Former head of UK counter-terror policing calls Suella Braverman’s comments on migrants ‘inexplicable’

Assistant commissioner Neil Basu compares ‘horrific’ language to Enoch Powell

The former head of UK counter-terror policing has called Suella Braverman’s language on migrants “inexplicable” and compared it to Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech.

Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Neil Basu, who is the country’s most senior non-white police officer, said the racist and anti-immigration address in 1968 had made his parents’ lives “hell” as a mixed-race couple.

In an interview with Channel 4 News before his departure from Scotland Yard, he was asked about Ms Braverman’s statement that sending asylum seekers to Rwanda was her “dream”.