The Conservative Party released a controversial poster about Labour’s border policies on Thursday, and many people on social media are criticising it for its strange use of numbers.
In fact, some people have called it an outright lie.
In large, red letters, the poster says: “Labour’s border pledge means 100,000 migrants arriving in Britain each and every year.”
The image was released after Labour leader Keir Starmer revealed his Labour government would work more closely with the EU to tackle the migrant crisis.
If he became PM, he said he would take a quota of asylum seekers who arrive in the bloc in exchange for returning those who cross the Channel.
He also promised to clear the backlog of more than 175,000 asylum seekers who are still waiting for an initial decision on their application.
Starmer’s proposed deal with the EU is the main dividing line between the two parties.
Shortly before the poster was published, PM Rishi Sunak also reporters in Devon: “His [Starmer] plans today seem to amount to saying that we might one day accept 100,000 EU migrants every year.”
But, it’s not entirely clear where the Conservatives got the “100,000 more migrants” number from.
The Guardian speculated that Sunak was making this numbers claim on the assumption that the UK would be required to accept a proportional share of the one million migrants who arrive in Europe annually, based on the UK population size.
There were more than 50,000 people who arrived by irregular means into the UK in 2022, while total migration was around 1.2 million (with net migration at a record high of 606,000) – numbers which come after 13 years of a Tory government.
Starmer has actually refused to discuss how many asylum seekers a Labour government would accept, saying his priority is just stopping people crossing in small boats in the first place.
In response to Tory’s campaign, Starmer said: “It’s embarrassing that the government is pumping out this nonsense. I can only assume it’s because they’ve got nothing sensible to say on the issue.”
He also claimed it was “common sense” to consider a security agreement.
So, it perhaps wasn’t surprising that X users really laid into the poster online...