LONDON: Labour leader Keir Starmer has hit back after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak accused him of planning to “sit down with the Iranian ayatollah” and of making a “deal with the Taliban” on return agreements in a bid to clear the UK’s asylum backlog.

During a televised debate aired on Wednesday, the Conservative leader rejected his election rival’s argument that he would seek to move asylum seekers to safe countries or return them to their home countries, adding that many had arrived in the UK from Iran, Syria and Afghanistan.

“Is he going to sit down with the Iranian ayatollah? Are you going to try to do a deal with the Taliban? It’s completely nonsensical; you are taking people for fools,” Sunak said in a BBC leaders’ debate.

As part of his election campaign, Starmer has said he wants to negotiate return agreements as part of efforts to address the country’s chronic asylum backlog, which has worsened due to recent legislation brought in by the Conservatives, which does not allow asylum claims to be processed while deportations to Rwanda are on hold.

“There are some things that are not sensible for the asylum policy. That was a throwaway comment from the prime minister himself who had no answer to that question,” Starmer said on Thursday.

“But leaving those claims unprocessed is not the answer to that. Of course, there will be countries, Afghanistan for example, where you can’t return people — people who perhaps helped us by interpreting for our troops in Afghanistan and put themselves at risk; people who in my constituency were fleeing war in Afghanistan and found we weren’t able to get them out on those flights. Of course, in relation to their particular cases they’re not going to be returned to Afghanistan.

“But what we can’t do is stay with this absurd situation where there’s just a growing and growing number to which the prime minister has got absolutely no answer. It is absurd and reckless,” he added.

Polls have predicted Starmer is on course to win the July 4 election with a large majority, ending 14 years of Conservative rule. The Labour leader and Sunak have clashed at several debates or public sessions with voters in recent weeks over who was better suited to lead the country.