Ding, ding, ding! It seems that James Cleverly took Downing Street’s instructions to get in some much-needed R&R over the holidays very seriously indeed. The Home Secretary was raring to go on this morning’s broadcast round, getting into several spats with the host of Radio 4’s Today programme, Mishal Husain.
Cleverly was on air to discuss the Home Office’s claim that the asylum backlog had been cleared. He argued that ‘every single [legacy claim] has been processed’ but said it was ‘impossible to say’ how long it would take to clear the remaining cases, asserting that the aim is to get the overall number of applications coming down.
Husain then noted that the immigration services’ union expected the number of applications to rise this year, before trying to move on to her next question. Cleverly, though was having none of it. ‘You can’t do that! You can’t just make a statement and move on,’ he protested, before saying the union was ‘wrong about those figures’. Cleverly’s appearance was also his first appearance since a string of four-letter incidents at the end of 2023. As Husain put it:
There have been a number of times now recently when things you have said have got you into trouble. There was the time it was reported you had called a government policy ‘batshit’, there was the person or place you referred to in parliament as a ‘shithole’.
Cleverly interrupted then to protest, saying ‘No, I didn’t.’ But Husein battled on nonetheless: ‘You didn’t use the word “shithole” in parliament?’ Cleverly denied using the word, telling Husein to ‘do better research’, but did admit to using the word ‘shit’. When Husein suggested that ‘other people heard different things’, Cleverly shot back that they couldn’t have done because ‘that’s not how science works’. Miaow!
New year but same old problems for the Home Secretary with the gift of the gab…
"You didn't use the word shithole?"@MishalHusain asks Home Secretary James Cleverly, who tells #R4Today he didn't refer to Stockton North using the phrase, but was 'referring to an individual'. pic.twitter.com/Xk2UzwBcTy
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) January 2, 2024
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