Politics latest: Ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe will not be charged over alleged 'verbal threats'
Who Starmer was really trying to echo with 'island of strangers' speech
Sir Keir Starmer is getting used to falling out with some of his MPs over policy decisions - be it on the winter fuel allowance, his approach to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza or welfare cuts.
But on Tuesday the prime minister found himself embroiled in a row with MPs over something entirely different - his language over immigration.
The prime minister's argument that Britain "risked becoming an island of strangers" if immigration levels are not cut has sparked a backlash from some of his MPs, and the London mayor Sadiq Khan is alarmed that his own leader is using language similar to that of Enoch Powell.
The politician the prime minister was trying to channel was about as far away from Powell as you could get in the 1960s, when the debate of immigration and race relations raged.
Sir Keir had wanted to echo former Labour home secretary Roy Jenkins who had always argued that immigration was good for Britain, but needed to be done at a speed the country could absorb.
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