Richard Tice takes aim at 'ridiculous' Andy Burnham after blaming Brexit on small boat crossings: 'Hard socialists!'

Richard Tice has launched a scathing attack on Andy Burnham over his "ridiculous" decision to blame Brexit for the small boats crisis.

Speaking to GB News, the Deputy Leader of Reform UK took aim at the Prime Minister's remarks and Labour's "hard socialist" Government.

Grilled on why Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood continues to be embattled with the ongoing crisis, Mr Burnham attempted to excuse his team's record.

The PM told told BBC South East: "I do point to the loss of collaboration with neighbours that came with Brexit. That hasn’t helped.

"We had a more cooperative system, if you like, in the past, so we are not able to have the same levels of collaboration that we used to have, but I don’t put that forward as a reason why we won’t keep working until we get the crossings right down."

Reacting to the remarks following two undetected small boat arrivals just this week, Mr Tice told GB News that the state of the illegal migration crisis is due to the "soft touch" Home Office.

He said: "Oh dear oh dear. Honestly, I think he's forgotten that what the Remoaners bang on about, the Dublin Agreement, when the Dublin agreement was in place in the last five years of it, more people were actually sent back to the UK than we sent back to the EU.

"It's just ridiculous. The small boats crisis is because we've got a soft touch Home Office.

"Under the Conservatives, we've just learned in the newspapers this morning the horrifying story that the Tories thought it was a good idea to give asylum to a senior Hamas operative and then give him British citizenship.You couldn't make this up."

Mr Tice declared: "And I say very simply to voters, never forgive and never forget what the Tories did to us, granting British citizenship to Hamas operators, as well as granting an indefinite leave to remain to millions of people.

"Many of whom haven't come here to work, they've come here to claim benefits. That's why we won't pay any benefits to overseas nationals."

Turning to the latest polling, host Camilla Tominey grilled the deputy Reform leader on his party "tanking" in the polls.

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Hitting back at Camilla, Mr Tice argued: "Polls go up and polls go down. Look at the weekly polls actually at the ballot box of council by-elections, and we've been the most successful since May 2026 through this interesting summer that we've enjoyed, this lovely, warm summer.

"We won the most council seats, and interestingly, when you look at the percentages at those council by-elections, we're way ahead of both the Conservatives and the Labour Party. So we're focused on the ballot box."

Mr Tice told GB News that Reform is working an preparing for the 2027 council elections.

He said: "But look, competition is a good thing and we will have lots to do over the coming weeks and months as we embark on a tour preparing for the council elections next May 2027, which are the big ones.

"And we intend to be the big winners with our policies, actually, to get the economy growing again and to stop wasting money which is being wasted on welfare. We're the only party with a proper plan to cut welfare spending by tens of billions every single year."

Challenging Mr Tice a second time, Camilla argued that "the national picture is just getting worse for Reform".

Mr Tice hit back: "We won the May elections by a country mile, and we're doing a great job with that. Polls go up and down, and we've had an interesting summer. We've had good days and bad days, that's the nature of life, and we're not afraid of that.

"We're not afraid of competition. We view it as a great challenge to take on this dreadful, failing hard socialist Government. We've got a Prime Minister that's got splinters in his backside from sitting on the fence on every key issue, whether it's on Chagos, whether it's on defence spending, whether it's on welfare, you name it.

"The Prime Minister and this Government just seems to want to do nothing except sort of talk the talk. We need action. We've got undetected dinghies now arriving on British shores, and the British people are furious. We're the only people who will pick up, rescue and return to France."