A deportation flight intended to take murderers, rapists and paedophiles back to Jamaica set off in the middle of the night with only 13 of its planned 50 passengers after last-minute legal challenges saw several removed from the plane over claims they had been victims of “modern slavery”. Left-wing lawyers forced the government’s hand to keep on UK soil. Even with the legal victory, hundreds of hard-left activists and “black public figures” are furious that the flight deported anyone at all, despite the remaining 13 criminals having combined sentences of more than 100 years for murder, manslaughter, grooming, burglary and robbery.

Priti Patel was rightly furious at the continuing interference of campaigning lawyers, and accused Labour MPs of “re-traumatising” victims of rape and other evil crimes. 70 MPs had signed a letter organised by Clive Lewis calling for the flight to be delayed, names included the usual loony left; Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Diane Abbott, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Kate Osamor, Claudia Webbe and Dawn Butler. The letter claimed:

“Deportations epitomise the government’s continued ‘Hostile Environment’ agenda. Not only is this agenda unjust, but also the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has now found that the Home Office broke the law with its series of hostile environment policies and inhumane treatment of the Windrush generation.”

It is beyond disgusting that these Labour MPs and hard-left celebrities dare conflate the mistreatment of the Windrush generation to the frankly overly-humane treatment of this group of low-lifes. 

The criticism from the likes of Diane Abbott is particularly laughable. As immigration minister Chris Philp pointed out in the Commons this week after she called the mass-deportation “cruel and potentially dangerous”, the law legally requiring the government to ship this evil lot back to where they came from was implemented in 2007 under a Labour government – a law for which Diane Abbott voted.

Labour complain about a hostile environment towards thieves, murderers, rapists and paedophiles – it clearly isn’t hostile enough and their former voters in the Red Wall will drain away even further if identity politics continues to drive them down this route…