Readers may remember the last time Labour let gaffe-prone Claude Moares go on telly to talk about migrants. It did not go well. Today the portulent clanger specialist struck again on the Daily Politics, telling Andrew Neil we need a “final solution” to the migrant crisis. Oh dear.
Labour MEP Claude Moraes is, worryingly, the chair of the European Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee. This morning on Sky News, Moraes claimed no less than seven times that the UK had taken just 216 refugees from Syria, adding “David Cameron and the government need to tell the truth to the British people and not treat them like fools“. Really?
The 216 figure is demonstrably untrue – it did the rounds on social media last week before being comprehensively debunked. The correct number is around 5,000. You might have hoped someone with such a grand title would check what he reads on Twitter is right before repeating it on telly. What was that about “telling the truth to the British people”?