Sir Keir Starmer has been branded a “delinquent” after moving the first group of migrants into Crowborough’s ex-army base in the dead of night, despite mass public protest.

Speaking to GB News, Major Mike Shearer launched a scathing attack on the Prime Minister for “not acting in the interest of the country” and housing “criminals” over “soldiers”.

The first 27 migrants have been moved into the ex-army base, which will be scaled up to more than 500 single adult men.

The coach, with a police escort, was driven onto the Crowborough Camp just before 3.30am on Thursday.

The Home Office has insisted that they will only be housed there for up to three months while their asylum claim is processed, before being removed from the country if their claim is rejected.

Delivering his blunt assessment of the move, Mr Shearer told GB News: “I know Crowborough well, and it is very close to the town centre. Detention is the only way to do to deter illegal criminals, immigrants.

“Military bases should be full of soldiers, not criminals, and if the Home Secretary wants a solution, I suggest a British overseas territory like South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, it’s about 8000 miles away. We can put them there and process them there.”

He argued: “South Georgia is 113 miles long, 22 miles wide, plenty of space. And we can get our idle civil servants who all wish to work from home. Get them over there to process them.

“Our delinquent Prime Minister does not act in the interest of this country. We’ve got the Chagos fiasco, the Chinese super spy embassy, and he’s paving the way for illegal immigrants.

“Keir Starmer will have imported more illegal criminals into this country than the size of the British Army by Easter. And to him, boats mean votes, and he’s allowing Islamist ideology to thrive.”

Offering his take on the use of military bases to house illegal migrants, founder of the Oxford Initiative for British Islam Taj Hargey told GB News: “Currently, we’re spending over £6million accommodating these people in hotels, this is just scandalous.

“And the point is, these migrants send WhatsApp pictures to everyone out there to say, listen, come over, you’re going to be housed in hotels now. Military barracks are not the best solution, but it’s better than nothing.”

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Expressing his outrage at the cost of migrant hotels, Mr Hargey argued: “Why should the British taxpayer paying over £6million on a daily basis? These military barracks are usually not in the centre of the town, and we should be making sure that the accommodation is basic and hostile, not hotel like, and we should also be monitoring their movements.

“Why give them a free rein to go to wander around in the local community? We should be creating almost a detention-like camp for them to be there for the three months the Government says it will take them to process them.

“I don’t want to spend any more pounds on these migrants in hotels, because this is not the right message that we are sending to these people.”

Challenging Mr Shearer on whether he agrees that using military bases is better than using hotels, he hit back: “I’ve just given you a better idea, and it’s too easily done. Honestly. You’ve seen these big gyms that they can knock up now very swiftly, it’s easily done.

“I will give way for three months, but look, why aren’t we using proper deterrents like the one I’ve just suggested? It’s too easily done.”

Agreeing with Mr Shearer, Mr Hargey added: “I agree, at the very beginning, we shouldn’t have processed them on mainland Britain.

“They should have gone to South Georgia or the Hebrides or wherever, we have thousands of islands. So that was the wrong thing, to process them on British mainland”

He continued: “But now we’re stuck with this issue that we spend many million of pounds a day on hotels. That’s the issue. And forget about the money side, that’s really bad as it is, but the imagery that these migrants send on WhatsApp photos to all of their friends all over the world, say ‘come to Britain, you can be accommodated in a four star Holiday Inn, that’s the wrong image to send out there.”

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said of the move: “Crowborough is just the start. I will bring forward site after site until every asylum hotel is closed and returned to local communities. I will not rest until order and control to our borders is restored.”