.png)
2 days ago
9
Forgive me for feeling underwhelmed. As a general rule, countries collaborating on crime have not yet managed to do away with crime. But I suppose that doing something – even if it’s only being seen to do something – is better than doing nothing. So a big welcome to the 40 countries who have converged on Lancaster House in central London at Keir Starmer’s invitation for a summit on tackling illegal migration.
The government has chosen some curious targets for its attacks since the election last July. Mostly punching down. First it had pensioners in its sights, as it removed the winter fuel allowance. Then it went after farmers. Recently it has had a go at cutting benefits for disabled people. Now it is the turn of migrants. Maybe it’s just a wonder that Starmer took this long to get round to people making the small boat crossing from France. Every government is trying to out-Farage Farage these days.
“There’s nothing progressive about turning a blind eye to the criminal gangs,” said Starmer in his opening remarks to the summit. Which is true. The gangs do prey on vulnerable people. But there is also nothing progressive about turning a blind eye to the many people with no safe routes to claim asylum. The gangs only have a business because there are so many willing volunteers. If you don’t come from Ukraine or Hong Kong, you might as well not bother trying to get refugee status in the UK by a legal route. So just sit it out at home and hope you don’t get killed or imprisoned.
We are also now into the legitimised Two Minutes Hate. Or rather, because Starmer is happy to indulge us, the Ten Minutes Hate. Feel free to let yourself go. No need to be constrained by time limits. Take as long as you like to say how angry you really are about illegal immigrants. Keir was not shy about letting us know that he was angry too. Very angry. And he could see that it made other people angry too. It can’t be long before we bring back the stocks and the ducking stool. We all could do with someone to blame for the UK falling apart.
Keir was adamant that a corner had been turned. That he was getting a grip of the situation. He had personally deported more than 24,000 people in the past eight months, he said. Under the Tories’ Rwanda plan, it would have taken about 300 years to return that many. “I opposed the Rwanda scheme,” he told us, “because it was a hollow pledge to working people”. Not because it was cruel or because it had been deemed illegal by an international court.
You couldn’t help feeling that “working people” was doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Because some of the people who believe that migrants are the cause of the UK’s decline are not working. They are pensioners or unemployed. But somehow “working people” sounds so much better. It makes the demonisation of those who arrive in small boats feel much more legitimate. They are here to rob us in some way. Of our phones. Of our way of life. It’s better that 100 genuine asylum seekers be returned to an unsafe country than that one criminal beats the system.
This was Starmer talking tough. Rolling up his sleeves. He’s keen on that. There were no shortcuts. No gimmicks. Just a load of hard graft. Whatever worked. . He was now thoroughly onboard with Giorgia Meloni. Find a country – any country: don’t just stop at the safe ones – that would take people and send them packing. He stopped short of saying he would sink the small boats in the Channel. Though if the French decided that was the right way to go, he would happily turn a blind eye.
Britain was a soft touch, he said. By which he meant that we bothered to apply international law to those who arrived by boats. We gave asylum seekers access to lawyers. What mugs we are. We won’t be doing that again. We mustn’t be the only country to make sure that due process is observed. The European convention on human rights and dozens of refugee treaties are just for idiots. When the going gets tough at home and your ratings are falling, you might as well give someone more unfortunate than you a kicking.
Later that afternoon during Home Office departmental questions, the 10-year-old shadow home secretary, Chris Philp – yet again wearing his union jack socks – was also demanding tough action. You couldn’t help feeling that the Philpster hasn’t got the memo. He had years to be beastly to asylum seekers and he only managed to send four volunteers to Rwanda. At a rough cost of £150m per person. Something even Conservative MPs agreed did not represent good value. Just imagine. You could have sent eight for £75m each. Then you were talking.
But Chris remains catatonic. He is adamant the reason that 30,000 migrants have made the crossing since the election is solely because Labour binned the Rwanda policy. The Rwanda policy that had been on the verge of great things until it got sacked off. The criminal gangs hadn’t been able to believe their luck.
Then the Philpster isn’t the only one in denial. The whole of the Commons is. About He Who Cannot Be Named. Priti Patel was granted an urgent question to ask about the possible threat to Bosnia and Herzegovina from Serbia. It was outrageous that the Russian could use the Serbs to annex another country, she said.
Guys. Guys. You have a point. But JD Vance has literally just turned up in Greenland to do exactly the same thing as the Russians. An unwanted offer from an expansionist, undemocratic power. But Priti didn’t think to mention the name Donald Trump. She is blind to the similarities. Maybe it’s safer that way.
