Who is tougher on immigration: Boris Johnson or Rory Stewart? It seems to be the former Tory MP turned podcaster (that’s Stewart, not Johnson – who only has a column) who is trying to make that claim.
Speaking to Michael Gove on The Spectator’s Quite Right podcast, Stewart said that Johnson went ‘entirely mad’ on legal migration as prime minister. The centrist took aim at Johnson for letting close to a million people into the country in a single year through legal routes. ‘I don’t understand what was happening there. Why he, and I think it was Priti Patel as Home Secretary then, seemed to be a supporter of this kind of project,’ Stewart added.
‘This is a country which was taking, back in the 80s, 30-40,000 people a year and that found itself with David Cameron coming in… saying he was going to try to keep the number [of net migration] below 100,000, suddenly with a prime minister who’s deciding they’re going to let in close to a million. It’s mad.’
Stewart said that Boris Johnson went ‘entirely mad’ on legal migration
It is yet another disagreement to add to the rolling list of quarrels between Johnson and Stewart, over which the latter quit the Tory party in 2019. ‘100,000 is a number to aim at,’ Stewart told Quite Right!, branding it both a sensible and achievable legal migration target. Mr S notes that Stewart is advocating for a position that is potentially tougher than even the Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch, with the party not having committed to a number for their promised ‘annual cap on migration’.
And he would go further still. Anyone arriving on a small boat should be sent straight back across the Channel: ‘That would be my first principle.’
‘There is no argument that France is not a safe country,’ Stewart added, ‘and the basis of the entire refugee convention is the idea that you’re providing asylum to people who are in danger. People in northern France are not in danger and there is absolutely no reason for us to accept them.’
Right-wing politicians take note, the centrists are coming for your policies.
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