The UK Labour government is now proposing to send migrants to Balkan ‘offshoring’ locations, in what looks like more flip-flopping on previous commitments.
As part of a strategy to combat illegal immigration, under-pressure PM Keir Starmer promised “return hubs” abroad for failed asylum seekers. Typically planned for Balkan countries—where any construction has yet to commence—the locations would hold migrants whose home countries were deemed unsafe to return to. An earlier, Tory incarnation of this type of policy, the “Rwanda Plan,” was condemned by Starmer in opposition and scrapped when he took power last summer.
Starmer told GB News of:
return hubs, which is [sic] 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.
Although the PM is visiting Albania, he denied that any such facilities were planned for there. Hypothetically, other named Balkan countries in Starmer’s word soup (чорба) would be part of cross-border intelligence sharing, but, for now at least, they would not be offshoring returnee migrants.
With more than 12,000 individuals entering Britain via ‘small boat’ Channel crossings this year—and Reform UK trouncing Labour at the polls—Starmer is under pressure to ‘smash the gangs,’ as he calls it. The new ‘return hubs’ policy is meant to address both challenges, but many on the Labour benches oppose it. Both its vagueness and the PM’s propensity to change his mind on key issues make such proposals look dead in the water already.
