MANCHESTER, England — Priti Patel said she “absolutely ” accepts that Conservatives will be attacked over a so-called “Boriswave” of migration as her party seeks to fend off the rising political threat from Reform UK — and also says the Tories must do something about it.
Speaking at the POLITICO Pub at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, the shadow foreign secretary — who served as home secretary under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson — suggested that immigration has become an issue across Europe since the pandemic.
The “Boriswave” is a term coined by the online right, and pushed by Reform UK, to describe the increase in migration under Johnson’s Conservative government following the pandemic.
Asked whether she accepted the term “Boriswave” as a direct attack, Patel said: “It is, and I acknowledge that and absolutely accept that. So we have to move forward and do something about that, which is exactly the space our party is in right now.”
The Conservatives have announced plans to create a new force to detain and deport people modeled on the U.S. immigration enforcement team ICE, as part of plans to remove 750,000 people over the next five years.
However, speaking to POLITICO, Patel appeared to row back on the comparison pushed by her party when confronted with examples of reported ICE overreach.
“The two are different. America’s model is very different,” adding that the British version would be “different because our laws are different.”
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