Nigel Farage: I wouldn’t describe migrant groups as ‘swarms’

Nigel Farage briefly grabbed the moral high ground on the Calais migrant crisis this morning. He told the Today programme, rather loftily, that he wouldn’t use the word ‘swarm’ as David Cameron has done to describe those crossing the Mediterranean. ‘I’m not seeking to use language like that,’ he said.

It’s understandable, given ‘swarm’ does depersonalise a group that already has the rather inhuman-sounding tag of ‘migrants’. But what a change of heart from his earlier interview on Good Morning Britain in which, according to the PoliticsHome transcript, the Ukip leader said:

‘A couple of times I’ve been stuck on the motorway and surrounded by swarms of potential migrants to Britain and once, even, they tried the back door of the car to see whether they could get in.’

Perhaps he meant that he wouldn’t use that sort of language in the rarefied atmosphere of the Today programme studio…