Yvette Cooper avoids criticising Macron’s attack on Brexit as she defends migrant deal – UK politics live | Politics

Yesterday Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron published a leaders’ declaration that implied the returns agreement would need EU sign-off. They were not very clear about this, but the Times led its main story on this on the suggestion that the EU might block the deal.

As Kiran Stacey reports, in her interviews this morning Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, said that European commissioners had been “very supportive” of the plan and that she did not expect them to block it.

Good morning. Keir Starmer notched up a notable achievement yesterday – by agreeing a pilot returns agreement with France, something never managed by his immediate Conservative predecessors. But, as Kiran Stacey and Jessica Elgot report in their analysis, there was some Tory precedent for the policy. When Robert Jenrick was immigration minister, he tried, and failed, to get Rishi Sunak to negotiate a deal of this kind.

Yesterday Jenrick, who is now shadow justice secretary and seen as a likely replacement for Kemi Badenoch before the next election, told GB News that the Starmer scheme “hasn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of working” because the numbers involved were too small. The key Tory papers, like the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and Daily Telegraph, are fiercely critical. But, nevertheless, this is a win for Starmerism. The PM regularly argues that calm, sensible cooperation with allies can pay off, and now he has that the returns deal with Emmanuel Macron can achieve this.

In politics good news never lasts for long and the headline lines this morning is about the economy shrinking in May. Graeme Wearden has the details on his businesss live blog.

This is a setback because Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, have made boosting growth their number one priority. Graeme is covering the reaction to this.

I will be focusing on the reaction to the returns deal. Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has been doing an interview round this morning. She dismissed claims that the EU would try to block the arrangement, but she was less forthcoming about how many migrants might actually be returned to France, saying the numbers had not been fixed. And she declined to say whether Macron was right to say at the press conference with Starmer yesterday when he said Brexit had made it harder for the UK to deal with illegal migration.

In comments that have infuriated the pro-Brexit papers, Macron said:

Many people explained that Brexit would make it more possible to fight effectively against illegal migration But since Brexit the UK has no illegal migration agreement with the EU … That creates an incentive to make the crossing, the precise opposite of what Brexit promised.

The British people were sold a lie, which was that [migration] was a problem with Europe. With your government, we’re pragmatic, and for the first time in nine years we are providing a response.

Asked on Sky News if Macron had a point, Cooper replied:

I think what I’ve seen happen is that the way that the criminal smuggler gangs operate is that they will weaponise anything that is happening. And so what we saw in the run-up to Brexit being implemented was we saw criminal gangs promising people that they had to cross quickly, and they had to pay money to the smuggler gangs quickly in order to be able to cross in time before Brexit happened.

As soon as Brexit happened, they then said ‘Oh, well, now you’ve got to pay us money, because this means you can’t be returned because the Dublin Agreement isn’t in place’.

So the thing about the criminal smuggler gangs is whatever arrangements are in place, they will use them in order to make money, but that’s why we have to be fundamentally undermining their model.

I will post more from the Cooper interviews soon.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: MPs debate backbench bills, starting with Linsey Farnsworth’s unauthorised entry to football matches bill.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Lunchtime: Keir Starmer is hosting a cabinet awayday, reportedly at Chequers.

And Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in her constituency, North West Essex, today.

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