Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said she thinks Donald Trump would ‘love’ her deportations plans, which she unveiled as the Tory Party annual conference kicked off
The Tories have been told they have “zero credibility” after announcing plans to deport 150,000 people a year under Donald Trump-style immigration raids.
Fawning Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said she thinks the US President would “love” her proposal, which she unveiled as the Tory Party annual conference kicked off in Manchester yesterday. But the plan lacked detail and when asked a simple question on where people would be deported, a floundering Ms Badenoch hit back that the question was “irrelevant”.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood savaged the Tory proposal saying it is “totally lacking in any credibility whatsoever”. “I’m afraid to say the Tories have zero credibility in this area,” she told Sky News. “They were in government for 14 years. They’ve suddenly discovered a zeal for reform that they did not have when they were in office.
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“And they really do need to explain why with immigration enforcement, which we already have in this country – they might not know about it because they barely availed themselves of it when they were in government – removals were down under the Conservative Party.
“Removals of foreign offenders were down under the Conservative Party. They’ve all gone up under the first year of the Labour government.”
Ms Mahmood also slapped down the Tories’ plan to pull the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Cabinet minister said the ECHR, parts of which the Government is already reviewing, underpins other international agreements, including the UK’s ‘one in, one out’ returns deal with France.
She said: “So if the Tories are proposing ripping that up, I think the first question for them is to explain how they’re going to go about that, what the impact of that is going to be, and what other changes they’re going to have to make in order to not risk the agreements that underpin, at the moment, some of our ability to return people to their own countries.”
Over the weekend, Ms Badenoch announced plans to deport 150,000 foreigners not granted permission to stay every year, with a new Removals Force inspired by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids in the US.
Challenged on the plan, which would be in part funded by closing asylum hotels, the Tory leader said it was “irrelevant” to ask where people would be deported to and ranted about the Tories’ failed Rwanda plan.
“People need to go back to their countries,” she said. “They can go to safe third countries if that’s the best thing for them.”
Pressed further on they would go, she said: “Not here, not here. They don’t belong here, they are committing crimes, they are hurting people.
“I’m tired of us asking all of these irrelevant questions about where they should go. They will go back to where they should do or another country, but they should not be here. We need to look after the people in our country…
“The logical conclusion of what you’re saying is ‘just give up, it’s all too difficult’. This is how we got to this mess. We cannot have this attitude anymore. That is why we have come up with a credible plan.”
Ms Badenoch told the Sunday Telegraph that she thinks Mr Trump would love her plan. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he loved it,” she said. “But what’s really important is that people in this country will like it.”
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