Farage: Boris Lacks ‘Political Will’ to Stop Migrant Boats, Govt Should Declare ‘National Emergency’

Farage
Anthony Devlin/Getty
Kurt Zindulka

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said that Prime Minister Boris Johnson doesn’t have the “political will” to tackle the growing migrant boat crisis in the English Channel, as over 4,100 migrants have landed on British beaches since the start of the year.

On Monday morning, Mr Farage said that he doesn’t think the Prime Minister will tackle the issue out of fear of backlash and accusations of racism.

“I don’t think Boris Johnson and the Cabinet are prepared to do what it takes and to face the criticism that they’ll get,” the Brexiteer told Julia Hartley-Brewer on talkRadio.

Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage said that statements from the government about trying to secure a deal with France to immediately return boat migrants “will remain hollow and meaningless until there is real political action,” adding: “it needs to come soon.”

The Brexit leader said that the British government cannot wait until after the ongoing “transition” period with the EU at the end of 2020 to get control of the migrant crisis, saying that the “time has come already to declare an emergency.”

“This would be far better than sending a few Royal Navy vessels into the Channel where, as things stand, they would simply join the Border Force and [Royal National Lifeboat Institution] in becoming a taxi service,” Farage explained.

Mr Farage said that the only way to solve the issue will be to follow the lead of former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, who under his Operation Sovereign Borders policy halted illegal boat migration from by immediately returning boat migrants to the country they came from or to third-party states to have their asylum claims processed, with legitimate refugees housed in countries other than Australia at Australia’s expense.

“Like Abbott’s administration, Boris Johnson needs to make it clear that nobody who enters Britain illegally having arrived via France will qualify for refugee status. This is the only realistic solution,” Farage wrote.

The arch-Brexiteer said that the British public are increasingly seeing the failure of Boris Johnson’s government to stem the tide as a “national humiliation”, noting that the driving force behind the 2016 EU referendum was a desire for the United Kingdom to “control its borders properly”.

He went on to say that the hordes of mostly young male migrants crossing the English Channel is not just an issue of public opinion or the billions of taxpayer money spent housing and supporting them, but also a matter of national security.

“Unless Johnson acts quickly, one of his chief legacies will be to have stored up a huge problem for the future of this country. Does he really want to be remembered for this?” Farage asked.

For his part, Prime Minister Johnson said that his government will attempt to work with “our French friends” to stop the waves of migrants crossing the Channel.

“We want to stop that, working with the French, make sure that they understand that this isn’t a good idea, this is a very bad and stupid and dangerous and criminal thing to do,” Johnson said per The Guardian.

“But then there’s a second thing we’ve got to do, and that is to look at the legal framework that we have that means that when people do get here, it is very, very difficult to then send them away again even though, blatantly, they’ve come here illegally,” Johnson said — although as a governing prime minister with a parliamentary majority in the dozens it is unclear why he has not yet changed that legal framework.

Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

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