‘Righteous Indignation’: Conservative Dept. Chair Tells Migrants to ‘F*ck Off Back to France’ If They Don’t Like Britain

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Oliver JJ Lane

Lee Anderson, the bullish Conservative lawmaker has underlined the whole point of accommodating migrants awaiting asylum decisions on a converted barge by telling them if they don’t like the spartan taxpayer-funded floatel, they can “fuck off back to France”.

A small number of alleged asylum seekers are now being accommodated on the Bibby Stockholm, a large seagoing barge converted to house up to 500 people, but some migrants are resisting being transferred, and pro-migrant organisations have complained housing arrivals in places like barges and military bases is “inhumane”. But the government has hit back uncharacteristically forcefully, telling migrants they can essentially take it or leave it.

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick has said if migrants refuse taxpayer-funded accommodation that is their right, but they can fend for themselves if they chose to take that path, reports The Guardian.

Others were more blunt in their view on the migrants rejecting the accommodation prepared for them. Famously straightforward Conservative Member of Parliament and Party deputy chair Lee Anderson said on Tuesday that: “If they don’t like barges then they should fuck off back to France… These people come across the Channel in small boats … if they don’t like the conditions they are housed in here then they should go back to France, or better not come at all in the first place.”

Inevitably, the remarks have divided opinion. Conservative colleague and justice secretary Alex Chalk said Anderson was being “characteristically robust” and voicing the “righteous indignation” of the British people over the allegedly entitled attitudes of some migrant arrivals.

It was later established that the government-backed Chalk in backing Anderson, revealing the situation that it is government policy that migrants who don’t like the way they’re treated in Britain should go and live somewhere else. This of course is the point of the Bibby Stockholm barge, which the government has not been shy about saying is intended to discourage migrants taking human trafficker boats across the English Channel from France.

On the other side of the views proffered, the Conservatives have been accused of being “fascist” for the remarks and standing by them, and Anderson a “pound shop Enoch Powell” for his views. Anderson has defended his position, telling Nigel Farage on Tuesday night that he would not apologise for the words and said they came from the heart.

He told the Brexiteer turned broadcaster: “It’s borne out of frustration, borne out of me being absolutely furious. And not just me, but my constituents and millions of people up and down the country… I hate the words ‘asylum seekers’ because they’re not. They’re illegal economic migrants who are coming over in their thousands.

“They are being enabled by these charities. And the nerve of it, Nigel. I’ve been to Calais, I’ve seen migrants living in one-man tents, living in absolute squalor. Then they get here and we do our best, we bend over backward to put them in decent accommodation… don’t forget this barge, we’ve got workmen in the oil industry. Grafters, doing a good job for this great country of ours and they’ve never complained once.

“It makes me sick to the pit of my stomach when these lefty lawyers, these charities, these human rights campaigners say it isn’t good enough. If it’s not good enough, then they should go back to France.”

Strong language or not, Anderson’s words do little more than obscure the fact the government’s increasingly tough rhetoric on migration has not had much of an impact on actual ‘irregular’ migrant arrivals, which continue apace at a rate of thousands a year. Yet even the record numbers of boat arrivals in recent years are a tiny addition to the overall rate of migration to the country, most of which is totally in line with the government’s laws and rules.

Despite having fought and won several elections on the promise to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands”, the Conservative Party has never appeared to make any real effort to realise that promise, and net migration last year hit half a million in 12 months, the highest number ever. Some predict the figure will be considerably higher again this year.

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