Afghan hero must never be deported
Widdecombe
IHAVE commented before in this column on the shameful and treacherous way in which we have treated Afghan citizens who put their lives on the line for our troops in their country by acting as interpreters. Now perfidious Albion has plunged to new depths and if Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson spent as much time looking after our allies as he does abusing the Chancellor, these brave men might be saved from the vengeance of the Taliban. As it is they are being abandoned.
In the latest instance of British ingratitude an Afghan, who worked bravely for our troops and who made it to this country, is to be imminently deported while daily those who enter illegally and commit crimes here somehow seem able to invoke the law and remain.
Hafizullah Husseinkhel made an application to this country for asylum which has been rejected and an attempt to apply to the High Court for judicial review has also been refused. He was arrested when dutifully reporting to the Home Office as required and then detained.
The Home Office is proposing to deport him to Austria, where he was first registered as an asylum seeker. Of course it is legally entitled to do that but strangely does not return to France those who come here unlawfully from Sangatte. Recent changes to immigration law make Austria a less than reassuring prospect.
SO here we have a man who served on our front line against the Taliban and who had worked for other Nato forces for several years before that, who was praised by the regiment he assisted so faithfully, whose citation says he was popular with the troops and calm during enemy engagements. Furthermore he was injured in our service, resulting in severely reduced eyesight.
Nor has he wasted his time while being in this country, undertaking voluntary work and attending college to improve his English.
We should be laying out the welcome mat, not carting him off in handcuffs. WHEN I heard that my old friend Ken Clarke had praised the so-called Brexit deal I knew that my assessment of it was right: it is a prescription for staying in the EU in all but name. No wonder former EU commissioner Karel De Gucht crowed that we were heading towards a “very, very soft Brexit” and even that was an exaggeration as it is barely a Brexit at all. What did Britain vote for? A LOT of attention has been paid to that remarkable performance of Katya Jones in Strictly when she balanced Joe McFadden on her bent knees, back unsupported. The world gasped and gaped. Perhaps the clue lies in Katya’s Russian origins. I have never fully understood how the Cossack dancers balance either! MAX CLIFFORD was a manipulative and blatant liar who thought nothing of destroying people’s lives but he would not have flourished without the compliance of large sections of the media, which broadcast his fictions because they were sufficiently sensational.
His multi-million pound empire grew big because it was growing in the right sort of soil, fertilised by an insatiable appetite for scandal.
Clifford was a product of the age in which we live and had he not been incarcerated for sexual assaults he would have mercilessly exploited the opportunities for mass cruelty afforded by social media.
He was a bad man but he was living in dark times. Wasn’t it for control of our own borders and control of our own laws? Was that not the very definition of Brexit? That we were leaving the EU and running Britain ourselves? Did not the PM say Brexit means Brexit and did not the Chancellor tell us we were leaving the single market and the customs union?
I have no problem with the divorce bill, WHY is it that this country cannot cope with snow? Why do roads grind to a halt, schools close and theatres cancel shows? How do countries which suffer much deeper and more prolonged snow each and every year simply get on with it?
I remember 1963 when we had one of the worst winters on record. My father was off on a six-week tour of the Far East for the Admiralty and he gloated that he would miss it all. We built him a snowman to welcome him back in what should have been early spring! Yet I have no recollection of everything seizing up then.
Our problem is that we have lost our grit and I am not talking about the stuff that is strewn on our roads.
THIS DEAL IS NOT WHAT I CALL BREXIT ... WE HAVE TO BE FREE TO RUN OUR OWN COUNTRY
high though it is or with a two-year transition period to avoid the dreaded cliff edge as all that is time limited.
I can even swallow, though with much less willingness, the continued interference by the ECJ in limited circumstances for a full eight years after we “leave” but it is in the concessions around Northern Ireland that the terrible truth may be found. If we fail to reach an agreement with Ireland and the EU about the border between Eire and Ulster then we agree to maintain “full alignment” with the rules of the single market and the customs union, which of course include free movement of EU citizens. In short we would stay bound by EU law and will be precious little freer than we are now. No. Britain said leave and leave we must and that means all of the UK.