Sunak urged to ‘believe in Britain’ as PM told to act NOW to stop the boats

Rishi Sunak has been urged to “believe in Britain” and take unilateral action on the migrant crisis, amid escalating fury over the problem.

Former MEP Ben Habib told ONN TV that the Prime Minister’s seeming “weakness” is his “biggest enemy”.

He urged him not to seek a returns agreement with the EU, instead to take unilateral action without pandering to Europe.

Habib reminded both Rishi Sunak and Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer that EU leaders such as Macron are “not friends of the UK”.

Habib reminded UK leaders that EU lawmakers such as Macron are “not friends of the UK”.

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Speaking about the French President, he said: “The minute we voted for Brexit, said there has to be a price.

“He doesn’t respect the treaty of the EU which allows countries to leave. He wants to punish us for it and he’s been saying it ever since 2016.”

He said that migration “is an EU-created problem”, explaining: “There are 330,000 migrants who enter the EU every year because Greece, Montenegro and Italy are not doing their job.

“They need to be getting in the sea and stopping the boats before they get into Europe.

“For us to be rushing off to Europe beggars belief – we have to act unilaterally.”

Habib urged Sunak to “put our own Navy in the water”, adding: “That is our sovereign right”.

“If we have to put our covert operatives into Europe to find out who these people smugglers are, do it. That’s what MI6 is all about.”

When asked whether he thought Keir Starmer’s newly unveiled plan to tackle migration is likely to be a threat to Sunak, Habib said: “No. For Rishi Sunak, weakness is his biggest enemy rather than Starmer. Sunak and the Tories are losing this election, it’s not that Starmer is winning.

“Nobody looks at Starmer and thinks, wow we really want him to be Prime Minister.”

The Labour leader unveiled his plan to tackle illegal migration on Thursday, which will involve a cross-border approach to tackling the gangs.

He said he is planning to seek an EU-wide returns agreement for asylum seekers who arrive in Britain. This could involve the UK agreeing to a quota of migrants it will be forced to accept from the EU each year.

In his first significant intervention on the issue of migration, Starmer said he would expand the use of serious crime prevention orders, which can be used to restrict the movement of individuals and freeze assets.

Unlike normal sentencing, the penalties can be applied to suspects before they have been convicted.

The Labour leader promised to expand the use of serious crime prevention orders, which can be used to restrict the movement of individuals and freeze assets.

Starmer explained: “They’ve been used, these powers, for terrorism, for drug trafficking, but they’ve never been used for serious, organised immigration crime.

"My own view is that they should be used for that."