Small boat crossings have hit the headlines in recent years, but have been going on for some time (Image: Getty)
Emmanuel Macron blamed Brexit for the small boat migrant crisis as he stood beside Sir Keir Starmer last week. The French president said the British people had been “sold a lie”, but his claim has been described as “idiocy”.
Academic Matthew Goodwin explained that the problem of unlawful migration began long before the UK left the EU in 2020 and has been growing for 15 years. Mr Goodwin, a former professor of politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, said Mr Macron’s argument “though popular in Brussels, Oxford and Cambridge, is idiocy”. Writing on his Substack, he said: “The small boats crisis began long before Britain left the EU and Brexit has nothing to do with why a similar invasion has been unfolding across the EU for 15 years.”
And he criticised the idea that it was easier for the UK to remove asylum seekers when we were in the EU. He said: “Even when Britain was a member of the EU, under the so-called Dublin convention, we hardly sent back any illegal migrants or asylum seekers, while European courts routinely got in the way of these efforts to return migrants.
“In fact, when we were in the EU, we often took more migrants than we sent back, which I suspect will now happen again through Starmer’s gimmick.”
He added: “And what Starmer and Macron are not telling you is that if we were still in the EU, we would currently be under enormous pressure to ‘share the burden’ by taking in yet more asylum seekers through the EU migration and asylum pact.
“They are, once again, gaslighting you, treating you like morons.”
Mr Goodwin also criticised the “one in, one out” deal agreed between the EU and France, which will allow the UK to send some small boat migrants back to France in return for accepting an equal number of asylum seekers with a link to the UK, such as those with relatives here.
He said: “The British people do not want ‘one in, one out’. They want ‘none in, all out’.”
Farage calls for ‘virtue-signalling’ targets to be scrapped in major blow to Ed Miliband
Nigel Farage called net zero targets ‘virtue-signalling’. (Image: Getty)
Nigel Farage has urged Reform-led councils to abandon “virtue-signalling” climate emergency targets in a blow to Ed Miliband’s net zero dreams. Between May 2019 and 2023, eight out of 10 local authorities across Britain declared climate emergencies and announced eco-friendly commitments.
They pledged to allocate millions of pounds to make offices, waste collection trucks and all council-run services carbon-neutral. Instead of adhering to the 2050 deadline set by Parliament, most councils committed to a more ambitious target of 2030. But now, the Reform UK leader said these net zero pledges should be abandoned after his party took control of 10 county councils two months ago.
He told The Telegraph: “They need to be scrapped. It’s not the job of county councils to deal with global issues, and it wouldn’t make any difference at all if they were scrapped. It costs money and they are a massive diversion of time. It’s virtue-signalling.”
Mr Farage’s remarks follow his statement in May suggesting that staff working on climate change initiatives should be “seeking alternative careers”.
Of the 10 councils under Reform control, seven had existing climate emergency policies. Last week, Kent County Council became the first to announce plans to save £40m by slashing net zero spending.
Lincolnshire County Council has faced backlash for its “reckless” plan to eliminate its flood management scrutiny committee, despite the council acknowledging a climate emergency in 2019.
Derbyshire County Council also disbanded its climate change committee and called off all related meetings.
Ed Miliband said anti-net zero politicians are ‘betraying future generations’. (Image: Getty)
The energy secretary is expected to call out those who reject net zero policies in an update to parliament on the climate crisis, the Guardian reports.
Mr Miliband will make a “state of the climate” address to the Commons regarding the findings of a new Met Office-led report, which warned of extreme weather and its effects on the UK.
He said: “I feel a deep sense of responsibility to the British people to tell them the truth about what we know about the climate and nature crisis.
“I want this to become an annual statement where it’s an exercise in radical truth-telling about the state of the climate and nature. I think only by levelling with people about what we know can we win people’s trust about the need for action.”
