Would you like to know why Suella Braverman’s Illegal Migration Bill is breezing through the House of Lords, despite strong objections from figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury?

The legislation cleared its first hurdle in the Lords after a Liberal Democrat bid to block it was rejected by 179 votes to 76, majority 103.

The reason is simple: Keir Starmer ordered Labour peers to abstain on the vote because it would only delay, not stop, the Bill’s enactment. Worse still – he reckons it doesn’t affect his own migration plans:

So this former Director of Public Prosecutions, who is aware of the UK’s international human rights responsibilities as a requirement of his former career as a then-Queen’s Counsel, doesn’t think it is worthwhile to stop a law that tramples over those rights for as long as possible.

And his excuse is that the Tories will use a power to push it through without amendment if any effort is made to stop it.

It’s a cop-out, isn’t it?

Wouldn’t we be closer to the truth if we assume he wants this law to be passed?

Braverman has appealed to the Lords – in print – to let her horrorshow of a Bill pass without a murmur because it is “the will of the people”, despite the fact that only a minority of the population has indicated even the slightest approval…

… and she has demonstrated her lack of confidence in her own Bill by refusing to attend a joint committee that is required to scrutinise itL

She’s running scared, and with good reason:

Even the Archibishop of Canterbury has made a rare intervention, berating the Tory government for bringing forward a Bill that has no sense of the “global nature of the challenge”, ignores that “migration must be engaged with at source as well as in the Channel”.

He said: “It is morally unacceptable and politically impractical.”

He pointed out that, after all their jabbering about dealing with “criminal gangs” who they say exploit the people trying to reach the UK to claim asylum, there is no measure in the Bill for actually stopping them.

And he said safe, legal routes for people to claim asylum must be put into place.

Those are all good points – especially the practical matters of handling criminal gangs and creating safe, legal routes to claim asylum.

But Keir Starmer doesn’t have anything to say about them. He wants the Tory law to be passed as it is. We need to ask why.

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