‘Small boats week’ ignores wider context of irregular immigration in UK
THE GUARDIAN says Rishi Sunak’s “small boats week” has been marked by the government actioning its promise to house asylum seekers on a barge, then having to remove them; bad language; and, from the government’s perspective, bad numbers.
The official figures show the number of people arriving in the UK in small boats since 2018 has topped 100,000, an arbitrary figure but one that has caused much Conservative ire.
Chief among those critics was the party’s deputy chair, Lee Anderson. The MP for Ashfield said the government was failing on immigration. He was “very angry about the number. Again, very angry, as you know, every single day when I see these illegal migrants,” he told GB News, repeating his claim that people arriving on small boats are not genuine asylum seekers.