‘They are NOT poor souls’: Andrew Pierce locks horns with Kevin Maguire in fierce migrant row

A fierce row took place on Chopper's political podcast this week after Kevin Maguire labelled migrants "poor souls."

Pierce, Chopper and Maguire sat round a table this week and discussed all the latest politics news - and there was a lot to sink their teeth into.

Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called for a General Election in the UK and Conservatives and Labour have been busy campaigning.

Speaking of the controversial decision to call an early election Chopper said: "I think if he'd waited to November, he can say to the party, I did all I could in the time allowed.

Andrew Pierce and Kevin Maguire

"Instead, this defeat will be blamed on him personally. He's torching his personal brands and he's setting fire to the entire Tory house by doing it."

Pierce agreed: "I agree with that. But the reason he did it was because he did think he was flushing out Reform. But also he was terrified about the small boats flooding across.

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"We're seeing records pouring across this week. If this goes on throughout the entire summer, he and he and I think he didn't think he could keep the parliamentary party together for that lot more defections. There could still have been another leadership challenge, which would have been insanity."

Maguire said: "It would have exposed that you put your straps on poor souls on a plane to Rwanda, and the board to keep on coming. It's shown that it was never going to work."

Pierce fumed: "Poor souls? You mean illegal immigrants?"

He responded: "Hang on, migrants and asylum seekers are still poor souls." To which Pierce furiously denied.

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He said: "I know a lot of the economic migrants with their big flashy watches and their designer stuff are not poor souls, a lot of them."

The Conservative Party, which is trailing opposition Labour in polls, has said that if the party returned to power, lawmakers would vote to set immigration levels, an issue that has dominated Britain's political debate for more than a decade and played a role in the Brexit referendum.

The Conservative government's flagship policy to send asylum seekers who arrive in Britain without permission to Rwanda for processing has faced legal and parliamentary obstacles, and now hinges on the party winning the election.

The Labour leader vowed to end the Government's Rwanda scheme and concentrate instead on doing more to tackle the criminal people smugglers.

Starmer also promised to recruit hundreds more case workers to process the high number of asylum claims more quickly.

He said Labour would end the unacceptable situation where more than 38 million a day is spent on housing asylum seekers in hotels as they wait for their claims to be processed.