A former Reform UK MP has admitted mistaking a charity rowing crew for ‘illegal migrants’ but stopped short of an apology.

Rupert Lowe, an Independent in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, posted on X last night a photograph of a boat off the coast of his coastal constituency.

He wrote: ‘Dinghies coming into Great Yarmouth, RIGHT NOW. Authorities alerted, and I am urgently chasing.

‘If these are illegal migrants, I will be using every tool at my disposal to ensure these individuals are deported.’

Except the authorities had nothing to chase – it wasn’t ‘illegal migrants’, as Lower suspected, but rowers raising money for a motor neurone disease charity.

ROW4MND – consisting of Matthew Parker, Mike Bates, Aaron Kneebone and Liz Wardley – are rowing from Land’s End to John O’Groats. The Coastguard

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