Visiting Rome this week, Keir Starmer might have been expected to signal political differences with Giorgia Meloni. Instead he endorsed her approach to repressing migration, showing how much liberals have swallowed the far right’s agenda.

This week, the prime minister is in Italy breaking bread with Giorgia Meloni, a leader who came to power at the head of a party built in the aftermath of World War II to maintain the legacy of Benito Mussolini and Italian fascism. Starmer says he wants to learn from and cooperate with Meloni’s approach to migration.

It gets worse. Starmer and his foreign secretary, David Lammy, have also signaled that they will look to European arrangements with Libya and Syria for inspiration.

The promise of social democrats and liberals was that they would restore decency to politics, not take policy tips from far-right governments. Rather than repeating the previous government’s strategy of migrant-baiting and brutality — which was a factor in mobs attempting to burn down people seeking asylum only weeks ago — Starmer should use his majority to chart a different course: one that meets our obligations to protect, rather than harm, people seeking safety and does not attempt to divide us by where we were born.