Former Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan got in a heated row with ex Labour advisor James Schneider on GB News today as she claimed "it isn't far-right to be concerned about immigration."
The pair spoke on Dewbs & Co and discussed whether the term "far-right" is stifling free speech, as they discussed the riots that rocked the UK earlier this year.
The country battelled with weeks of unrest when false news spread that the man arrested for the Southport stabbings was an immigrant.
The former Tory MP stated: "It isn't far right to be concerned about the levels of immigration, both illegal and legal. It's just common sense."
A heated row took place over stifling free speech
GB News
Schneider hit back: " I don't think it is necessarily just common sense, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily far right either."
She claimed: "But this is what is happening to the debate."
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He responded: "I would not say, for example, that someone who wants to have a lower level of migration in Britain is far right, because they want to have a lower level of migration in Britain.
"I would say someone is far right, if they carry water for racist street violence, for example."
Schneider said: "I think that in the in the first, let's say, 10 days of the racist violence that we saw this summer.
He explained: "There was attacks on mosques, there were they were pulling people out of their cars."
The debate was sparked after the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) won national elections in Austria
GB News
He later added: "I think we saw a lot in in those 10 days, or people saying, oh no, there are questions to ask about what really happened in Southport, echoing the language that was being used to mobilize for these, these riots, these racist attacks. We saw lots of that."
The debate was sparked after the hard-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) won national elections in Austria.
The party, whose first leader was a former Nazi lawmaker, has sought to distance itself from its past, and in 2019 helped pass a law allowing foreign descendants of Austrian victims of National Socialism to acquire Austrian citizenship.
Party leader Herbert Kickl said he wants migrants who have entered Austria illegally to be removed and very strict criteria enforced on legal immigration.
This includes no asylum applications on the grounds that any asylum seeker who comes to Austria has crossed a safe country, with "pushbacks" used at the border.
The party also rejects the EU's Pact on Migration and Asylum, which aims to secure the bloc's borders and divide up migrants among members, in order to pressure the EU to toughen up its borders.