A furious migrant row erupted on BBC Newsnight, as comedian and creator of Black Boys Theatre Club, Munya Chawawa clashed with Reform’s Laila Cunningham Presenter Matt Chorley hosted the latest episode of the show, which quickly turned tense as the conversation turned to illegal migrants coming to the UK. Munya raised his concerns to Laila, as he said: “Whenever I see you on screen it’s a very weaponised politics. It’s about identifying an enemy.”

Laila didn’t take kindly to his comments, as she raged: “If I encounter an Ethiopian, this is now the person we’re talking about. We just spent the whole top of this show talking about Prince Andrew, and yet I’ve never heard you say Abolish the Royals. You can treat it as a case study. So what I’m saying to you is, part of Britain, we are importing rapists and terrorists into this country through our open borders. You cannot deny that. How many rapes is too many for you to say it’s not okay? How many rapes would you accept?”

Munya replied: “This is my question to you, right? We are talking about instances. We know that there are rapists in Britain right already here. You’ve described them as homegrown rapists before. That is very different the homegrown rapist. That’s almost a juxtaposition. It doesn’t make any sense as a term of condemnation, right?”

Laila hit back: “Yes, of course it does. Any rapist is condemned by me. I was a criminal prosecutor, and I’m a mother of daughters, and I’m a woman myself. Of course they are, don’t put words into my mouth, but we have homegrown rapists. That does not excuse us importing more and putting them in towns and villages. I’m sorry I’m not going to back down from that position, and I think you’ll find most of the British public completely disagree with you, and if that certain rapist that I mentioned happened to be Ethiopian, then, yes, I’m not going to shy away from saying that he was Ethiopian, because that’s what happened with the Pakistani rape gangs.

“People didn’t want to say where they were from, and it was happy they were proliferated…” as Munya chimed in: “Yes, but you’re applying it to a wide group.”

The Reform MP quickly shot back: “No I’m applying it to illegal migrants who are allowed into this country, as she added: “How do you know that every man crossing that on that boat is not a rapist or a terrorist. We know that one was a convicted terrorist.”

Matt Chorley was forced to intervene, as he said: “”Just to be clear, you don’t know that.”

Laila admitted: “No, I don’t know, but I’m not going to give them the benefit of the doubt because they have thrown their passports; they’ve entered this country illegally. So I will treat them as criminals,” as Matt quickly moved the conversation on.