The Archbishop of York is “wrong on all accounts” for critiscising Reform UK’s migrant deportation plans, Richard Tice has blasted. The party’s deputy leader lashed out after Stephen Cottrell said the UK should resist Reform’s “kneejerk” plan for the mass deportation of migrants, telling Nigel Farage he is not offering any “long-term solution”.
He said: “He’s wrong on all accounts. The role of the government is to look after the British public first.”
Mr Cottrell is currently acting spiritual head of the Church of England while a new Archbishop of Canterbury is chosen.
Phillips asked him: “What’s your response to the people who are saying the policy should be ‘you land here, unlawfully, you get locked up and you get deported straight away. No ifs, no buts’?”
Mr Cottrell said he would tell them “you haven’t solved the problem”, adding: “You’ve just put it somewhere else and you’ve done nothing to address the issue of what brings people to this country.
“And so if you think that’s the answer, you will discover in due course that all you have done is made the problem worse.
“Don’t misunderstand me, I have every sympathy with those who find this difficult, every sympathy – as I do with those living in poverty.
“But… we should actively resist the kind of isolationist, short term kneejerk ‘send them home’.”
Asked if that was his message to the Reform leader, he said: “Well, it is. I mean, Mr Farage is saying the things he’s saying, but he is not offering any long-term solution to the big issues which are convulsing our world, which lead to this. And, I see no other way.”