A Labour veteran Dame Margret Hodge has accused Sir Keir Starmer of being “too frightened” to discuss immigration and warned that the party only got into power over a “protest vote.”

This comes after the UK came under attack by rioters and anti-immigration protesters, with many seen fighting with the police saying “enough is enough” as they are wanting an end to immigration.

She said that Labour must control the borders and she said that the Prime Minister must accept that there is frustrations over the conversation of immigration.

Speaking to The Guardian Hodge said, “We are all at fault that we’ve always been too frightened to talk about immigration. If you’re a politician, you have a voice.

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“We need to use that voice to develop a new discourse about immigration – you lead rather than follow.

“It’s talking about why people are here, what they contribute, the richness they bring to society.

“We also have to show we can control our borders. Those who aren’t legitimate asylum seekers, you send back as quickly as you can.

“If somebody breaks the law here and ends up in prison, you send them back where you can.

“But then link that to a much more positive and realistic view of immigration. We’ve got to just tackle it.

“People who want to hang on to their seats next time have got to worry that [the election] turnout was low, and be worried that there was this protest vote. We ignore it at our peril.”

Last week Lee Anderson who is the Reform UK MP for Ashfield has said that Parliament is “to blame” for the rioting seen across England.

Anderson took aim at the Prime Minister over his response to the riots and said Sir Keir Starmer simply “chucked a bucket of petrol over a fire.”

He told GB News that we know “there is two-tier policing” in the UK and warned that the problems “we’re having at the moment” will unfortunately “continue to happen.”

Speaking to GB News Anderson said, “the people that are to blame for [the riots] are Parliament, and Nigel [Farage] touches on this every single day. He talks about the effects of mass legal migration, he talks about the effects of mass illegal migration.

“And people in this country are fed up, up and down the country, and we’ve seen the madness again this week. I think Angela Rayner is stating that the illegal migrants who have come over the Channel, she’s going to disperse these all over the country.”