Peer who fled Nazis says PM should sack Lee Anderson after asylum seeker rant
Rishi Sunak should sack the Tories’ controversial deputy chairman Lee Anderson for his foul-mouthed rant on asylum seekers, a peer who fled the Nazis as a child has said.
It comes after the senior Conservative MP provoked outrage after saying asylum seekers should “f*** off back to France” if they did not want to be housed on a barge in Dorset.
Speaking to The Mirror, Lord Alf Dubs, a campaigner for refugees’ rights who fled Prague in 1939 as part of the Kindertransport, said the comments were “unworthy” of a politician. The Labour peer stressed that if the country is to have a “sensible” refugee policy it must be done by “getting public opinion on our side”.
He added: “Whereas what he [Mr Anderson] is doing is seeking to divide public opinion, he’s seeking to put one part of the population against another, he’s seeking to inject an atmosphere of hostility and hatred”.
Asked whether Mr Sunak should ask the Tories’ deputy chairman to step down, he replied: "Of course he should. He should never have appointed him in the first place given what he must have known about him. Of course he should step down. “It taints the Government and it taints the country by having senior politicians making comments like that."
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Lord Alf Dubs, a campaigner for refugees’ rights, fled Prague in 1939 as part of the Kindertransport (Philip Coburn /Daily Mirror)Mr Anderson has since refused to apologise for the remarks, saying they were “borne out of me being absolutely furious”. He told GB News earlier this week: “It’s not just me that’s furious, it’s my constituents and millions of people up and down the country.”Despite widespread condemnation, No10 and Tory ministers have also stood by Mr Anderson.
The Labour peer Lord Dubs also claimed the Conservatives had lost “complete control of any semblance of a policy on refugees”. He added: “I don't think they know what they are doing. I think they are flailing about, desperately trying to find some answers. I think the legislation - the Illegal Immigration Bill - was supposed to solve all this. It did nothing of the sort. I think the Rwanda [deportation] policy is not going to work."
Lord Dubs also described the use of Bibby Stockholm barge - a giant vessel designed to accommodate migrants - as a “very penal policy”. “It is tantamount to them being in prison. And people have been through the most dreadful experiences that they have been through - fleeing war, fleeing persecution, fleeing torture, seeing their families' murdered. To then subject them to a kind of imprisonment when they think they've found safety is intolerable.”
His remarks came before the Home Office was forced to evacuate all migrants off the Bibby Stockholm barge - just four days after they arrived. Officials discovered Legionella bacteria, which can cause a serious lung infection and is fatal in 10% of cases, in the water supply of the accommodation.
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