No wonder public is stone-cold furious at asylum shambles

SELDOM has the gap between political rhetoric and grim reality been as wide as or as undermining of public trust as in the field of immigration and asylum.

- Patrick O'Flynn

Rishi Sunak is merely the latest prime minister to talk a good game about bringing rigour to the system. And yet the utterly reckless, life-endangering shambles over which he presides manifests. itself with ever greater frequency.

That the suspect in the Clapham corrosive substance assault a sadistic, targeted attack on a mother and her two young daughters - should turn out to have been a successful asylum claimant hardly came as a surprise. After all, barely a week goes past without reports of appalling criminal conduct by men who came to our country illegally and somehow got to stay. And, more often than not, it seems women and children are their prime victims.

SO But the case of Abdul Ezedi, a 35-year-old Afghan, is extreme it should ignite lasting public outrage at our political and judicial establishment.

Despite having two previous asylum claims turned down, Ezedi was permitted to stay while mounting a third. This was in spite of him being convicted of a sex crime while in the UK and having illegally smuggled himself into our country in a lorry.