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Rishi Sunak, UK prime minister, has vowed to work with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni to review international rules on asylum, claiming that a wave of clandestine migration threatens to “overwhelm our countries”.
Sunak was speaking at a rightwing festival in Rome, organised by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, where the British premier sought to cement his relationship with his Italian counterpart.
He said that he and Meloni were prepared to break from the consensus on how to deal with migrants arriving by irregular means and would work to change international rules that got in their way.
“If that requires us to update our laws and lead an international conversation to amend postwar frameworks around asylum, then we must do that,” he said. “Because if we don’t fix this problem now, the boats will keep coming and more lives will be lost at sea.”
Sunak is under pressure from rightwing Tory MPs to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights, one of a number of international conventions that they claim is frustrating attempts to transport asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda.
The British prime minister says that his Safety of Rwanda bill complies with international law, but he made clear that he and Meloni believed the legal framework needed to be reviewed.
Alistair Carmichael, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said Sunak was involved in a bidding war with rightwing Tory MPs over “who can make the most toxic contribution” to the migration debate.
Sunak was speaking at the Atreju festival at the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, following in the footsteps of former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán, who have both appeared in the past.
Sunak also claimed that hostile states would use mass migration as a weapon to destabilise the west. Earlier this year Poland accused Russia and Belarus of orchestrating an influx of migrants at the Polish frontier.
“Our enemies will see how unable we are to deal with this and so they will increasingly use migration as a weapon, deliberately driving people to our shores to try to destabilise our societies,” Sunak said.
“If we do not tackle this problem, the numbers will only grow. It will overwhelm our countries, and our capacity to help those who actually need our help most.”
Sunak’s political relationship with Meloni has blossomed during 2023. He said they were both fans of former UK premier Margaret Thatcher who “never shied away from hard choices and big issues”.
He added: “Giorgia and I became prime ministers of our countries at pretty much the same time and we are pretty much the only centre-right leaders in the G7, so we have been drawn to each other.
“We have built a strong friendship but also a strong relationship over shared interests and, most importantly, shared values.”
Elon Musk, the US billionaire, attended the event in Rome and also attacked irregular immigration, claiming there was a risk of a “woke mind virus” spreading from the US to Italy.
“If it’s illegal immigration and there is no filter, how do you know who is coming in?” he asked.