Good morning. Throughout August, when parliament shouldn’t be sitting and the faucet of home information is working dry, opposition events typically prefer to run campaigns. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK chief, is following this mannequin with gusto and at this time, for the third week in a row, he’s holding a press convention with reference to crime. Reform’s success within the polls is sort of fully all the way down to the actual fact it advocates hardline insurance policies to chop immigration and small boat crossings and Farage is making an attempt explicitly to hyperlink this situation to crime, arguing that asylum seekers are disproportionately more likely to be felony.
The Conservative occasion don’t have a single theme for his or her summer season campaigning. (Yesterday Kemi Badenoch was campaigning concerning the uselessness of the Liz Truss mini-budget, a subject the place the nation largely agrees.) However in response to an in a single day announcement from the federal government about new measures to crack down on small boat crossings, they’ve additionally been depicting these migrants (whose numbers, in fact, elevated dramatically whereas they had been in workplace) as a menace to public security. In an announcement launched in a single day Chris Philp, the shadow house secretary, stated: “This weak Labour authorities has misplaced management of our borders, and we now see rapes and sexual assaults by unlawful immigrants reported on a close to each day foundation.” And, in an interview on the Immediately programme this morning, Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, doubled down on this declare. He stated:
I’m afraid there may be growing proof of a critical hyperlink between unlawful migration, migration usually, and crime, notably sexual crime in opposition to girls and women.
In London, 40% final 12 months of the entire sexual crimes had been dedicated by overseas nationals, although they solely make up 25% of the inhabitants.
And a number of the information that – we’re seeing we don’t have good information in the mean time – a number of the information we’re seeing could be very hanging. Afghans and Eritrean nationals are 20 occasions extra more likely to be convicted of a sexual crime than a British nationwide.
These are very stunning statistics.
Farage lately instructed the New Statesman, for an attention-grabbing, prolonged profile written by Harry Lambert, that he thought Jenrick would “nearly actually” finish as much as the precise of him on migration by the subsequent election. “I think he’ll most likely go additional – that’s simply my intuition for somebody who needs to make noise,” Farage stated.
Angela Eagle, the minister for border safety and asylum, has been giving interviews this morning, and on the Immediately programme she steered that there was not agency information to again up the claims that Jenrick was making. She stated:
[Jenrick] did really say that we don’t have good information in the mean time, and but he’s asserting with nice certainty information factors, and I don’t know the place he’s acquired them from. So it’s troublesome for me to criticise from a knowledge perspective. However he’s admitted in that interview that we don’t have good information.
Requested if she thought that the Tories had been “enjoying with fireplace” by linking asylum seekers with sexual crime, Eagle replied:
I believe that we have to take care of all crimes, all sexual crimes, no matter who has perpetrated them in the identical means. And we have to crack down on violence in opposition to girls and women, which is why we’ve really acquired Jess Phillips, a minister, whose whole job is about doing that.
Requested if she was open to discussing attainable hyperlinks between immigration and crime, Eagle replied:
I don’t thoughts having debates about something, however I believe we haven’t acquired good information on this, and I believe that we’ve acquired to take a look at the precept. And that’s that we’ve acquired to take care of all sexual criminality, whoever perpetrates it, in an nearly color blind means.
If a lady has been abused by anyone or has been subjected to a vile sexual crime, it doesn’t actually matter what the color of the pores and skin of the perpetrator is.
As Eagle stated, it’s arduous to evaluate the reality concerning the hyperlink between immigration and crime as a result of the info is sophisticated, and in some respects restricted. However one one who has tried is the researcher and scientist Emma Monk. On her Substack weblog she lately printed an evaluation of the declare that some folks arriving within the UK on small boats are 20 occasions extra seemingly than Britons to be felony. This can be a declare that Jenrick referenced, describing it as “stunning”. Monk argues that it’s shockingly inaccurate. Her complete submit is value studying, however right here is her conclusion.
As you possibly can see, the declare that migrants arriving on small boats are 24x extra more likely to find yourself in jail was a straightforward manipulation of accessible statistics. It wasn’t fully fabricated – they will level to ‘official statistics’ to say credibility – however it’s clearly misinformation all the identical.
A Tory MP briefed it to a right-wing newspaper, which printed it unquestioningly. That was picked up by the remainder of the right-wing media ecosystem, and now the 24x determine is firmly within the minds of those that wish to imagine it, and is being repeated all around the web, and throughout dinner tables and backyard fences.
There are solely two gadgets within the diary for at this time.
11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK chief, holds a press convention.
11.30am: Downing Avenue holds a foyer briefing.
(For readers who maintain asking why we function the Reform UK press conferences, however not the Lib Dem ones, or the Inexperienced occasion ones, the reply is straightforward; they don’t seem to be holding any.)
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Up to date at 05.04 EDT
