Lee Anderson's day trip to France

“No-nonsense Lee Anderson shows his tender side in France’s largest camp… only for one refugee to try and get a lift to London on his bus,” ran the headline in the Daily Mail this week as hack Neil Sears was invited to join the Reform chairman on a trip to Grande-Synthe, near Dunkirk.

Anderson had headed over the Channel on a fact-finding mission (or to get content for his social media channels) and party “sources” had briefed Sears that he “would spark action when confronting charity workers who feed and advise thousands of migrants heading for Britain”. “He’ll be going up to female volunteers in their 20s and say: ‘Don’t you know what these migrants do to young women like you in England?’” the Mail man was told.

In the event, though, Anderson was described by a clearly adoring Sears as being “briskly tender as he handed a packet of Smints to a ten-year-old boy”, an incredible gesture which apparently led to “gulps from onlookers”. And, what’s more, “Mr Anderson engaged with anyone who spoke English”.

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“Mr Anderson also found it hard to remonstrate with Amir, 32, who said he had fled violent Iraqi militias, left his wife and children in Istanbul, and was now preparing to cross to England,” Sears went on.

But “Smints and empathy aside, Mr Anderson was unbending in his belief that the dinghies must be stopped – and blasted the charities supporting the ‘multi-billion pound trade’ centred on migrants.”

Meanwhile, Anderson found time from his mint-sharing to speak to his paymasters at GB News, moaning about what he had found on his brief trip over the Channel.

Recalling his interaction with the French authorities upon his arrival, the Reform chairman declared: “At about 4am this morning, with our hi-vis jackets on and a few cameras, within minutes, the French police, armed to the teeth, turned up with a tear gas on and asked what we’re doing,” he complained.

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“We’re outside of a migrant camp between Calais and Dunkirk. We’ve been up early doors this morning, on the beach at about 4am looking for possible boat crossings. We didn’t see any, but we saw signs that they’d been crossing there before.

“We saw a dinghy that had been cut up and left on the beach, so we’ve made our way to one of the migrant camps to see what’s going off here.”

So the police were present in numbers and proactive, no boats were crossing the channel and there was evidence of a dinghy having been destroyed, leaving it unusable by any gangmasters. Sounds rather like everything is working rather well, doesn’t it?