The open-borders establishment in the media class and the globalist wing of the Tory Party has thrown a fit over Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s rhetoric on the migrant crisis, which she described as an “invasion”.
Echoing previous statements from Brexit leader Nigel Farage, Suella Braverman took to the dispatch box in the House of Commons on Friday afternoon to address the migrant crisis in the English Channel, which has seen some 40,000 illegals, including thousands of young Albanian men, reach British shores since the start of the year.
“The British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our southern coast and which party is not,” Braverman said amid loud grumbling from the Labour Party.
“Some 40,000 people have arrived on the south coast this year alone, many of them facilitated by criminal gangs, some of them actual members of criminal gangs. So let’s stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress: the whole country knows that that is not true.”
“I’m utterly serious about ending the scourge of illegal migration and I am determined to do whatever it takes to break the criminal gangs and fix our hopelessly lax asylum system, that is why I am in government.”
The comments from Braverman sparked an instant backlash from all sectors of the globalist establishment in Britain, from the legacy media to politicians in both the Labour Party and the Conservatives, all of which opposed Prime Minsiter Sunak’s decision to re-hire her as Home Secretary, just a week after she resigned from the Truss government.
The staunch Brexiteer had supposedly resigned over breaches to the ministerial code by sending documents to other ministers via WhatsApp, however, in her resignation letter, it was apparent that she felt the government was prepared to do another u-turn and abandon attempts to curb mass migration, both illegal and legal.
Closing in on Braverman, ITV head political editor Robert Peston said: “Rishi Sunak has, with Jeremy Hunt, said he will govern with ‘compassion’. Her inflammatory description of asylum seekers crossing the Channel as ‘an invasion of our southern coast’ is not especially compassionate language.”
Her fellow cabinet member, Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick also took a shot at Braverman on Tuesday. When pressed on whether he would classify the 40,000 mostly young males illegally arriving this year as an invasion, he told Sky News: “In a job like mine, you have to choose your words very carefully. And I would never demonise people coming to this country in pursuit of a better life.”
The Times of London claimed that an unnamed former Tory Home Office minister said that her “invasion” comments demonstrated “what a thug she is,” adding: “She’s facile, totally uncompassionate and insincere, hamming it up and that’s the reputation she has now.”
Far-left Labour Party MP Daine Abbott chimed in as well on the controversy, saying: “If Nigel Farage thinks that Suella Braverman is right then she really does need to get sacked.”
For his part, Mr Farage said that the manufactured outrage over the use of the term invasion or the minor infractions of the ministerial code are in reality just cover for the fact that many want Braverman kicked out of office to prevent her from enacting reforms to shut down mass migration.
“Let me tell you what her great sin is,” Mr Farage said on Tuesday morning, “She wants to leave the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights), she doesn’t want judges to be able to stop deportations of those that shouldn’t be here. That is her real Sin and the people that want her out are basically remainers, rejoinders… and it isn’t just in the media, it’s coming from some inside her own party as well.”
Braverman, a daughter of immigrants herself, was previously backed by Farage in the summer’s leadership contest to replace Boris Johnson after she came out in favour of scrapping the UK’s membership in the European court, which the UK is still a member of despite Brexit as it is technically a separate institution from the EU, and which controversially intervened to stop a flight of several illegal migrants from being removed from the country to Rwanda.
In addition to being a strident figure on the issue of illegal immigration, Braverman has also been one of the few voices advocating for a reduction in overall legal immigration as well, arguing in September that to actually deliver on the promises of Brexit, the government should work to finally reduce net immigration to the “tens of thousands”.
This has won her no favours with the globalist establishment. Indeed, in a barely veiled threat, writing in the Financial Times on Monday, billionaire Hungarian activist George Soros wrote: “I find the reappointment of Suella Braverman as home secretary disturbing. Restricting immigration will raise wage costs and fuel inflation. If this is the route Sunak is choosing, the prevailing optimism in financial markets will not be justified.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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