Much has been, and will be, written about the Government’s – latest – attempt to stop the small boats.
Labour has several problems. First, there is an open borders element in its ranks. Second, its representatives – many of whom don’t know, or won’t say, what a woman is – can’t, or won’t, accept that those crossing aren’t all refugees.
A significant number were previously identified as economic migrants from Albania.
If only 10% are economic migrants that would have been c. 4.5k in 2022, then probably c. 8k in 2023 and 10k+ in 2024…
10,000 economic migrants paying, say, £5,000 each is £50m.
There’s nothing wrong with working with the French and cracking down on the criminal gangs and we’re told that this:
“prevented 30,000 small boat crossings and made 500 arrests in the past year [2022].”
This probably doesn’t mean that there would have been 75,000 crossings in 2022 but that 30,000 were delayed.
How many of the 500 [people smugglers?] arrested were charged and then convicted? Were they fined or incarcerated? Even if they were all locked up for a long time they’d be replaced.
There’s supposedly “an extra 500 officers and a new detention centre in France, but this will not be fully operational until the end of 2026” – largely paid for by the British taxpayer.
Is the “detention centre” for people smugglers or refugees and economic migrants? If it’s for the latter it’ll need a large capacity and what will the leftie lawyers do? Neither refugees nor economic migrants can be locked up indefinitely, then they’ll head back to the coast.
Even without refugees the boats wouldn’t stop, there would still be tens of millions to be made from economic migrants.
The inevitable conclusion of Labour’s approach has to be open borders which would put the people smugglers out of business – but be politically unacceptable.
This is the consequence of an ideologically-driven position which, like the Gospel according to Stonewall, collapses on contact with reality.
France is a prosperous liberal democracy and those paying people smugglers are choosing to. It’s almost like betting on a one horse race, anyone reaching Kent is extremely likely to remain.
If the people smugglers can’t be stopped then anyone reaching Kent has to be extremely unlikely to remain, and the legislation seeks to achieve that.
Assuming the leftie lawyers can be overcome a single flight to Rwanda may demonstrate that the people smugglers have stopped selling tickets to the land of milk and honey where the streets are paved with gold, and they’ll be out of business.
Stopping the small boats scores well with the public and is important to groups Sunak needs. It’s far from certain that he’ll be successful but he who dares, wins!
