TWO Tory student societies have been slammed for inviting peers to debate on whether small boats should be sunk in the Channel.
Students at the University College London and King’s College London had been invited to drink port and debate which policy they supported, “sink the boats” or “invade Yemen”, by student Conservatives societies.
The post featured a picture of a small boat packed with asylum seekers making the journey across the Channel.
The invite posted to Instagram has now been changed and student are to now debate on whether they would “send the boats back”.
Labour's shadow minister Jon Ashworth reacted to the post, and said: “While Tory students quaff port and laugh at weak Rishi Sunak’s failure to stop the boats, the British people are looking on in despair.
“Suggestions of sinking boats, after the tragic loss of life in the Channel last weekend, is a disgraceful new low.
“Rishi Sunak and his colleagues should come clean immediately over whether this event is sanctioned by the Conservative Party.”
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The Conservative party asked the student groups to remove its posts and cancel the event in a statement.
A CCHQ spokesman: "This is obviously not acceptable, and we will be asking the student groups to remove this and cancel the event."
Previous debate topics have included whether they would “allow fracking”, “arm Taiwan with nuclear weapons”, that “the UN is redundant” and “Christmas should only be celebrated after December 1”.
London Universities Conservatives (LUC) said the error was due to a "miscommunication" and that "at no point was anybody seriously suggesting sinking the boats"
In a statement, the group said: "LUC is committed to comprehensive, open and robust debate. In this regard, it is a leader within the wider London university environment for freedom of speech and ideas-led discourse. LUC is also independent from the Conservative Party.
"Given the contemporary pre-eminence of small boat crossings, a discussion relating to possible motions on the issue was held. At no point was anybody seriously suggesting sinking the boats as a credible policy option, and we had no intention of debating the motion as was first promoted. Our initial investigation into how this has happened suggests that there was a miscommunication of the proposed motion leading to a member of a society committee posting the incorrect motion.
"This mistake was noted shortly after posting, and the motion duly revised. It is important to note this was actioned before any media interest had arisen. A full investigation is now being conducted to determine the exact course of events, and it would be inappropriate to comment further until this investigation has been concluded."
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