PLATELL’S PEOPLE: Boris Johnson has betrayed us all on borders 

Can it be only five years since Boris Johnson and Priti Patel toured the nation before the EU referendum, promising Brexit would mean we’d take back control of our borders and stop uncontrolled, unsustainable illegal immigration into this country?

‘The only way to take back control of immigration is to Vote Leave on 23 June,’ declared Boris — and millions of Brits took him at his word.

Fast forward to today and there’s no control. More than 900 immigrants have crossed the Channel illegally in the past fortnight alone. 

At least 4,000 migrants have crossed by small boat so far this year, according to Home Office statistics — double the number in the same five-month period last year.

With the warmer weather and UK borders which are unfit for purpose, the number is only going to rise. And what have Boris and Priti done to stop the flow? Absolutely nothing.

As the Mail reveals today, migrants have even been secretly plucked from French waters by UK Border Force vessels and ferried to Britain.

It is the most abject betrayal of their Brexit promises.

To add insult to incompetence, a High Court judge ruled this week that a former Army barracks was ‘unfit’ for asylum-seekers fleeing persecution in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Palestine and Kuwait.

Six migrants housed at Napier Barracks in Kent claimed they were unsafe, and the judge agreed that the accommodation had damaged their mental health. 

Not only did the migrants win their case but they were entitled to compensation, too.

Call me a cynic, but surely someone fleeing persecution and in fear of their lives would find housing in an Army Barracks in Kent a refuge.

Britain has a proud record of welcoming refugees, but that generosity is being abused. 

One migrant boasted on TikTok of how easily he had travelled in a dinghy powered by a Yamaha motor from Calais to Dover.

The broken system only encourages more migrants to chance their arm — and their lives — to get to Britain.

Boris and Priti’s promises lie in tatters. They should hang their heads in shame.

BILL GIVES ME THE NEEDLE! 

Worth £89 billion, Bill Gates says he is donating millions to poorer countries for Covid jabs and demands richer nations search deep into their consciences and fund the billions needed to vaccinate the world.

Bad timing for magnanimous Bill. He issued his plea just as a Microsoft subsidiary based in Ireland was revealed to have made a £222 billion profit last year, while paying no corporation tax.

I suppose that if none of us paid our taxes, we could all become self-righteous, pre- aching philanthropists. 

KATE’S YUMMY… WITH A TUMMY

Having squeezed into my fat pants for the first time since lockdown, I was overjoyed to hear Kate Winslet demanded that her mid-life tummy be shown in all its glory for a sex scene in her TV hit Mare Of Easttown.

Good for her. It reminded me of Julia Roberts who said, at a similar age to Kate, in the film Eat, Pray Love: ‘Men don’t care. Because he’s in a room with a naked girl, he’s won the lottery.’ 

The Queen has invited Harry and Meghan to her Platinum Jubilee celebrations next year, suggesting they join the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace for the Trooping the Colour. 

A wise move to keep them at a safe distance from the crowds, given so much of the nation’s animosity towards them. 

How dismaying that Channel 5’s much-heralded Anne Boleyn, the first portrayal of Henry VIII’s second wife played by a black woman, Jodie Turner-Smith, got fewer viewers than its show The Yorkshire Vet.

It’s not the colour of one’s skin that counts but the quality of the script, which was dire.

Even the magnificent Jodie couldn’t rescue this awful show that portrayed the men, especially her husband, as weaklings and her as the heroine.

Was I the only one aching for her head to be cut off in this week’s final episode — just to put us all out of our misery?

A Catholic priest who, during lockdown, converted his garden shed into a mini church and held mass daily and streamed services online, is up to win the prestigious Shed of the Year award. 

To those seeking spiritual sustenance, Father Len Black was a Godsend. 

Sadly, with our ever-dwindling Christian congregations, a shed is probably room enough for worshippers in most parishes.

LO EXPECTATIONS 

Only the hardest of hearts would fail to swell on seeing loved-up Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck back together after 17 years.

Who among us hasn’t sometimes in the dead of night longed for a lost love and dreamed of a magical reunion? 

How romantic — they could even recycle the $1.2million engagement ring Ben gave her the first time around, which she never returned.

Yet while we all want a happy ever after, with their collective past of four marriages behind them, I give it two years, tops.

WESTMINSTER WARS

• A former Tory treasurer who stood down amid allegations of ‘cash for access’ is now Lord Cruddas. The ex- banker, worth £860 million, gifted his party £500,000 after he was given his life peerage by Boris — despite the Lords Appointments Commission opposing it. He may now be a Lord but no amount of ermine can, in my view, disguise the stink.
• Just days into her new role as Mrs Johnson, flunkies are seen arriving at No. 10 with armfuls of frocks for the First Lady to peruse before her appearance on the international stage at the G7 summit next week. Let’s hope her mutt, leg-cocking Dilyn, is not in the vicinity when she’s trying them on.
• Bad news for the Tory rebels — whose ranks Theresa May has joined — determined to stop cuts to our foreign aid budget, which at £10 billion a year still makes us one of the world’s largest givers. An unelected PM who was defeated over Brexit, lost her majority in a general election and was ousted by Boris? That poor woman hasn’t won a political battle in her life.

A MILLION THANKS

This newspaper has a long tradition of campaigning for great causes and there’s no better evidence than the £1 million you readers raised to create the memorial on the beaches of Normandy to commemorate our fallen, 77 years later.

Sometimes giving feels impersonal, yet it means so much to so many, like my dear friend Anthea.

She was just nine when her mother got the telegram to say her father, Lieutenant Theo Ionides, had died in the Battle of Normandy — the battle ‘which changed our lives’. 

Her father had just been old enough to fight in World War I and just young enough to serve in Naval Intelligence during World War II.

As she told me, it means the world to her that her father is honoured in such a way.

And she asked me to pass on her thanks and gratitude to all of you who made it happen.

As the Indian variant threatens our June 21 release from purgatory, a British acquaintance originally from Mumbai tells me of his joy that a pal’s daughter’s wedding will go ahead legally with 150 guests in a private garden. How so, I asked.

They’ve sent strict invitations allocating 30 guests a two-hour slot, after which they have to leave, and then 30 more arrive every two hours until it adds up to 150.