Nigel Farage has hit out at Tory rebels who abstained on yesterday’s Rwanda Bill saying they “don’t have the courage of their convictions.”
Speaking on GB News he said:
“I like Mark Francois as a person, the ERG boss, but like the grand old Duke of York, you know, he's marched the troops up to the top of the hill. And then he marched them down again.
“[The Prime Minister and Home Secretary] are confident they've got the party under control; confident that the rebels frankly haven't got the courage of their own convictions.
“I mean, how could you one day argue that what's being done will make no blooming difference and then the next day, effectively go along with it by just sitting on the benches abstaining, and allowing the government to win?
“The really big question here is will this make any difference anyway? And the answer is, absolutely not.
“Number one, it won't stop any of the individual legal claims that we know just how long that whole process takes. This is all fiddling while Rome burns.
“The big picture, and we saw this when that first flight couldn't leave for Rwanda when a nameless judge, probably not somebody even trained in law - I know it sounds bonkers but these are the so-called jurists that sit in Strasbourg on the ECHR court. All the while that court is there, we are not in control of policy, we're not in control of deportations.
“So frankly, it doesn't matter what Sunak says. Four successive Tory leaders have promised us they will deal with illegal immigration and we're no closer.
“It is no deterrent, everyone knows it, and whilst the numbers are down, if I'd said to you five years ago 30,000 young men would cross the English Channel in dinghies and be allowed to stay I mean, you'd have thought I’d been smoking something.
“So the fact that numbers are not as bad as last year, frankly, to hang on to that is really Cold Comfort Farm.
“Nobody did more to try and highlight the cross-channel problem than me going out repeatedly into the Channel and yet I am going to admit now, it is very small beer compared to legal migration into Britain.
“These are arguments I've been making publicly for well over a decade, that we simply cannot deal with the numbers and whether that is having any hope of getting a GP appointment, any prospect of your kids or grandkids ever getting themselves onto the housing ladder, the near impossibility as Christmas approaches and driving route on motorways to go and visit family.
“Our quality of life is diminishing directly as a result of a population crisis caused by a government that frankly, isn't concerned about the numbers. You know why? Because they're in hock to big businesses.”
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