AIRPORT chaos, a failure to tackle terrorism and the Queen’s support for Black Lives Matter were the topics raised by columnists and contributors in the newspapers.
The Daily Mail
Janet Street-Porter said Priti Patel was back in the headlines ‘protecting’ UK borders.
“[She is] unveiling a knee-jerk policy that’s doomed to failure by ordering Border Force officials to turn around boats laden with immigrants in the Channel (hoping they float back to France),” she said. “Will officials use extending cattle prods to turn around leaking inflatable mattresses and dinghies laden with babies and pregnant women so they point towards Calais and shout ‘on your way?’
She said the Mayor of Calais said it was impossible to stop the boats with 300 to 400 kilometres of coastline to patrol day and night.
“Instead of bobbing about with binoculars off Dungeness, Border Force officials ought to be turning their attention to the scandalous scenes on the frontline at Heathrow and other airports,” she added. “It’s time to call in the people who run Morrisons or Sainsbury to get a grip on staffing levels and instill a can-do mindset at Border Control. It’s can’t be harder than predicting sales of ice cream and barbecue meats in hot weather.”
The Guardian
Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff from 1995 to 2007, said the fall of Kabul 20 years after 9/11 represented ‘not just the failure of the western strategy in Afghanistan but a wider failure of our overall strategy in tackling the terrorism that gave rise to the attacks in New York and Washington.’
“The principal failure in Afghanistan was, rather, to fail to learn, from our previous struggles with terrorism, that you only get to a lasting peace when you have an inclusive negotiation – not when you try to impose a settlement by force,” he said. “Are we going to continue to refuse to talk to Hamas, and to the other Islamist groups? The lesson from Afghanistan is as clear as it was from Northern Ireland. If we ever want to secure lasting peace then we have to engage with our enemies, not just with those we like.”
The Independent
Victoria Richards said when you look at the Queen and her role as head of the Commonwealth, ‘it really shouldn’t be surprising that she’s supportive of Black Lives Matter’.
“As head of state of 16 countries that are a part of the Commonwealth, including the UK (as well as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and several island nations in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean), it is her duty to embrace diversity. It’s in her bones,” she said.
“Diversity is something the UK does gloriously well: one recent report revealed that almost half of all births in England’s biggest cities are children born to mothers born outside of the UK, which means we’re surrounded by a rich tapestry of different cultures, influences and ideas. It shouldn’t be a shock that the Queen celebrates precisely what has made the country what it is today.”
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