Exclusive: Labour Anger Erupts Over Party's Response To Katie Lam Immigration Row

Keir Starmer told Labour's annual conference that the country faced a choice between "decency and division".Senior Labour figures have reacted with dismay to the party’s response to calls by a shadow Tory minister for the deportation of immigrants living legally in the UK.Katie Lam said their forced expulsion would make the country more “culturally coherent”.Speaking to The Times, the shadow Home Office minister said: “Everybody who’s in this country illegally I think needs to go home.“There are also a large number of people in this country who came here legally, but in effect shouldn’t have been able to do so. It’s not the fault of the individuals who came here, they just shouldn’t have been able to do so. They will also need to go home.“What that will leave is a mostly but not entirely culturally coherent group of people.”In a letter to Kemi Badenoch on Monday, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said: “People who have come to the United Kingdom legally, played by the rules and made it their home do not need to ‘go home’. This is their home.”But it took Labour more than 24 hours to finally issue a response to Lam’s remarks.A spokesperson said: “The Tories want to retrospectively change the rules to deport people who have been in this country and contributed to our society for decades.“They would separate British children from their parents and expel doctors and nurses who have been serving patients in the NHS for years. “We welcome those who come to this country legally, and give more than they take. We believe the right to stay here must not be automatic, but that those who play their part should be able to earn that right.”However, the statement made no reference to Lam’s desire to make the UK more “culturally coherent”.One Labour MP told HuffPost UK: “What’s the point of us saying we’re anti-racist when we fail to call out racism? Not only are we cowards but we’re incompetent as well.”A senior Labour source said: “If a Labour government minister is now not willing to even put their name to denouncing out and out racism and call for Kemi to take action, then we are absolutely nowhere.”In his speech to Labour’s annual conference last month, Keir Starmer said the party faced a generational battle against the right-wing politics of Reform.He said: “Britain stands at a fork in the road. We can choose decency, or we can choose division. Renewal or decline.“A country proud of its values, in control of its future or one that succumbs, against the grain of our history, to the politics of grievance.“It is a test. A fight for the soul of our country, every bit as big as rebuilding Britain after the war, and we must all rise to this challenge.”A Labour peer said: “What is the point of drawing a dividing line with Reform, calling on all decent people to unite against them for a generational struggle, and then not assert that dividing line when politicians on the right cross it?”A party insider said: “At some point, the people in No.10 are going to realise if they simply accept the premise of every right wing argument that multiculturalism is somehow bad and diversity is a weakness, the public will end up thinking they agree with Reform and the Tories.“We can’t just have the prime minister making an argument once a year and then his team rowing back after.”Related...'A Breach Of Human Decency': James O'Brien Savages Tory Frontbencher's Immigration CommentsA Cabinet Minister Has Branded Nigel Farage Racist Over His Immigration PlansFarage's Big Immigration Crackdown Is Already 'Falling Apart'. Here's Why

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