Angela Rayner was asked on the Today programme whether it is appropriate for people to be crossing the channel on boats carrying the same number of passengers as an EasyJet flight. Nick Robinson noted that at this point along with sympathy Brits are also feeling “rage.” Rayner said:
“Well, these are desperate, vulnerable people getting into these vessels that are dangerous and we’ve got to stop that. The Home Secretary has got this agreement which is pay by results with the French to stop these boats from coming over.
We’ve seen a reduction in the number of boats that are coming over. And we’ve also seen a huge increase in the amount of deportations of people that come here illegally. So, we’re cracking down on those that are in the country illegally and removing those that shouldn’t be here.
But we’re also saying that those criminal gangs that are putting often, you know, children and women into vessels that are not seaworthy, we’re seeing people that are dying at sea that are desperate to come here and we’ve got to crack that and stop it.”
More than three quarters of all crossings are men over the age of 18…
Lucy Powell told Sky News that the Ed Miliband-Russell Brand interview happened in part because the ‘social media age’ had not begun by 2015:
“Look, I mean, he approached the Labour Party, he approached the campaign team, and we’re in very different times now. We weren’t in the social media age at the time – where you could maybe search things up and see allegations about somebody at the time. and as I say, if there was any suggestion at all, we were dealing with someone who was a known sexual predator at the time, then, of course, you know, no one would have done that. But as I say, he was a well known public figure. Lots of people from Hollywood to the BBC to many others gave this person a very, very powerful platform. And we didn’t know at the time, unfortunately. It was a different era.”