Two days ago Daniel Hannan posted this tweet which is both inept and potentially very provocative for people who may not have taken the time to follow his link, or watched or listened to the Governmental Coronavirus daily update on 25th April which Daniel has clearly ignored, just as he has not bothered to read the article he was actually pointing to. Then yesterday Nigel Farage posted this tweet which includes his link to a page on the LBC website which is focused entirely on his own programme which contains false information and has the potential to provoke the many people who listen to him or read his text. Rather sadly up until the end of January both of these men were our MEPs and so one could have hoped that they were a bit more responsible as people and better informed.

The article that Hannan was sharing appears on Kent Online and was written by Alex Jee with the headline:

76 migrants brought to Dover after being stopped in Channel

Clearly if this was all that someone read, it could potentially lead to them agreeing with Hannan and indeed Farage. However the article which is very short in length then goes on to send a torpedo into Hannans tweet and Farages comments starting with these words “Britain’s Border Force has brought in 76 migrants to the Port of Dover after they attempted to cross the Channel. The officials were alerted to several small boats early this morning, and stopped five before they made landfall.” which should be sufficient for Hannan to have realised the answer to his question and justify the action of the vital border force, however it goes on to state “Of those brought into the harbour, there were 55 men and 21 women, all of whom identified as being from Iraq, Iran, Yemen and Kuwait.” which demonstrates that irrespective of how these people got to the Channel in the first place that most are fleeing from locations which are experiencing war or other attacks, several of which we have helped set up or sell weapons to and so these are clearly potentially entitled to be considered as asylum seekers and should not be defined as illegal immigrants at this stage by anyone with a credible position in our nation. Then the article goes on to state “The Home Office revealed French police have stopped more than 200 migrants from risking their lives by seeking to get to the UK using a small boat since the start of the month. They also revealed that over 155 people who entered the UK illegally on small boats have been returned to Europe since January 2019.” The article then goes on to refer to a similar theme to that which was covered in the Coronavirus daily update with a very clear presentation by Lynne Owens, the Director General of the National Crime Agency a role that she has had since she left her role as Chief Constable of Surrey. Her statement on this subject was:

We are working to protect the border. We know that our joint work together with immigration enforcement is helping our partners in France to bring people smugglers to justice. An increasing proportion of attempts to reach the UK by small boat are being thwarted on the French side with at least 30 people being convicted.

These two contributions offer a very clear set of information that should have led Daniel Hannan to write a very different tweet and Nigel Farage to make a different set of comments which begins with this headline

Nigel Farage enraged by news migrants are still crossing into UK

Now to be fair I have not listened to his radio piece nor do I know which news he claims is enraging him but the text in the website states: “He [Nigel] turned his attention to news that in the last few days, “34 migrants have crossed the channel”, bringing into question the security of the UK during the lockdown. An agitated Nigel revealed that this adds to the number of 521, the amount of migrant that have entered the UK by crossing the channel since lockdown began. Nigel made the point that when he was watching the government’s coronavirus press briefings “not a single journalist asked a question about it”, upsetting him further. He stressed the issue with these people crossing into the UK during the crisis, pointing out that “nobody that gets into the UK through this route ever gets sent back” and this could cause a big problem for the UK once lockdown is lifted. Nigel was shocked that “no one seems to care” about the issue and wondered why nobody felt that it matters to discuss the problem. “Doesn’t this matter?” Nigel pleaded.“

So the first bold section is entirely correct in the sense that no one asked Lynne Owens a question on Saturday, however it would seem as though her statement was sufficient for most people without the need for any questions and one wonders if Nigel even saw it. The second bold element clearly demonstrates that Nigel is very ignorant compared to Alex Jee which in one sense is understandable as Nigel like Daniel can appear very ignorant when it comes to matters that they have very extreme views about. However the problem is that far more people would be listening to Farage than may have read Alex’s piece from start to finish as is clear from the approach by Hannan. If only there was a way of holding these people to account, but even when they were MEPs they refused to be held accountable, so there is no chance now!