The backlash to Sir Keir Starmer’s speech on immigration has been “way overblown”, a senior Cabinet minister has said.
The Prime Minister has faced criticism for the language he used in the speech, setting out plans to crack down on legal migration into the UK, on Monday.
Sir Keir said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” if migration controls were not tightened.
Critics, including backbench Labour MPs, have raised concerns about the language, with some comparing it with a similar passage from Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 “rivers of blood” speech.
“Honestly, I think this has been way overblown,” Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden told LBC.
Asked if he would use the phrase “island of strangers”, Mr McFadden said: “It depends on the context.
“I mean, I might, because what the Prime Minister was talking about was, we need a society with rules. We need a society with responsibilities and obligations.”
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood later backed Sir Keir’s remarks, as she held a press conference on prison reforms, though she avoided using the “island of strangers” phrase verbatim.
Asked whether she would repeat the Prime Minister’s language, she said: “I agree with the Prime Minister that without curbs on migration, without making sure that we have strong rules that everyone follows, and that we have a pace of immigration that allows for integration into our country, we do risk becoming a nation of people estranged from one another.
“And what he has described is something that I absolutely believe in, and which are the values of the Labour Party, which is a desire to see this country as a nation of neighbours.”
Pressed again on Sir Keir’s wording, she said: “Yes, it is a risk that we are running without immigration curbs.
“It is self-evidently true that people in our country will become more estranged from one another, and if we want to build a nation of neighbours, we have to take active steps to make sure that that is what happens, and that matters to me deeply, personally as well, as someone who is the child of immigrants.”
Reform UK’s newest MP, Sarah Pochin, said Labour was sounding “more like Reform than Reform”.
“Reform have got them on the run. They know what the electorate want to hear.
“They’ve seen the devastating impact of our policies on their results in these latest set of elections, and so now, yes, they’re sounding more like Reform than Reform are,” she told Times Radio.
But she said the immigration policies announced were “just a bit of bluster, a bit of waffle”.
Downing Street has rejected the comparison with Mr Powell’s speech, in which the then-senior Tory said white British people could find themselves “strangers in their own country” as a result of migration.
Mr Powell was sacked from the Conservative frontbench as a result of the speech and it outraged his senior colleagues at the time.
Sir Keir’s official spokesman said on Tuesday that the Prime Minister stands by his words.
“The Prime Minister rejects those comparisons and absolutely stands behind the argument he was making, that migrants make a massive contribution to our country, but migration needs to be controlled.”