Reform’s Zia Yusuf and the Conservatives’ Chris Philp got into a slanging match on camera while both arguing against a new asylum centre.
As the main home affairs’ spokespeople for their respective parties, the politicians travelled to the English village of Piddington to support the residents campaigning against the government’s plans.
Housing secretary Angela Rayner overruled local concerns overnight and gave the Home Office permission to use the former military base in nearby Bicester to house more than 1,000 male asylum seekers.
But the men’s rivalries ended up overshadowing the cause as they tore chunks out of each other in front of the media.
Yusuf began by asking Philp: “Would you like to actually apologise for the things you did in government to bring hundreds of thousands of people into the country illegally?”
“That is disingenuous Zia, as usual,” Philp said. “The men who are going to be placed here are the ones who arrived here very recently under this Labour government.”
The shadow home secretary claimed his party has a clear plan to end illegal immigration rather than “cheap slogans”.
“But I hope today that rather than engage in point scoring, we can stand in solidarity with the residents,” Philp said as the crowd clapped.
Yusuf then tried to cut in, but the Tory frontbencher said: “Read the room! Listen to the people clapping and read the room.”
Reform’s home affairs spokesperson insisted it was important to hold everyone to account, adding: “The notion that you had no involvement, you know that’s not true.”
Philp worked as the immigration minister under Boris Johnson, who oversaw a huge increase in post-Brexit immigration.
But he hit back: “The public here want you to pipe down on the cheap politics.”
The two then continued to interrupt each other, with Philp telling Yusuf: “You’re in a hole, stop digging.”
“The only way we are going to solve this problem is being honest about how we arrived in this situation,” the Reform politician cut in.
Philp said: “I’m not going to give you comms advice! Mate, you are in a hole. You have misjudged the situation. Do yourself a favour and calm down.”
Yusuf told him to apologise to the British people, but Philp said the public wanted to hear “solidarity and unity”.
The right-wing parties were there to back local parish council leader, Tim McNally, as he accused Labour prime minister Andy Burnham of abandoning his “responsibility to our community”.
McNally said the villagers had “tried very hard to engage” with the prime minister, but said he hasn’t “extended to us as simple as courtesy of consideration of what we are going to have to consider, to receive here as our new incumbent guests that you have targeted for us: 1,250 men.”
According to the 2021 census, which recorded that there were just 358 people living in the parish, that means the residents would be outnumbered by more than three to one.
Piddington already held a symbolic referendum to leave the UK over the issue in September, with 258 voting in favour of secession – though the vote had no legal basis.
Defence minister Luke Pollard defended the controversial decision on LBC this morning, saying: “I want to see every asylum hotel closed.
“To do that, we have to look at what temporary sites can be used to speed that effort up…
“This is one of the ways we are going faster to do that, and I hope that we won’t have to use these sites for many years into the future.”
A Downing Street spokesperson told reporters such sites “designed to be self-contained with 24/7 security and CCTV to minimise the impact on the local community”.
The spokesperson said: “As the prime minister himself has said, we do not want a situation where it’s only the poorest communities in the country that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers who believe all parties to play their part.”
They added that the safety of the public “will always be our top priority”.
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