Rishi blasts ‘when I see a group chanting “Jihad” on the street I ban them – Keir invoices them’ in brutal takedown
RISHI SUNAK blasted Sir Keir Starmer for acting on behalf of Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir as a lawyer, accusing the Labour leader of "invoicing" extremists instead of banning them.
In a tense session of Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer sought to attack the PM over his Rwanda deportation plan.
He accused the PM of not believing in "the Rwanda gimmick", adding: “When he sees his party tearing itself apart, hundreds of bald men scrapping over a single broken comb, doesn’t he wish that he had the courage to stick to his guns?”
In response, Mr Sunak showed a document on European Human Rights law that Sir Keir previously authored.
He said: "I know he’s always been more interested in what lefty lawyers have to say. I’ve even got here the textbook that he authored for them – and it’s called European Human Rights Law by Keir Starmer.”
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The PM also slammed Sir Keir for having represented Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group which the UK now plans to ban as a terror organisation.
Mr Sunak said: “Just this week we had another example of him doing one thing, saying another, because this week he backed the Home Secretary in banning the terrorist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, despite him personally using the European Court of Human Rights to try and stop them being banned.
“Don’t take my word for it, the extremists’ own press release said ‘the Hizb ut-Tahrir legal team led by Keir Starmer’. I know he doesn’t like talking about them because they have been a client, but when I see a group chanting jihad on our streets, I ban them, he invoices them.”
The exchange comes as the PM faces the fight of his premiership tonight after 60 Tory MPs, backed by Boris Johnson, rebelled over his Rwanda migrant plan.
Senior Tories Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith resigned before they were sacked on Tuesday, as they joined their colleagues and voted in favour of changes tabled by Sir Bill Cash and former immigration minister Robert Jenrick.
Jane Stevenson also quit her role as a parliamentary private secretary in the Department for Business and Trade to back the amendments.
The Prime Minister ended up defeating the rebels thanks to the backing of Labour and other opposition parties, which oppose the Rwanda bill in principle.
But the real challenge is expected later on, as MPs are set to continue debating proposed changes to the legislation.
The Bill will be put to a vote afterwards if it remains unamended and if around 30 Tory MPs join opposition parties in voting against it at third reading, it could be defeated.
So far very few Conservative MPs have explicitly committed to voting against the bill.