SIR Jacob Rees-Mogg has said that housing migrants on Ascension Island had been dismissed previously by ministers as it would cost £1 million per person sent there.
The GB News presenter and former Business Secretary said: “I was involved in some of the discussions looking at this whilst I was a member of the government and unfortunately it would cost at least a million pounds per person you sent there to do it…
“You’ve got to send out Portakabin residences for your builders, then you’ve got builders who have to live there whilst they’re doing the building, then you have to build the premises for the migrants to live in, then you’ve got to persuade people that they want to go and live on Ascension Island for long periods to run the centre.
“And the costs just went up and up and up and up. And that’s why when I was involved in the discussions, it was just thought to be impossibly expensive to do.”
Asked about Labour’s policies in a discussion with Patrick Christys on GB News, he continued: “Well, imitation is the greatest form of flattery and the Labour Party has worked out what Tony Blair worked out.
“That is to say that the Labour Party is only electable if it carries out soft Tory policies, that is to say policies that the Tory party would want to carry out, but less effectively.
“And if you do it as a sort of Mini-Me version of the Tories, you may be able to win elections because there’s no majority in the United Kingdom for red in tooth and claw socialism, and Keir Starmer has quite intelligently worked this out.
“And as you rightly say, he is now sympathetic to oil and gas, doesn’t like Just Stop Oil, and suddenly barges are the latest rage.”
He added: “The reason it hasn’t been working with illegal migration is because of what Labour left behind in terms of the European Convention on Human Rights being brought into UK law, the power that’s given to judges to block what Parliament passes, which is a really strange way of running your democracy.
“If we had the powers that we had prior to 1997, we’d have got on with it ages ago. So this is still the legacy of the constitutional changes made by the Labour Party.
“That’s why you can’t rely on them in government to do things properly.”
