Nigel Farage furiously locked horns with former Tory MP Ranil Jayawardena on GB News over Tory migration failures.
The Reform chief repeatedly called on the MP, who lost his seat in the July General Election, to admit the party’s record in government was “shameful”.
But Jayawardena would only go as far as admitting he was “disappointed” at the party’s inability to bring net migration down to the tens of thousands.
“You had 14 years to do this. You promised us in three consecutive manifestos net migration of tens of thousands a year”, he said.
Nigel clashed with Jayawardena
GB NEWS
“You gave us nearly a million in one year. Is it shameful?”
As Jayawardena went to give an answer – Nigel hit back repeatedly asking the same question twice more.
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But the 38-year-old would not directly respond, instead just saying he was “disappointed” by the failures.
“Disappointed? The country is furious”, Nigel hit back.
Jayawardena continued by insisting the Rwanda plan would have started to reap benefits, pointing to countries across Europe adopting similar schemes, but Nigel was sceptical.
It comes after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer accused the previous government of conducting a deliberate attempt to allow the significant flow of migrants into the country to take place.
The matter was discussed on GB News
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His comments came after official figures revealed net migration reached 906,000 in the year to June 2023.
Speaking at a Downing Street press conference, Starmer said the dramatic increase happened “by design not accident” under the Conservatives.
“Time and again the Conservative Party promised they would get the numbers down. Time and again they failed, and now the chorus of excuses has begun,” he stated.
The figure marks a significant rise from 186,000 just four years ago.
Starmer emphasised this was “a different order of failure” in immigration policy.
“Policies were reformed deliberately to liberalise immigration. Brexit was used for that purpose to turn Britain into a one nation experiment in open borders,” he said.
The Labour leader announced plans to publish a white paper outlining measures to reduce immigration numbers.
This will include a crackdown on sectors “over-reliant” on foreign workers.
“For far too long, we’ve been casual about malpractice in our labour market,” Starmer said, adding that employers who break rules would be banned from hiring overseas labour.
He emphasised the solution requires “hard graft, not the gimmicks” including focus on skills agenda and migration advisory committee.
