05/10/2026
“I watched the Gosport footage last night and the order of the thing is the part that sticks.
149 people off a mega-dinghy from Normandy were brought into Portsmouth Harbour at Fort Blockhouse just after 10pm on Sunday, on 2 RNLI boats, after a French vessel had shadowed them to the edge of English water. Coaches were waiting. About 2 and a half hours later a convoy of coaches and police cars set off for Kent, where the Home Office says they will be processed in a short-term holding facility.
Hampshire Police had already closed Haslar Bridge, put a dispersal order over the whole of Gosport, banned face coverings, and told anyone who wanted to gather to use Walpole Park car park. The order does not name 80,000 residents. It covers the town, and anyone who will not move when told can be arrested. 6 people were.
Fort Blockhouse sits on the doorstep of Portsmouth, the Navy’s harbour. The British state put the cordon on the people who live there and the es**rt on the people who had just crossed illegally. Shabana Mahmood has the Home Office. Andy Burnham has the government. Neither has explained why a landing gets the convoy and a street gets the dispersal. A border that locks the town to process the boat is not a rescue. It is a queue with blue lights on it.”