Breitbart London’s Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam appeared to wrong-foot the lefty campaigners and TV show host Krishnan Guru-Murthy tonight on Channel 4 News, as he welcomed the ‘Help is Coming’ Charity migrant charity song, saying that it represented a victory against coercing taxpayers to foot the bill for the emotional response to the migrant crisis.
Kassam, as becomes evident during the interview, was asked onto the programme to be the “nasty” right-wing face of the debate, but took the panel by surprise by stating that allowing the British public to contribute if they wanted to, rather than the government doing so on their behalf, was the right thing to do.
He also raised the point that people were not thinking with their heads about the crisis, and that European countries should not be so quick to try and resettle people in the West, but rather to establish a safe zone in Syria. He criticised the political establishment for cheering on the destabilisation of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, and said that we have had years to deal with this issue but largely ignored it until one picture came along.
Left wing journalist Hella Pick, introduced for having been on one of the original Kindertransport to Britain, rather than for having being the Guardian’s UN correspondent, admitted that for Germany, as well as in her mind for Britain, taking lots of migrants was a good idea as it provided for cheap labour.
“The Germans have recognised that they need young people, they need professional people,” she said.
Guru-Murthy turned his attention to Kassam, having failed to “skewer” him on the charity single: “Isn’t the problem that your side of the argument has just seemed a bit nasty and out of tune?” he enquired.
Kassam shot back: “I don’t think so. I’ve been doing plenty of interviews and saying ‘we are shedding tears over this’… but is the best way to stop this crisis to actually stop the boats and stop people dying and create safety zones in Syria and on the Turkish border, and encourage the globe to commit…”
“Good luck with that,” Guru-Murthy interrupted.
“That’s fine, you can have that cynical and flippant attitude if you want,” replied Kassam. “But it’s not like this Syrian crisis appeared overnight Krishnan, we’ve known this has been going on for years. In fact we were cheering when they first started to attack Assad and destabilise the country. Now we’re saying ‘let’s prop him up’!”