The Rwanda plan was one of the showcase policies of former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to try to curb migrants from making dangerous English Channel crossings.. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on July 6 that he is scrapping a controversial Conservative policy to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda.

“The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started,” Mr. Starmer said in his first news conference. “It’s never acted as a deterrent. Almost the opposite.” The move was one of Mr. Starmer’s first acts in office, though it was widely expected. He had said during his campaign that he would ditch the plan that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but never taken flight.

Also read: Explained | Why has densely populated Rwanda agreed to the U.K.’s plan to deport migrants?

Mr. Starmer made the announcement after holding his first Cabinet meeting at 10 Downing St., the day after his Labour Party’s landslide victory overturned 14 years of Conservative rule.

The Rwanda plan was one of the showcase policies of former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to try to curb migrants from making dangerous English Channel crossings.

But it was beset with challenges over human rights issues and never managed to deport a single person despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars in a pact with the east African nation.

Suella Braverman, a Conservative hard liner on immigration who is a possible contender to replace Mr. Sunak as party leader, was critical of Mr. Starmer’s anticipated plan to end the Rwanda deal.

“Years of hard work, acts of Parliament, millions of pounds been spent on a scheme which had it been delivered properly would have worked,” she said Saturday before he made the announcement.

As the Labour party swept the U.K. general elections, the number of Indian-origin Members of Parliament increased from 15 in the previous Conservative government to 26 — the highest number of British-Indian members.

Overall, 107 British-Indians contested the elections. Here are some prominent candidates and how they fared in the elections.

Also read: U.K. General Election 2024 highlights: Landslide win for Labour; Keir Starmer appointed new PM

Rishi Sunak

Rishi Sunak, the outgoing Prime Minister of U.K., is arguably the most renowned Indian-origin political leader in the country in the current political arena. He contested the 2024 election from the Richmond and Northallerton constituency in northern England. 

Mr. Sunak was also the first Indian-origin Prime Minister of the U.K. He was born in 1980 in Southampton on England’s south coast to parents of Indian descent who were both born in East Africa.

His wife Akshata Murthy is an Indian citizen and is the daughter of Infosys co-founder Narayan Murthy. 

Among his most controversial plans was his anti-migration stance. Earlier this year, he had vowed to begin forcibly removing migrants with failed asylum claims to Rwanda starting in July in a bid to deter migrants from crossing the English Channel on boats to enter the U.K. 

Shivani Raja

Shivani Raja is the British-Indian Conservative winner from Leicester East. She is a first-generation British citizen and was born to parents who came to Leicester from Kenya and India in the late 1970s. Her policies are in line with those of Mr. Sunak’s and the larger Conservative Party, including tougher immigration controls. 

Rajesh Agrawal

Labour Party’s Rajesh Agrawal lost to Conservative candidate Shivani Raja in Leicester East. Mr. Agrawal was born in Madhya Pradesh and grew up in India, and is the former Deputy Mayor of London for Business.

Mr. Agrawal campaigned on the issues of unemployment and low wages in light of the rising cost of living. Leicester is home to many British Indians and immigrants

Kanishka Narayan

Kanishka Narayan of Labour Party won the Vale of Glamorgan constituency in Wales. He was born in Bihar, India, and moved to Cardiff with his parents at 12. He studied at Oxford and Stanford universities, and has previously worked in public policy. 

Suella Braverman

Suella Braverman was the former Home Secretary to Rishi Sunak before she was fired for defying her boss in November 2023. She was born to Indian-origin parents who emigrated to the U.K. from Africa in the 1960s. In the 2024 election, she won the Fareham and Waterlooville constituency.

Ms. Braverman has been active in the Conservative party from her days as an undergraduate student at the University of Cambridge. She campaigned for the country to leave the EU during the Brexit referendum. Despite being from a family of immigrants, she is known for her hardline views against immigration, and has previously vowed to reduce the annual inflow into the U.K. to “tens of thousands”. 

Abbas Merali

Abbas Merali was a candidate from Harrow West in the U.K. parliamentary election, representing the Conservative and Unionist Party. He was defeated by Labour Party candidate Gareth Thomas. 

Navendu Mishra

Navendu Mishra, Labour Party candidate from Stockport constituency, won the 2024 U.K. parliamentary election and held on to his seat. His parents are from Uttar Pradesh.

Prior to entering politics, Mr. Mishra was a shop-floor trade unionist in Stockport, before becoming an organiser for Unison and helping to organise care workers in precarious employment.

Preet Kaur Gill

Preet Kaur Gill won the Birmingham Edgbaston constituency as a Labour Party candidate in the 2024 U.K. general election. She became U.K.’s first female Sikh MP in 2017. She was born to parents of Indian-origin in the U.K., and was the Shadow Minister for Primary Care and Public Health before the election. 

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, popularly called Tan Dhesi, is a U.K. politician of Indian origin who has been elected as the winner in Slough constituency. He is a Labour Party member.

Mr. Dhesi was born in Berkshire, but completed most of his primary education in Punjab, India, before returning to the U.K. at 9. In the Parliament, he was the Shadow Minister for Exports. 

Lisa Nandy

Lisa Nandy of the Labour party held on to her Wigan seat in the election — the constituency she has represented since 2010. She’s the daughter of well-known academic of Indian origin, Dipak Nandy.

In the past, she was the Labour Councillor on the Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council, and has also worked as the Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities. 

Seema Malhotra

Seema Malhotra, the Labour and Co-operative Party candidate in Feltham and Heston constituency, won the 2024 U.K. election.

Before becoming a full-time politician, Ms. Malhotra worked as a management consultant. 

Valerie Vaz

Labour party candidate Valerie Vaz won the reformed Walsall and Bloxwich constituency. She was first elected in 2010 from the Walsall South constituency, which now stands abolished.

Her younger brother Keith Vaz is also a Labour leader in the U.K. and was the longest-serving Indian-origin MP in the House of Commons when he retired in 2019 after 32 years. 

Baggy Shanker

Labour candidate Baggy Shanker won the Derby south constituency in the 2024 U.K. election. He has been a trade unionist working in the manufacturing and civil aerospace sectors for over three decades. 

Uday Nagaraj

Labour candidate Uday Nagaraju lost the North Bedfordshire constituency to Conservative and Unionist Party leader Richard Fuller by a margin of over 5,000 votes.

Mr. Nagaraju studied engineering the Nagpur University before moving to the U.K. He founded the AI Policy Labs in 2020 before venturing into politics. 

Hajira Piranie

Hajira Piranie lost the Harborough, Oadby and Wigston seat to Conservative candidate Neil O’Brien by a narrow margin of only around 2,000 votes. Her mother is from Maharashtra and her paternal grandparents are from Gujarat. 

Shama Tatler  

Shama Tatler, Labour candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green, lost to Conservative candidate Iain Duncan Smith by a little under 5,000 votes. 

Ms. Tatler is a second-generation British Indian with parents who were born in Nairobi and Mombasa. She has been a Councillor for Fryent Ward. 

Ryan Jude

Labour candidate Ryan Jude lost in Tatton constituency to the Conservative candidate by only around 1,100 votes. His parents had moved to the U.K. from India to work for the NHS. He works in environmental and climate policy.

Primesh Patel

Primesh Patel, Labour party candidate in Harrow East, lost to Conservative candidate in the constituency. He started his career in health and social care sector with NHS and worked there for 18 years. 

London:

Britain is to ban Russian mercenary outfit the Wagner Group as a terrorist organisation, media reports said on Tuesday, quoting Home Secretary Suella Braverman. The UK was set to make the Wagner Group a “proscribed” organisation under anti-terror laws, putting it on a par with Islamic State and al-Qaeda, a report in the Daily Mail said.

“Wagner is a violent and destructive organisation which has acted as a military tool of Vladimir Putin’s Russia overseas,” the newspaper quoted Braverman as saying.

“While Putin’s regime decides what to do with the monster it created, Wagner’s continuing destabilising activities only continue to serve the Kremlin’s political goals.”

Under the Terrorism Act 2000 the home secretary has the power to proscribe an organisation if they believe it is involved in terrorism.

A proscription order makes it a criminal offence to support the group.

“They are terrorists, plain and simple — and this proscription order makes that clear in UK law,” a BBC report added, quoting the minister.

“Wagner has been involved in looting, torture and barbarous murders,” Braverman added in the Daily Mail.

The group’s operations in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa “are a threat to global security,” she said.

“That is why we are proscribing this terrorist organisation and continuing to aid Ukraine wherever we can in its fight against Russia.”

Draft measures to ban the Wagner Group under the act will be laid in Parliament on Wednesday, the reports said.

In July, Britain announced sanctions against 13 individuals and businesses it said had links to the Russian group in Africa, accusing it of crimes there including killings and torture.

The people and entities targeted — which are no longer able to deal with UK citizens, companies and banks, and have any UK assets frozen — were allegedly involved in Wagner’s activities in Mali, Central African Republic (CAR) and Sudan.

They included the purported head of Wagner in Mali, Ivan Aleksandrovitch Maslov; its chief in CAR, Vitalii Viktorovitch Perfilev; and the group’s operations head there, Konstantin Aleksandrovitch Pikalov.

Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died last month in a plane crash, had already been sanctioned by Britain alongside several of his key commanders who had participated in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Prigozhin — a Kremlin confidant turned “traitor” — died two months after ordering his troops to topple Russia’s military leadership.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

U.K. interior minister Suella Braverman ordered a watchdog to review “political activism and impartiality” in the police after an independent review found the force racist, sexist and homophobic. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

U.K. interior minister Suella Braverman said Saturday she has ordered a watchdog to review “political activism and impartiality” in the police after an independent review found the force racist, sexist and homophobic.

Braverman, who has earned criticism since taking up the post nearly a year ago with her “anti-woke” rhetoric and hardline stance on immigration, commissioned the probe to “explore impacts of police taking part in political matters”.

The interior ministry cited officers policing gender-critical views on social media, their conduct at political marches and some taking the knee in public as examples of how public confidence in police may have been “damaged”.

The review by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services comes ahead of a general election expected next year and prompted immediate criticism it was a politicised move.

Braverman’s ruling Conservatives, in power since 2010, have been trailing the main Labour opposition by double digits in the polls for more than a year.

They have been accused of increasingly stoking so-called culture war issues — such as those linked to immigration, transgender rights and social justice — to reverse sliding fortunes.

Conservatives and others have hit out at police in recent years after some officers made public demonstrations of support for social justice issues, such as taking the knee to protest against racism.

However, U.K. police forces have also been embroiled in numerous scandals involving racism, sexism and corruption, in particular London’s Metropolitan Police Service, the country’s largest.

One of its officers was sentenced to life in prison in 2021 for kidnap, rape and murder, while another was jailed after admitting being a serial rapist.

In March, an independent review found it to be institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic.

Braverman said the review will explore if officers’ supposed involvement in “politically contentious matters is having a detrimental impact on policing”.

“The British people expect their police to focus on cutting crime and protecting communities — political activism does not keep people safe, solve crimes or support victims, but can damage public confidence,” she said..

In a letter to police chiefs, the hardline interior minister said she had reiterated that officers should not engage in political activism and maintain a neutral stance at all times.

Meanwhile in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, she said rank-and-file cops had told her that they are “fed up with apologies by chiefs for being institutionally racist, because they’re not racist, and they don’t feel that they’ve been properly represented”.

“They’re uncomfortable with the takeover by gender ideologues and trans ideology.”

But opposition parties and unions criticised Braverman’s decision to order the review.

“Policing should never be put on any political agenda and is too important to be kicked around like a political football,” Tiffany Lynch, deputy chairwoman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said.

Labour criticised Braverman for commissioning a report “into her own political obsession”, and the Liberal Democrats opposition party accused her of using the police “as a weapon in her culture war”.