The prime minister today announced a plan to reduce net migration as he warned the UK risks becoming an "island of strangers". 

Sir Keir Starmer wants to bring in tougher English language tests and tighten overseas carer recruitment as part of his policy overhaul to "tighten up" the immigration system.  

On this episode of the Sky News Daily, Niall Paterson is joined by our deputy political editor Sam Coates to discuss whether this is a change in direction for the government after suffering losses in the local elections.

"We risk becoming an island of strangers."

We normally use our quote of the day feature to highlight something a little different, but there was really only one option today.

I certainly didn't have "Keir Starmer compared to Enoch Powell" on my Politics Hub bingo card this morning, but his comments about migration have proved so divisive that several MPs said they evoked Powell's notorious Rivers Of Blood speech.

He infamously declared Brits had "found themselves made strangers in their own country" (read more on this here).

As a reminder, here's exactly what the prime minister said when talking about immigration today:

"Nations depend on rules, fair rules. 

"Sometimes they are written down, often they are not, but either way, they give shape to our values, guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to each other.

"In a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together."

Despite calls to apologise, Downing Street says he stands by his words.

Join us tomorrow, when perhaps he'll cheer up his angry Labour backbenchers by telling them "this man's not for turning".

We've had details from Downing Street of a call between the prime minister and Canada's Mark Carney this evening.

Keir Starmer began by congratulating the ex-Bank of England governor for winning his country's recent election, achieved after voters endorsed his full-throated repudiation of Donald Trump's rhetoric.

Starmer, of course, has pursued a very different approach.

Like a G7

Nonetheless, the two men believe there are "opportunities to deepen the friendship" between the UK and Canada, of which Britain's King is of course the head of state.

They cited economic and technological co-operation, and joint work to support Ukraine and pressure Russia into a ceasefire.

A Number 10 statement said Starmer told Carney of his excitement for next month's G7 summit in Canada, and will "stay in close touch".

A charity that works to prevent people from reoffending has said short sentences must be scrapped to ease pressure on prisons.

Responding to our special edition of Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge, Revolving Doors said short sentences are an "expensive, ineffective policy failure" that cost £1bn a year but have a reoffending rate of 60%.

The charity's chief Pavan Dhaliwal added: "If the government is serious about ending the prisons' crisis, it must start by ending short sentences."

Dhaliwal added that those on short sentences often have "serious unmet health and social needs" such as a history of homelessness, trauma, poverty, substance use and domestic violence. 

These "would be better addressed out of prison with tailored community sentences", she added.

We're hearing now from Nico, a prisoner who is due to be jailed for the second time for a drugs offence, though he is yet to be sentenced.

In fact, this is the very thing the father-of-six takes issue with.

Nico tells Sophy Ridge: "So, my trial was in November, sentencing was meant to be February. 

"We got to February, then [it] got adjourned til April. We got to April, then it got adjourned till September this year. 

"So nearly a year waiting after, I'll have done 17 months on remand by the time I get sentenced."

Nico's wider problem is he has been doing charity work while behind bars. He says it means if he was already serving his sentence he could have been transferred to an open prison (a category D jail), where you can go home five days a month.  

Nico says he wanted to be sent to one of these prisons so he could see his children. Instead, because his sentence is yet to officially begin, it means he must remain at the prison in Preston until sentencing. 

"Now I'm only getting sentenced in September, I'm already going to miss Christmas," he says, as the courts grappled with a huge backlog.

'I don't have a daddy any more'

Nico says while he is a repeat offender, "no amount of money in the world" would make him "make the same choices" again. 

Now he is a family man, he says he can see the pain he has put his fiance and children through, and it has reshaped how he views prison.

He tells Sophy his six-year-old asked his partner if Father's Day exists. When she found out there was, she said "I don't have a daddy any more."

"Things like that - they break your heart", Nico says. "I'll never make the same choices that I've made. I just regret I've made them this time."

The domestic abuse commissioner has warned victims are paying a "huge price" due to prisons being overcrowded.

Dame Nicole Jacobs says that often victims will only find relief when the perpetrator is in prison.

But she tells Sophy Ridge many measures used in the criminal justice system, such as tagging and restraining orders, are "inadequate" for victims of domestic abuse.

"They are not measures that are routinely enforced, that are successful," she says. 

"We have to ask an important question:  Do we have the safeguarding measures in place for victims of domestic abuse? 

"I don't think we do yet."

Jacobs says domestic abuse perpetrators are "known reoffenders" and they repeat the offences "over and over".

"We cannot have a plan in place to manage offenders in the community without having a very significant plan for how that will be done and how victims of domestic abuse will be made safe in that," she says.

She tells Sophy she understands the government must address overcrowding in male prisons, but the views of victims must be "baked in from the very start".

Andrew Blundell, who has served at HMP Preston for almost two decades, says he noticed a big change when the coalition government introduced a voluntary redundancy scheme in prisons. 

"We lost hundreds and hundreds of years of experience all in one hit."

It made it much harder to run prisons effectively. Newer staff do "a great job", but sometimes run into trouble through a lack of experience.

Andrew also agrees with his colleague Sophie (see previous post), that prison is not the best place for many of the inmates.

'They're not having time to be rehabilitated'

He says he too has been seeing the same faces "year after year, week after week".

"They're coming in on small sentences, a lot of them coming with drugs and alcohol substance misuse issues, so they could be coming in for two weeks to two months, and they're just not having time to address their issues, to rehabilitate."

After a very short stint in prison, they are then released with "very minimal money, nowhere to live sometimes", with many of them without close family and a history in the care system.

Andrew adds that many of the prisoners have "very, very basic educational skills" too.

"There's a lot who can't read or write," he says. 

Andrew tells Sophy Ridge it's not just young prisoners who are illiterate but older prisoners too who have "slipped through the net all their lives".

He believes many would be better served spending time being rehabilitated "in the community".

Prison officers act as "agony aunts" for inmates, with young offenders being returned to the same prison time and time again.

That's according to Sophie Lynch, who has worked at HMP Preston for seven-and-a-half years.

She tells Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge she has become "used to seeing some faces" as prisoners become trapped in a cycle of serving short sentences, being released, only to be convicted again going back to jail.

She says: "The prisoners that we're releasing, they're coming back in weeks later, and we're having to start all over again to try to get things in place for them when they do get out."

'They've not got their wits about them'

Sophie works in a department that aims to manage those at risk of self-harm or suicide, making her work less about "locking doors" and more about caring for inmates.

She compares her work to that of an agony aunt. "I think there's a general misunderstanding of what a prison officer does," she adds.

She also says that "nine out of 10" prisoners she sees are men aged 25 or younger, who have spent time in care.

"They are kids", she says. "They're coming in at 18, [it's their] first time in custody, not really got their wits about them, and you'll see how they get almost ingratiated in those groups. 

"And then they come back, and then they're 19, then they're 20, and then they're 21. 

"And each time they're getting different, sometimes longer sentences."

'Overstretched and under-resourced'

She also believes sometimes prison is "not a suitable environment" for these young men, as many have had "adverse childhood experiences or enduring mental illness".

Pushed on what those behaviours are, Sophie says this can mean self-harm or violence. 

Sophie also tells us that some prisoners at HMP Preston are waiting for a bed at a secure unit or hospital, and were not supposed to be in a conventional prison at all. 

She believes "something needs to be done" and says her years of experience shows prisons are "overstretched, under-resourced, and people are constantly just coming back into custody".

The prisons minister has said fewer women should be going to prison, in part because of the impact it has on families.

Lord Timpson tells Sophy Ridge: "We need to do more to prevent women going to prison for low level, non-violent offences."

He says he was fostered as a child and grew up with other children who were also fostered due to their mothers being in prison. He says some of these children grew up and ended up committing criminal offences.

"The impact on the kids is huge," he says.

Some women - those who have committed serious offences - have their babies with them in prison.

"A lot of the babies that are there are not getting the normal life experiences that a young baby should have," Timpson adds. 

He tells Sophy about volunteers who take babies to the supermarket, just so they can get used to normal life. 

"While the mother needs to be punished for what they have done, the baby gets punished too," he remarks.

The prisons minister says the government would consider US-style super-max prisons. 

Lord Timpson tells Sophy Ridge "we should consider everything".

"Violence in prisons is too high," he says. 

"When you have prisons that are so full that the people are not going to education… you get more violence," he adds.

He calls violence against staff "totally unacceptable", following recent high-profile assaults on prison officers.

Timpson says "so much" of what goes on in prisons come down to drugs, and labels substance abuse "the number one thing that undermines" good initiatives in jails.

He also says the number of people being recalled is "too high".

Recall is an issue that prisoners have raised with Sky News tonight as their biggest concern causing problems in the justice system.