Why is Labour looking to Italy on migration?

Keir Starmer has come under pressure after saying he was "interested" in learning about Italy's policies on tackling irregular migration during a meeting with his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni.

The prime minister was asked on his way to Rome if the UK government was considering following Italy's controversial system for dealing with migrant boat crossings, in which people rescued at sea are sent to Albania to have their asylum claims processed.

"Let's see," Starmer said. "It's in [its] early days. I'm interested in how that works – I think everybody else is."

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Italy agreed its five-year deal with Albania last November, when the Balkan country began accommodating asylum seekers who had arrived illegally in Italy. Only people from "countries that Italy deems safe" are processed under the deal, said Sky News. Over the last year, the number of illegal migrants arriving in Italy has fallen from 118,000 to 44,500, said The Telegraph – "a decrease of 62 per cent".

What did the commentators say?

The left has gone from viewing Meloni as a "neo fascist", when former PM Rishi Sunak wanted to work with her, to "a respectable national leader with lots of ideas to offer our own enlightened, grown up government", said Ross Clark in The Spectator.

The difference between sending migrants to Albania and to Rwanda is "academic" to someone "fleeing" for their life, Clark added. He asked also if anyone else could detect "a whiff of hypocrisy" in Labour considering one of these options after ruling out the other. "Apparently a white European country can be trusted to look after migrants sent from the UK but not an African one."

A former member of the home affairs select committee told The Guardian it was "disturbing" that Labour was "seeking to learn lessons from a neo-fascist government", especially after the Southport riots this summer. Liverpool MP Kim Johnson told the paper the government should focus on the "serious failures" in the UK's current system and "strive to implement a just and humane system for asylum seekers and migrants".

Nor is the Albanian plan working as it should, said the Financial Times – it is "already running behind schedule and over budget". In addition, it has been "fiercely criticised" by the Council of Europe, human rights organisations and Italy's opposition politicians for being a "costly piece of theatre" that will fail to deter people from trying to reach Europe.

What next?

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has "hinted" the UK could be interested in a similar scheme, said Sky. "We've always said we would look at what works," she told Kay Burley, although they were not looking at the Albania scheme "at the moment".

Cooper also rejected claims that the scheme was similar to the former Conservative government's plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda to have their claims processed. Appearing on "Good Morning Britain", she said the two were "very, very different", the i news site reported, as this was "Italian processing taking place in Albania" and was monitored "to make sure that it meets international standards".