• Starmer dismisses Sunak’s argument, stating that many asylum seekers arrived in the UK from Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan.
• Starmer argues that leaving asylum claims unprocessed is not the solution.
• Polls predict Starmer to win the July 4 election, ending 14 years of Conservative rule.

Labor leader Keir Starmer hit back after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak accused him of planning to “sit down with the Iranian ayatollah” and make a “deal with the Taliban” to address the UK’s asylum backlog through return agreements.

During a televised debate aired on Wednesday, the Conservative leader dismissed his election rival’s argument that he would seek to relocate asylum seekers to safe countries or return them to their home countries, noting that many had arrived in the UK from Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan.

“Is he going to sit down with the Iranian ayatollah? Are you going to try to do a deal with the Taliban? It’s completely nonsensical; you are taking people for fools,” Sunak said in a BBC leaders’ debate.

As part of his election campaign, Starmer has stated he wants to negotiate return agreements to address the country’s chronic asylum backlog. This issue has worsened due to recent Conservative legislation that does not allow asylum claims to be processed while deportations to Rwanda are on hold.

“There are some things that are not sensible for the asylum policy. That was a throwaway comment from the prime minister himself who had no answer to that question,” Starmer said on Thursday.

“But leaving those claims unprocessed is not the answer to that. Of course, there will be countries, Afghanistan for example, where you can’t return people — people who perhaps helped us by interpreting for our troops in Afghanistan and put themselves at risk; people who in my constituency were fleeing war in Afghanistan and found we weren’t able to get them out on those flights. Of course, about their particular cases, they’re not going to be returned to Afghanistan.”

“But what we can’t do is stay with this absurd situation where there’s just a growing and growing number to which the prime minister has got no answer. It is absurd and reckless,” he added.

Polls predict Starmer is on track to win the July 4 election with a large majority, ending 14 years of Conservative rule. In recent weeks, the Labour leader and Sunak have clashed in several debates and public sessions with voters over who is better suited to lead the country.

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