Boris Refugee Rant Is Crap

Any and every pundit has had their say several times over on the refugee crisis caused by conflict in the Middle East, but that has not deterred London’s occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson from using this instalment of the Telegraph column that brings him more than £250,000 of “chicken feed” each year to pretend that he is a serious politician with equally serious ideas, or maybe not.

A clueless Muppet. And a character from Sesame Street

After telling “The Britain-bashers’ moral outrage will not solve this migration crisis … Recognising that not all migrants are refugees is the first step to finding a constructive way forward”, Bozza goes badly wrong: “the UK was just about the only EU country willing even to contemplate direct military action to protect the Syrians – at that precarious moment when the leadership of the Syrian opposition had not been lost to the maniacs”.

In other words, we proposed bombing. The kind of thing that has precipitated the refugee crisis. But he wants his readers to know “It was thanks to Ed Miliband and the Labour party that the opportunity was squandered; but I don’t think you could fault the instincts of David Cameron”. I most certainly can fault the instincts of a Prime Minister who allows Rupert Murdoch to tell him what his foreign policy should be, thanks.

It gets worse: “this has been a collective EU failure”. That includes your pal Dave, stupid. Try again: “the confused response of some European capitals has made matters worse”. Including London, Bozza, where you’re supposed to be the Mayor, remember? Then he goes totally gaga: “They seem to be composed overwhelmingly of young, able-bodied men … and it is neither callous nor lacking in compassion to say that many of them are arriving in Europe as economic migrants”. And to that I call bullshit.

To be able not only to get to Budapest, but also to be able to commit to walking a further 100-plus kilometres to the Austrian border, you have to be young and able-bodied. And, as the scenes from Munich and Frankfurt showed, there are plenty of women and children in there too. Their homes have been bombed to rubble. They are refugees.

But Bozza is now onto forthright scaremongering: “it is all too easy to see how a generous message of openness and welcome to refugees could be misread – by millions of people in relatively impoverished countries surrounding the EU – as an invitation to up sticks and arrive in Europe. There is a real danger of triggering further large migratory flows”. That would be the same “pull factor” argument used to let refugees drown in the Mediterranean.

Then he goes all UKIP and pretends we’re full: “Germany, Italy and several other western European countries have seen a marked fall in their indigenous birth rate. They have ageing populations, and are failing to produce enough young people of their own … It cannot be said Britain is in exactly the same position. We are going through a population boom. Our schools are bursting – certainly in London”.

There is a greater part of the UK that is not London, Bozza, and schools are not bursting there. This may please Tel readers, but it shows Bozza is playing to the gallery and demonstrating yet again why he is totally unfit to lead his party.