‘Let me finish!’ Michelle Dewberry steps in as blistering row breaks out over Suella Braverman’s asylum comments

‘Let me finish!’ Michelle Dewberry steps in as blistering row breaks out over Suella Braverman’s asylum comments

Jo Phillips clashes with Kelvin MacKenzie

GB NEWS
Ben Chapman

By Ben Chapman


Published: 26/09/2023

- 22:09

Suella Braverman says being gay is not enough to claim asylum

Michelle Dewberry was forced to step in as a fiery row broke out over Suella Braverman’s attack on the refugee convention.

On Dewbs & Co, Former Sun Editor Kelvin MacKenzie and political commentator Jo Phillips were embroiled in a feisty debate on the matter.


It comes after the Home Secretary claimed being gay or a woman should not be enough to claim asylum.

She added that multiculturalism has “failed” in Europe and threatens social cohesion in the nation state.

Jo Phillips and Kelvin MacKenzie

Jo Phillips and Kelvin MacKenzie were embroiled in a tense debate

GB NEWS

Speaking on GB News, Jo Phillips touched upon women in Afghanistan, questioning how Kelvin MacKenzie feels about them.

He responded: “I feel sorry for them. But the country people chose to throw their hand in.

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“As the Taliban came over the hill, they said ‘come on down, you’re going to run our country now’.

“That is not our responsibility, are you suggesting that the whole of Afghanistan come here?”

Phillips responded: “No, I asked you a very simple question.

“Women in Afghanistan are being persecuted.”

The Dewbs & Co panel

The Dewbs & Co panel had a raucous debate on Braverman's comments

GB NEWS

MacKenzie interjected, “so what are you saying, we should take them all on?”

Phillips snapped back by suggesting that MacKenzie was failing to “let her finish”.

Michelle Dewberry was forced to step in and ask Phillips to clarify her comments.

“I would argue that women in Afghanistan are being persecuted”, she said.

Suella BravermanSuella Braverman is in the US to deliver her speech on migrationPA

“I would say gay people in many African countries are being persecuted, at what point does persecution meet Suella Braverman’s criteria for being able to enter the country?”

Setting out the “civic argument” against illegal migration, Braverman said: “Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades.

“Multiculturalism makes no demands of the incomer to integrate. It has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it. They could be in the society but not of the society.

“And, in extreme cases, they could pursue lives aimed at undermining the stability and threatening the security of society.”

She said “the consequence of that failure” are evident “on the streets of cities all over Europe,” pointing to clashes in Leicester as an example.

Migration to the UK and Europe in the last 25 years “has been too much, too quick, with too little thought given to integration and the impact on social cohesion”, she said.

“If cultural change is too rapid and too big, then what was already there is diluted. Eventually it will disappear.”

It “does not make one anti-immigrant” to say that the nation state must be protected, Braverman added.

The senior Cabinet minister, a child of migrants from Mauritius and Kenya working under a Hindu Prime Minister, said: “It is no betrayal of my parents’ story to say that immigration must be controlled.”

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