Blood streams through Ukraine. Tears run through parliament. At PMQs today, numerous members urged Boris to show more compassion towards Ukraine’s refugees.
Poland has already taken 1.2 million. Barely a thousand have been received here, as Boris confirmed, but the number will rise sharply. Leading the pro-refugee campaign was the SNP’s Ian Blackford who seems to represent every region on earth apart from his own constituency. In a venomous speech he charged the home secretary, Priti Patel, with imposing a ‘hostile environment’ on refugees for ‘ideological’ reasons. Well, well. No one could accuse the SNP of embracing xenophobia for political gain.
Blackford lambasted the government for ‘putting up barriers and bureaucracy’. Yet he dreams of installing a barbed-wire frontier at Berwick-upon-Tweed and dividing Britain into two trading areas.
Boris was clear. He expects and wants a vast influx from Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands, he declared, will arrive through the family reunion scheme.
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