Facts
Conservative Party Deputy Chairman Lee Anderson told the Daily Express that “Slippery Starmer’s only solution is a dodgy deal he’s cooked up with the EU to give hundreds of thousands of migrants a golden ticket straight to our shores.”
Anderson provided no official figures or stats to support this claim.
As Full Notes notes: “This is misleading. The 100,000 figure is a Conservative party estimate which is not reliable, because it makes several assumptions and appears to misinterpret a recent EU agreement on relocating asylum seekers. We don’t know how many migrants the UK might take under a future returns deal with the EU—Labour has not said what such a deal would involve, or how many migrants it would accept.”
Verdict
Lee Anderson provided no evidence to support his inflammatory claims.
Similar misleading statements have been made by multiple conservative MPs and the Prime Minister, see all similar posts here.
We emailed Lee Anderson’s office offering him the chance to respond. The email was received, but no reply.
Client Journalism
If the Daily Express was set on giving credibility to the Conservative Party Deputy chairman by publishing his rant it should have provided context. At the time of writing (22/05/24) the article is still online.
We contacted the Daily Express offering them the chance to respond. We received no response.