When did BBC Question Time become so irrelevant? Or perhaps I should ask if it was ever relevant in the first place? I ask because it’s become so blatantly left-wing in recent years – both in audience and guests – it’s barely watchable. Last week Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones claimed “the majority of the people in these [small migrant] boats are children, babies and women”.
Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf leaped in and corrected this rubbish by pointing out, rightly, that “more than 90% of them are adult men”. But wide-eyed host Fiona Bruce asked Jones: “You’re saying that’s not true?” and he replied: “I’m saying it’s not true.” It’s incredible that Jones thinks he can get away with that.
Anyone with half a brain knows that women and children are – thankfully – very seldom on these boats from France. They are mainly carrying young men of a military age who are coming here to improve their lives economically.
But we really don’t know what happens to most of them – other than the huge costs to taxpayers racked up from accommodation, benefits and the like.
We are paying the French millions of pounds to stop people breaking into our country and they aren’t doing so. We should ask for our millions back and start sending people who came here illegally to third world countries.
We know there was a deterrent effect from the Rwanda scheme that Keir Starmer foolishly abandoned as soon as he got elected. It can work.
We need to sort this problem ourselves. It’s clear we can’t rely on anyone else, not least the French, to do it for us.