UK minister slams ‘thuggish’ anti-migrant protests in Portsmouth
British minister Emma Reynolds has condemned hundreds of protesters who blocked streets in the English coastal city of Portsmouth late on Sunday to try to stop the arrival of migrants from France, calling them “thuggish”.
The gathering was the second anti-migrant demonstration in two days, after masked men disrupted traffic in the port of Dover on Saturday, chanting “Stop the boats”, a reference to the vessels carrying asylum seekers across the English Channel.
Both groups appeared to be led by Daniel Thomas, an ally of veteran far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson.
“Perhaps the scale of the protest was something that we hadn’t seen before, but the police have brought this under control,” Reynolds, who is chief secretary to the Treasury, told Sky News on Monday when asked about the protests in Portsmouth.
Successive British governments have faced accusations from opposition parties and anti-migration activists of failing to curb the numbers of asylum seekers coming to Britain, often in overcrowded, inflatable boats.
Reynolds said the numbers had fallen sharply to about 17,000 from January 1 to September 1, down 43 per cent on the same period last year.