Ealing MP Challenges New Prime Minister

Rupa Huq questions Boris Johnson on his stance on immigration and Heathrow

The Ealing Central & Acton Labour MP, Rupa Huq, challenged the new Prime Minister as he took to the dispatch box for the first time.

Huq reminded Johnson how he’d “courted popularity with pledging an amnesty for illegal immigrants” in his spell as mayor of London and asked what he’d be doing about it now he was in a position to change immigration policy.

In his response Johnson indicated that the policy had been blocked by Mrs May when she was prime minister. “It is absolutely true that I have raised it several times… I must say it didn’t receive an overwhelming endorsement from the previous prime minister when I put it to her when I raised it once in cabinet.”

The new Prime Minister said that the new government should look at the economic advantages and disadvantages of going ahead with a policy that could reverse the situation whereby 500,000 law-abiding people in an anomalous situation whose status could do with regularising.

The exchange hit the headlines and Dr Huq told Ealing Today “I’m also now the toast of Bangladesh – my cousins there alerted me that they’d seen me on telly. She continued “Migrant groups welcomed the news and his fans have paraded it as evidence of his liberal credentials to contradict assertions of him being dangerously rightwing I reckon it’s more a case of it just slipping out 2 hours into a 2.5 hour appearance rather than being a concrete policy announcement,”.

She also probed Johnson on his Heathrow stance. On being elected Uxbridge MP he famously declared that he would “lie down in front of the bulldozers” to prevent further expansion of the airport, which he also appears to be backtracking from in now promising to follow the upcoming legal challenge with interest.

She remarked “Who knows what Boris really thinks, he flips so often. Perhaps the only certainty is up to now he would clearly do anything or say anything to get into power and it’s worked. Whether the Johnson era is measured in weeks, months or years my message to the PM is turn again Boris. The narrow calculation of the Tory leadership contest is over and Oxford japes are long gone, it’s time to govern in all our interests now.''

6 August 2019