Katie Hopkins triumphantly said 'it's nice not to wear a mask again' after landing at London Heathrow Airport this morning following her deportation from Australia after she mocked the country's strict hotel quarantine rules and called Covid lockdowns the 'greatest hoax in human history'.
The former Apprentice star, who had flown in to Australia last week to appear on Celebrity Big Brother, flew with Singapore Airlines flight from Sydney after her visa was torn up and she was fined £536 for allegedly answering the door of her hotel room naked and without a facemask.
Accompanied by security as she left the west London airport, the 46-year-old told photographers 'it's nice not to wear a mask again' before getting into a black Mercedes and being driven away.
During her 14-day self-isolation in Australia, Hopkins shared a video on social media in which she 'joked' about deliberately breaking Covid rules by opening her door naked and mask-free to the workers who deliver her food.
Ahead of her flight back to London, she told her supporters on Instagram: 'See you in the morning, my lovelies. You may 'deport' the Hopkins, but you cannot silence the truth. We will fight to TAKE BACK our freedoms.'
Australia has enforced strict border closures since the start of the pandemic, with tickets into the country rationed and all arrivals forced to undergo mandatory 14-day quarantine in their city of arrival along with repeat testing before being allowed in.
Sydney and Victoria state are also in lockdown with 25 million Australians under stay-at-home orders in response to outbreaks of the highly-infectious Delta strain.
Victoria extend its lockdown beyond the initial Tuesday end date and NSW will be shut down until at least July 30. It is not clear when exactly Victoria will be allowed to resume normal life, with a further announcement due tomorrow.
Katie Hopkins has been pictured landing at London Heathrow Airport this morning following her deportation from Australia after she mocked the country's hotel quarantine rules and calling Covid lockdowns the 'greatest hoax in human history'
The former Apprentice star, 46, boarded a Singapore Airlines flight from Sydney and told supporters on Instagram: 'See you in the morning, my lovelies. You may 'deport' the Hopkins, but you cannot silence the truth. We will fight to TAKE BACK our freedoms'
Hopkins had flown in to Australia last week and was placed into 14-day isolation ahead of an appearance on Celebrity Big Brother
Amid a backlash, her 'critical skills' visa torn up by the Australian federal government and she was handed a £536 fine for answering the door of her room in quarantine naked and without a facemask
Bitter: Far-right provocateur Katie Hopkins has tried to claim her humiliating deportation from Australia as a victory, telling her supporters on Instagram she will never be 'silenced' after being sent back to the UK for joking about breaching hotel quarantine in Sydney
'The police officer who checked me in told me when they knock on my door I have to wait 30 seconds until I can open the door,' she said while breaking out into hysterics.
Hopkins said she was 'lying in wait' to 'spring [the door] open and frighten the s*** out of them and do it naked with no face mask.'
After the comments sparked huge backlash, Channel Seven dropped Hopkins from the show and her visa was cancelled.
Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said on Monday morning: 'I hadn't heard of her before and I don't want to hear about her ever again.
'I thought it was just shameful, the fact that she was out there boasting about breaching quarantine was just appalling,' she told the ABC.
'It was a slap in the face for all those Australians who are currently in lockdown and it's just unacceptable behaviour.'
Some 12 million Australians in Victoria and Greater Sydney are in lockdown over an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant which began on June 16.
Under one of the toughest Covid border policies in the world, Australia has banned tourists and is only allowing 3,035 people a week to enter the country via 14-day hotel quarantine, leaving 40,000 Aussies stranded overseas.
But foreigners with critical skills visas are not always included in the cap because they are deemed to bring 'economic benefit' to the country.
'There are very well established processes and procedures for people to enter this country and many decisions are made on the basis of economic benefit,' Ms Andrews said.
Critical skills visas are for sectors 'critical to Australia's economic recovery' including financial technology, large scale manufacturing, film, media and television production and emerging technology.
The minister said her department approved Hopkins' visa at the request of the New South Wales government.
'It was the State Government that came to us with an application to bring in this individual to effectively increase the economic opportunities in that particular State,' she said.
Facing criticism that celebrities are being prioritised over Australians seeking to return, Ms Andrews said the federal government wants to increase the arrival cap which was halved last month at the request of Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia state governments.
