Reform continues to top the polls as Brits remain concerned about migration to the UK. At the start of the week, Nigel Farage held yet another London press conference in which he announced his plans to abolish indefinite leave to remain, make foreign nationals ineligible to claim benefits and introduce an English standards test – which would be retaken every five years. Crikey!
Former prime minister Boris Johnson was in the firing line too, despite the defection to Reform of his onetime ally Nadine Dorries. Farage’s party took aim at the ‘Boriswave’ – slamming the rise of immigration to the UK seen under Johnson’s premiership and accusing the ex-PM of having ‘betrayed the electorate’. But now Johnson has hit back, with the former Conservative leader adamant he can explain away the immigration figures.
‘What do you say to the Boriswave?’ the Sun’s Harry Cole quizzed the former premier.
BJ: Look at the fall in legal migration that took place in my first year of government – and it went to the lowest level for 40 years – and that was because of Covid. We then had – those figures are wrong, by the way, your graph is rubbish…
HC: This is non-EU migration.
BJ: Okay so who are you going to kick out? The Ukrainians? You want to kick out Ukrainians?
HC: No.
BJ: You want to kick out the Hong Kong Chinese? You want to kick out the nurses? Who do you want to kick out? This is entirely a function of Covid. And what we did was take back legal control. The problems we face now are illegal migration, people coming across the the channel illegally. And you need the Rwanda solution. And the other problem we have on the legal… We have a problem of emigration. We’ve got people fleeing this country at the moment because of the taxes that Starmer is putting in, because of the mess that these guys are making of the UK economy.
The ex-prime minister went on to insist that he was ‘very proud’ of his time in government – adding that the Brexit vote delivered ‘full legal control’. Whether that will reassure those worried about housing, jobs and crime, however, is another matter…
Watch the clip here:
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