Heidi Alexander Refuses to Say If Starmer Will Secure French Migrant Deal This Week – Guido Fawkes

LISTEN: Heidi Alexander Refuses to Say If Starmer Will Secure French Migrant Deal This Week

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Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander was wheeled out for the media round ahead of President Macron’s state visit today, as Starmer desperately tries to secure a “one in, one out” asylum deal with the French. A big policy Labour has been scrambling to patch together in recent months…

As Guido first revealed, Starmer had hoped to agree the deal last Thursday as a rabbit to mark his one-year anniversary and there was still an expectation of a deal up to the last minute. That didn’t happen. Downing Street was then hoping an agreement would take centre stage this at the Anglo-French summit Thursday…

Pressed this morning on whether the deal was actually any closer, Alexander said on Times Radio:

“I’m not going to speculate on the coverage of this possibility of a one in one out agreement with France. We’ve seen in the last couple of days, haven’t we, that the French authorities are now using some new tactics to stop the boats in shallow waters. We welcome that and we want to build on it.”

The excuse deployed so far for the lack of a deal agreement is last month’s opposition from Italy, Spain, Greece, Malta, and Cyprus who all wrote to the EU Commission warning that the deal could dump Britain’s deported migrants on their shores instead. Meanwhile, shadow home secretary Chris Philp is demanding Macron give back the £771 million the UK already forked over to France to “stop the boats.” If Macron snubs this deal during his visit, it would be yet another humiliating failure for Starmer…