Nigel Farage warns against Swiss-style deal

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Bedford Council has hit back at Nigel Farage on Twitter after the former politician blasted them for flying the Albanian flag on Bedfordshire Day. November 28 is officially Bedfordshire Day, but it is also Independence Day in Albania.

The county in eastern England is one of the most diverse in the UK, with 23 percent of its residents being from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Mr Farage tweeted on Monday: “No England flag for St George’s Day posted by Bedford Borough Council Facebook in April.

“But they did manage to get the flags out for Pakistan in August and for Albania today.

“What is wrong with these people? Sort it out @BedfordTweets.”

However, the Council hit back on the social media site, replying: “Thanks Nigel for flagging how diverse our Borough is, something we are very proud of.

“By the way, we did have the St George cross flying on St George’s Day in April.”

A picture posted on April 23 showed the St George’s Cross flying at Borough Hall and the Old Town Hall in Bedford.

This comes as a plan put to Rishi Sunak to return Albanian asylum seekers to their homeland has been slammed by refugee charities as “unworkable”, according to The Guardian.

While former cabinet minister David Davis claimed it would “reduce asylum backlogs and provide a deterrent to migrants”, other groups have raised the issue that it may breach the UN refugee convention and put vulnerable people at risk.

The letter to the PM states: “If they have really been taken against their will, then they could not reasonably object to being returned to their own homes.

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“The quirks in our modern slavery laws that prevent this are clearly in defiance of the aims of that law and should be removed.”

Mr Davis added that the Home Office had “not been interpreting the asylum laws correctly”, however, Amnesty UK’s refugee and migrant rights programme director Steve Valdez-Symonds said the politician was wrong on several fronts.

He said: “There does seem to be quite a lot of nonsense here. The starting point is whether your government is unwilling or unable to provide protection from persecution. It doesn’t set out who your persecutors have to be.

“It could be organised crime, or a blood feud. It can also be women who are persecuted by their own families.

“The question is whether the state is both able and willing to provide the protections that it is expected under international law to provide.”

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