Keir Starmer has doubled down on his attacks on Reform leader Nigel Farage – saying he would ‘tear our country apart’ and hitting out over ‘Farage boats’

Keir Starmer has doubled down on his attacks on Nigel Farage – saying the Reform chief would “tear our country apart”.

The PM and his top team have turned their fire on Mr Farage, with Mr Starmer referring to small boats in the Channel as “Farage boats”. Mr Farage has hit back claiming the PM’s attacks are putting him and his activists in danger, which Mr Starmer denied.

He told The Mirror: “That is not an accurate reflection of what I am saying. I am saying there is a fundamental fork in the road for our country.

Labour have ramped up attacks on Nigel Farage in recent days

“We can either go forward with a Labour government for patriotic national renewal, where we bring the whole country with us, our beautiful, tolerant, diverse country, or we can go for toxic division and decline that will, in my view, tear our country apart.

“I’m not going to back down from making that argument, because it’s a crucial argument to make for our country, the country that I love.”

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In an interview with GB News, Mr Starmer said the Reform leader had been “wrong” to claim during the Brexit referendum campaign in 2016 that leaving the EU would make no difference to migration policy.

He said: “We’ve now done that, but now we need to ramp that up. I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU and he told the country it would make no difference if we left. He was wrong about that.

“These are Farage boats, in many senses, that are coming across the Channel.”

Ministers have repeatedly claimed Reform’s proposal to abolish indefinite leave to remain and apply this to people living in the UK is racist. Speaking to Times Radio, Mr Starmer said his words were not putting Mr Farage at risk, stating: “What I was doing in the speech was being absolutely crystal clear that at the next election there is a different battle to be had, a different divide in our politics.

“And it’s a really important divide for our country as to who we are. Because the divide will be Labour taking forward a patriotic national renewal programme where we fix our problems, change our country for the better.

“But where I am proud to serve the wholeof our country, our beautiful, tolerant, diverse country and bring the whole country together. Or Reform and the toxic division and divide that will come that will rip our country apart. And this is fundamental.”

And he went on: “This is a fight that matters to all of those people who love this country for what it is, love our values and do not want to see them torn apart. Which is why I held out the hand to people from other parties who I think would agree with this analysis and see it as pretty fundamentally important for our country.”

And he told Good Morning Britain that Mr Farage’s proposal would “tear our country apart”. He said: “I want to make sure that we are deporting those who are illegally here,quite right too. We’ve deported 35,000 since we’ve been in government.

“That’s the biggest number for nearly 10 years. And many will be frustrated that they need to seek change in their country. That is fundamentally different to Nigel Farage saying he wants to deport migrants who are lawfully here, who’ve been here for years, working in our schools, in our hospitals, running businesses, who are our neighbours.”