Keir Starmer has said he “deeply regrets” saying that Britain risks becoming “an island of strangers”.
The prime minister was accused of echoing right-wing former Tory MP Enoch Powell in a controversial speech last month.
Unveiling a crackdown on illegal immigration, Starmer said countries rely on “fair rules”.
He then added: “In a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important.
“Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.”
Critics pointed out that in his infamous “rivers of blood” speech in 1968, Powell said: “While, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For they found themselves made strangers in their own country.”
In an interview with The Observer, Starmer admitted that he now wishes he had not said it.
“I wouldn’t have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as an echo of Powell,” he said. “I had no idea – and my speechwriters didn’t know either.
“But that particular phrase – no – it wasn’t right. I’ll give you the honest truth: I deeply regret using it.”
Just hours before he made his speech, the front door of the Starmer family home in North London was set alight in a firebomb attack.
The PM, who had also just arrived back in the UK from a three-day visit to Ukraine, admitted he “wasn’t in the best state to make a big speech”.
He said: “I was really, really worried. I almost said: ‘I won’t do the bloody press conference.’ Vic (Starmer’s wife]) was really shaken up as, in truth, was I.
“It was just a case of reading the words out and getting through it somehow … so I could get back to them.”
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