Home Secretary: Vote with your feet and don’t buy shirt
FOOTBALL fans should ‘vote with their feet’ and not buy the new Nike England football kit, James Cleverly has said.
The Home Secretary is the latest figure to criticise the St George’s flag ‘update’, alongside Rishi Sunak and Gareth Southgate.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Mr Cleverly said: ‘If it’s not a red cross on a white background, it’s not the England shirt. It’s not the England flag.’
He added: ‘I am sure that fans will vote with their feet.’
The shirt, which costs up to £125, has a red, purple and blue cross on the back of the collar instead of the St George’s Cross. Speaking to the MoS to launch a social media campaign to curb illegal migration, he said he owns a replica England 1966 World Cup shirt and last year was pictured in a 1982 one.
The Home Secretary will tomorrow announce measures to ‘counter the disinformation’ online put out by criminal gangs smuggling people into the UK on small boats. Adverts on YouTube and Facebook will try to dissuade people considering crossing the Channel.
They will include first-person testimonies from migrants who have made the journey, describing how perilous it is, as well as the risks of becoming forced into modern slavery by the gangs once in the UK.
The Government will also step up work with social media companies to pull down adverts by people smugglers selling places on small boats. ‘These adverts are for criminal enterprise,’ he said, adding that he was ‘frustrated’ that the Rwanda Bill had not got through Parliament yet and blamed Labour for the delay. Once the legislation is passed, the aim is for the Rwanda policy to be added to future social media campaigns.
Also, Mr Cleverly accused Sir Keir Starmer of ‘trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the British people’ over his record as a lawyer. Last week the Labour leader defended giving legal advice to banned terrorist group Hizb utTahrir, saying ‘it is very important that everyone is represented’.
‘I don’t buy it at all,’ Mr Cleverly said, adding: ‘He should be held to account and asked to explain why he has acted so often against the national interest.’
A Labour spokesman said: ‘Keir Starmer was the country’s most senior prosecutor. He oversaw the first ever prosecution of Al-Qaeda terrorists, the jailing of the airline liquid bomb plotters and the deportation of countless terrorists.’