Nigel Farage hits back at Keir Starmer after being blamed for surging small boats: 'Stop gaslighting the public!'

"He is gaslighting the British public and attempting to blame everything on me."

Following his speech, in which the Prime Minister accused Reform UK of being the "enemy of national renewal", Sir Keir told the People's Channel: "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’ coming across the Channel."

Nigel responded on his show this evening, sarcastically saying: "I am the devil. The Farage boats."

He added: "I warned the entire British political establishment in 2020, Prime Minister, that we had a major problem coming down the track.

"I also asked the mainstream media why they're not covering this. I predicted that it would lead to an invasion.

"Of course, I was absolutely demonised for daring to say the words, but 180 thousand people later, perhaps I was right.

"What the Prime Minister is talking about is the EU-wide Dublin Convention.

"This was the means by which he argues, as EU members, we could send people back well in that very year of 2020.

"We took more in from the European Union under this programme than we sent back.

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"Is the Prime Minister being deliberately dishonest?"

The UK's final few years of participation in the Dublin Convention would indicate that Britain was a net recipient of asylum seekers.

Home Office data revealed that 676 asylum seekers were transferred from Britain in 2016 and 2017, while 1,019 illegal migrants were transferred to the UK over the same period.

The problem worsened in 2018, when only 209 out of 5,500 requests for asylum seekers to be returned were completed, while the UK accepted 1,215 migrants.

The figure comes in stark contrast to the 131 who were transferred into the UK in 2015, when 510 asylum seekers had been transferred out.

Since Labour’s conference kicked off on Sunday, a staggering 1,368 illegal migrants have landed on Britain’s shores.

Speaking today, the Prime Minister suggested he could overhaul how courts apply human rights laws in migrant cases involving "torture".

He said ministers should "look at issues" with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights – the clause frequently used by dinghy arrivals to block deportation.

Migrants have repeatedly used the treaty to argue they can’t be sent home because prisons in their countries don’t meet UK standards.

But Sir Keir Starmer told BBC Radio 4 there’s a clear distinction between "someone being deported to summary execution" and someone facing poorer healthcare or "different prison conditions".