Greenwich Council leader Anthony Okereke has branded Suella Braverman’s comments about migration at the Conservative Party conference “vile and dehumanising”.
The home secretary told her fellow Tories in Manchester that a “hurricane” of migration was coming to the UK in a speech where she declared that politicians had been “too squeamish” to reduce the numbers of people coming to Britain.
Braverman’s language was criticised by some Conservative MPs but her speech was warmly received in the conference hall.
“The wind of change that carried my own parents across the globe in the 20th century was a mere gust compared to the hurricane that is coming,” she said.
“Because today, the option of moving from a poorer country to a richer one is not just a dream for billions of people, it is an entirely realistic prospect.”
Okereke, who is hoping to have Labour-run Greenwich declared a borough of sanctuary, said Braverman’s comments showed “how out of touch and out of ideas” the Conservative government was.
“Her reference to a ‘hurricane of migrants’ is vile and dehumanising,” he said. “Hurricanes cause damage. Hurricanes cause pain. Hurricanes devastate the areas they pass through. Yet our country and our economy is built upon migrants that moved to our country after the Second World War and they still play a vital role in our communities today.
“We know there is a migrant crisis and one that is set to get worse with climate change predicted to force people to move from where they live. That’s why we need a home secretary who works with our international partners to come up with a plan to deal with this situation. Instead we have one who appears to prefer scoring cheap and nasty headlines to cover up their own failings in this area.”
Labour and Conservative councillors in Greenwich supported the move to become a borough of sanctuary when it was proposed under Okereke’s predecessor, Danny Thorpe, in 2021.
Greenwich hopes to join a number of boroughs and cities which openly welcome those fleeing violence and persecution and have changed the way they work to learn from those seeking asylum and to “embed concepts of welcome, safety and inclusion” in the way the council works.
Earlier this year Okereke spoke out after Braverman’s Home Office forcibly moved 100 asylum seekers from a hotel in Greenwich to Bedfordshire at just a few hours’ notice without telling the council, even though many had been studying and had built up community links in southeast London.
Neither the leader of Greenwich’s Conservative opposition, Matt Hartley, nor the party’s general election candidate for Eltham & Chislehurst, the former councillor Charlie Davis, responded to a request for comment on Braverman’s speech.
During another part of Boff’s speech, one of the capital’s most senior Conservative politicians, the London Assembly chair Andrew Boff, was thrown out of the conference hall after objecting to a reference to transgender issues.
Boff could be heard saying “there’s no such thing as gender ideology” before Greater Manchester police and security guards moved in to eject him. He said on Wednesday that he “very much hopes that Suella Braverman learns about the power of her words and moderates her tone”.
Neither Hartley nor Davis responded to a request for comment on Boff’s treatment.