A CONSERVATIVE member told the Question Time panel that his only reason for remaining in the party is to oust Boris Johnson during a charged episode of the political debate show from Newcastle.
During a segment in which one audience member suggested refugees fleeing to the UK could be “rapists or murderers”, one man stood up against the Government’s “incompetent” Rwanda policy.
“It’s absolutely incompetent, incompetence in the Home Office,” the Tory member said.
He directed the comments to Matt Vickers, a Tory MP and parliamentary private secretary in Priti Patel’s Home Office.
“What on Earth is going on?” he asked the MP. “Regardless of the policy, this just strikes of incompetence which is through and through in this government in every single department.”
Asked by host Fiona Bruce if the Rwanda policy made him question his Conservative membership, the audience member responded brutally: “The only reason I’m a member of the Conservative Party now is to get rid of Boris Johnson.”
The intervention came after Johnson's deputy Dominic Raab defended the policy on Thursday. The first flight taking refugees over to Rwanda was due to take off on Tuesday, but failed amid a series of legal challenges.
Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, who is also Justice Secretary, defended the scheme as a “sensible, proportionate plan” despite the legal intervention from the European Court of Human Rights.
Defending the contrast between the Rwanda plan and the visa scheme welcoming Ukrainians, Raab claimed refugees from Afghanistan and Syria need to be vetted in a different way from those from Ukraine because of a “history and track record of terrorism” in the Middle Eastern countries.
Later, Downing Street insisted that the option of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights entirely remained an option despite Raab’s suggestion that domestic legal changes could resolve some of the problems preventing the Rwanda deportations from taking place.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “It is fair to say we have not made a final decision on next steps.”
