
Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones had earlier denied that the Government was in crisis.
He insisted Sir Keir now has the ‘strongest team’ in place around the Cabinet table following Ms Rayner’s departure.
He ruled out the prospect of an early general election amid opposition claims that the upheaval could open up splits within Labour and collapse the PM’s authority.
Speaking to broadcasters on Saturday, Mr Jones dismissed suggestions that the reshuffle could delay the PM’s self-described ‘phase two’ of Government by moving senior figures to unfamiliar briefs.
‘It’s not instability insofar as the outcomes that we’re delivering are the same,’ Mr Jones, who is also the newly-appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, told BBC Breakfast.
He rejected the idea Ms Cooper had been moved out of the Home Office because she was failing to control immigration, adding she would be ‘brilliant’ in her new role as Foreign Secretary.
But Kim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, said the reshuffle looked like ‘moving deck chairs on Titanic’ and ‘creating a London elite’.
‘The Labour Party is a broad church this is certainly not represented with this reshuffle,’ she said.
