BORDERS-BASED MSP Michelle Ballantyne has criticised footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign to give free meals to disadvantaged children.

During an interview with The Herald, Ms Ballantyne – who recently defected from the Scottish Conservatives to join Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party – gave her view on Rashford’s food campaign.

The South of Scotland MSP – and former Selkirkshire councillor – questioned the England international’s motives and said that “none of it really adds up” when referring to Rashford’s own experience with food poverty.

“You could argue that Rashford’s campaign on school meals had a huge impact but you also have to ask when he is telling the terrible story of his life and Labour are bashing the Conservatives about this being terrible … Rashford grew up under Labour, they were in government,” said Ms Ballantyne, according to The Herald.

“And he was an apprentice at a football club, who will have seen that he got to eat correctly. None of it really adds up or makes a lot of sense.”

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She added: “The problem is there is a lot of ‘policy sell’ but it doesn’t work in terms of changing people’s lives.

“They talk about free school meals and the stigma of that. The stigma bites in secondary school, that’s not what they are solving.

“In the past there have been attempts to provide school meals in the holidays and virtually no children turned up to take them.

“People run these sort of campaigns to influence politics, and they often work.”

Rashford, 23, has been widely praised for his influential work in forcing a U-turn from the UK Government over providing food vouchers for some of Britain’s poorest families.

 

The Manchester United forward also publicly criticised the £30 food parcels recently sent out to families with children who would have received free school meals.

However, in questioning the footballer’s motives, Ms Ballantyne alleged that he could have “paid for the school meals himself”.

“People like politics, politics is a strange world and people find it exciting, they like campaigning, they like the publicity, and they feel they are doing something useful,” said Ms Ballantyne, who set up a manufacturing business in Walkerburn in the 1990s.

“I don’t know what Rashford earns but I suspect he could have probably paid for the school meals himself.”

Mr Farage announced on Twitter last week that Ms Ballantyne would be the leader of Reform UK Scotland.

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Having been introduced to the former UKIP leader, Ms Ballantyne described Farage as “lovely”, adding that he is “vilified wrongly”.

“I was introduced to Nigel Farage. He was lovely,” she said. “Not the least bit as he is portrayed.

“He is a very thoughtful, very considered man. He knows his stuff, he really does understand it and thinks deeply about it.

“He is very centrist; I would even say he is very conservative. We found that we agreed on most things, he is not an extremist at all. He recognises that sometimes to get heard you have to say things in the way he says them, but he is vilified wrongly.”