Pathetic posturing

AS illegal immigrants continued to storm the Channel Tunnel, the roads of Kent were again gridlocked and police were photographed discovering stowaways in lorries in four different parts of Britain, Labour had no interest yesterday in finding solutions to one of the biggest crises of our time.

Instead, the party risibly busied itself whipping up a storm of fake outrage over Mr Cameron’s use of the word ‘swarm’ to describe the migrants laying siege to Britain’s borders.

Harriet Harman said it was a ‘worrying turn’ for the PM to have described them as ‘insects not people’. An opportunistic Andy Burnham, his hopes of becoming leader receding by the day, made the pathetically cheap remark that: ‘There’s no dog whistle these Bullingdon Boys won’t blow.’

Meanwhile, the UN’s special representative on migration, Peter Sutherland, made the absurd claim that Britain’s concerns about the bedlam at Calais are ‘xenophobic’ and the scale of the problem has been ‘exaggerated beyond belief ’. Perhaps Mr Sutherland (an Irishman paid fortunes during a 20-year career at Goldman Sachs International) would like to tell that to the Kent residents who are trapped in their homes or the thousands whose holidays are being ruined.

If the crisis in Calais – which, of course, Labour did so much to cause by making Britain a magnet for illegal migrants the world over – is not to escalate, mature debate is required.

Pathetic posturing by polytechnic politicians helps no one.