Keir Starmer only took GB News with him on his trip to Albania this week, in a further sign that he is trying to appeal to Reform voters.
At the start of this week, the prime minister unveiled controversial plans to crack down on immigration, seen by many as a clear play to try and combat the rise of Reform UK following the local and mayoral elections.
And if you needed any further proof that Starmer is focusing almost entirely on drawing support away from Nigel Farage’s party, then how about this: the only broadcaster the prime minister took with him on his Albania trip was GB News.
As Channel 4 pointed out, taking only one broadcaster on the trip was an “unusual” move from Sir Keir.
During the visit to Albania, the prime minister and his Albanian counterpart Edi Rama announced plans to strengthen cooperation to tackle illegal migration.
Starmer told GB News UK officials were “in talks” with other countries about introducing “return hubs” for refused asylum seekers, plans that sound remarkably similar to the Rwanda scheme that the PM scrapped on his first day in office.
“What now we want to do and are having discussions of, talks of, is return hubs, which is where someone has been through the system in the UK, they need to be returned and we have to make sure they’re returned effectively, and we’ll do that, if we can, through return hubs,” he said.
However, there was a somewhat embarrassing moment for Sir Keir when Rama said Albania would not agree to any deportation deals with the UK, instead choosing to focus on a similar scheme with Italy.
Rama said: “We have been asked by several countries if we were open to it, and we said no, because we are loyal to the marriage with Italy and the rest is just love.”
The Times had reported that Albania was one of the UK’s preferred options for a hub.
Starmer said on Thursday that return hubs are a “really important innovation” that complements other measures the government is taking to crack down on criminal smuggling gangs.
By relocating them to another country, the government aims to limit their opportunities to establish new grounds for avoiding deportation, such as forming a family.
The prime minister’s spokesman said: “This will basically apply to people who have exhausted all legal routes to remain in the UK but are attempting to stall, using various tactics, whether it’s losing their paperwork or using other tactics to frustrate their removal.
“It will ensure that they don’t have the chance to make their removal harder by using tactics such as starting a family, et cetera, as we have seen from cases in the past.
“That obviously will reduce the cost to the taxpayer.”
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