From 24m agoKey events12m agoLabour welcomes Lee Anderson’s admission government failing on immigration, but says his ’back to France’ jibe wrong24m agoTory deputy chair Lee Anderson admits government has ‘failed’ on immigration in interview with Farage1h agoJenrick suggests he’s open to anderson-acknowledges-governments-shortcomings-on-immigration.html” title=”UK politics live: Tory deputy chair Lee Anderson acknowledges government's shortcomings on immigration”>backing parliamentary move to force byelection in Nadine Dorries’ constituency2h agoJenrick suggests Tories would take UK out of ECHR if that offered only means of stopping small boats2h agoLabour says it would set up commission to tackle 60% fall in proportion of crimes solved since 2015Filters BETAKey events (5)Robert Jenrick (3)12m ago06.34 EDTLabour welcomes Lee Anderson’s admission government failing on immigration, but says his ‘back to France’ jibe wrong
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has welcomed Lee Anderson’s admission that the government is failing on immigration. She told the Today programme:
[Anderson] did admit that the government is failing to tackle the boats crisis. What we need is grip rather than gimmicks, we need solutions rather than just this ramping up the rhetoric all of the time.
And that is the problem – because they are failing, because they have been flailing around for years while they have just made things worse with the policies they have pursued, they have ended up now lashing out trying to promote division and trying to find someone else to blame.
That is not what responsible governments do. They should be getting on with trying to solve the practical problems around the gangs and around the backlog.
But, in her interview, Cooper criticised Anderson for saying yesterday that asylum seekers unhappy with barge accommodation should “fuck off back to France”. She said:
It is clearly the wrong language to use and it is ramping up the rhetoric as a distraction from the fact the government is failing.
One person likely to welcome Cooper’s condemnation is Anderson himself. In an interview with the Daily Express, which could be seen as confirmation that his reactionary soundbites are primarily crafted with the intention of provoking a reaction, he in effect complained that Labour MPs weren’t criticising him publicly over his France comment. Anderson told the paper:
The leftwing mainstream media has gone into meltdown over my comments but, interestingly, I am yet to see one Labour frontbench MP disagree with my comments.
Is this another U-turn from Labour because their silence is deafening.
Updated at 06.38 EDT24m ago06.22 EDTTory deputy chair Lee Anderson admits government has ‘failed’ on immigration in interview with Farage
Lee Anderson, the Conservative deputy chair, has admitted that the government has “failed” on immigration.
Anderson made the comment last night, in an interview with the former Ukip and Brexit party leader Nigel Farage on GB News.
As the Telegraph reports, Farage put it to Anderson that the government had “completely and utterly failed everyone” on immigration. Anderson replied:
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2023-08-09 05:34:46
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