Angela Eagle defends government plan to broadcast deportations as Home Office launches new immigration raids

The Labour MP Oliver Ryan is to meet the government chief whip to decide on any sanctions over his membership of a WhatsApp group that featured racist, sexist and other offensive comments, Angela Eagle has said. Peter Walker has the story.

Good morning. Politicians like to claim that they are completely different from their opponents, because to win elections they need dividing line issues, but in truth the similarities can be striking too, because they end up facing the same challenges, and the electorate does not change much either. This Labour government is not the same as the last Conservative one. But at times it has sounded like Rishi Sunak (it adopted his signature anti-smoking legislation wholesale), Liz Truss (ministers constantly stress that growth is the number one priority) and even Boris Johnson (after the negativism of last year’s budget, there is a pivot towards more optimism). And today it it is sounding a bit like Theresa May in her “hostile environment” phase as home secretary.

Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, is expected to join an early morning raid this week targeting illegal working, while the government will broadcast footage of deportations, a number of them involving foreign criminals, from detention to removal centres and on to waiting planes …

Downing Street is planning to go beyond simply taking the fight to Reform. “We don’t think it’s enough just to look strong on migration, we actually need to be strong. We’ve done really well on returns but people say they don’t believe it, that if it was true they’d see it on the news,” a source said.

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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/feb/10/immigration-home-office-footage-deportation-yvette-cooper-labour-politics-live