A former shadow immigration minister and Black Labour MP has strongly criticised UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s immigration rhetoric, warning it could incite civil unrest and repeat the injustices of the Windrush scandal.

Earlier this week, Starmer caused consternation among several MPs when he said the UK risked becoming “an island of strangers” during a speech unveiling major immigration reforms in a newly published White Paper.

The rhetoric was likened by some to the language used by Enoch Powell in his controversial 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech, in which he warned of a future where white people “found themselves made strangers in their own country”.