Labour's Immigration Plan Won't Work
On the latest plans to try and stop the boats
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Immigration will be one of —if not the biggest— issues at the next election. It’s already the third most important issue for voters and the most important issue of all for Conservative voters.
And at the heart of this is the small boats crisis, where already this year the number of boats entering Britain illegally is up more than 20% on the same time last year.
This is why Labour leader Keir Starmer was recently in Dover to unveil his latest proposals on dealing with illegal immigration. Starmer knows he’s parking his tanks on the Tories’ front lawn.
So what does he suggest? What’s Labour’s plan?
Labour want a new Border Security Command to bring together the National Crime Agency, Border Force, Immigration Enforcement, the Crown Prosecution Service and MI5. Starmer claims this will enable them to work together, free from bureaucracy.
As proof, he points to his experience as Director of Public Prosecutions, when he had prosecutors deployed in Pakistan for counter-terrorism and South America for drugs. What’s more, he wants more cooperation with our European allies, including Europol.
Comparing the people-smugglers to terrorists, he says he’ll bring in new powers to target them before conviction. That could include shutting off their internet, closing their bank accounts, and tracing their movements with the help of MI5. Meanwhile, to bust the asylum backlog he will hire more caseworkers to process their claims and create a new fast-track unit to return those with no right to be here.
So far so tough.
But here’s the thing —it won’t work. Here’s why.
Let’s start at the top. A new command is great but the government already launched the Small Boats Operational Command (SBOC) at the beginning of last year.
Amid great fanfare about the hundreds of staff recruited for it, the new drones and radar, it has already failed to stop the small boats —just look at the latest numbers.
Starmer’s team, of course, say this isn’t a fair comparison because the SBOC is part of Border Force whereas Labour’s entity will be a whole new structure.
But really they do the same thing.
Perhaps it will be better but nobody I know thinks slightly improved operational performance is what will fix the crisis. I’ve not yet met anybody in the National Crime Agency or the security industry who thinks Labour’s plan will work.
What about having more cooperation?
Nobody is ever against this. But the government is already doing this.
The blunt reality is we’ve already agreed to pay France £500 million to help more with this issue. We’ve already agreed to work more with FRONTEX, the EU border agency. And we’ve already signed deals with Vietnam and Albania.
It’s hard to see how much more cooperation can take place and how it would stop the rising flow of illegal immigrants. Our European partners are already battling the same issues and, despite some successes, there is no sign of it slowing down.
What about going after the people smugglers?
As I’ve already warned, experts at the National Crime Agency say the gangs are simply too numerous to defeat. As soon as one group is thrown into jail, another starts up. Focusing only on ‘smashing the gangs’ is basically a game of Whac-A-Mole.
With people paying up to £6,000 each, the trade in illegal immigration is just too profitable. And, at the end of the day, when all you need is a dinghy, a few life-jackets, and a torch, how can you ever really stop this?
So what about using MI5?
It certainly sounds exciting, to invoke the powers of the spooks. But, at the end of the day, they’re just normal people. Like a lot of government agencies, MI5 is completely overwhelmed and under-resourced.
As recently as 2020, they said there were more than 40,000 terrorism suspects in the UK, the vast majority of whom are radical Islamists, and who are clearly drawing strength from a ‘circle of tacit support’ in Britain’s growing Muslim communities.
Surveillance requires large teams, so only the most dangerous warrant the manpower. That’s one reason why so many recent Islamist terrorists in the UK were already known to the authorities but had no action taken against them.
There just aren’t enough spies to watch all of them.
So, taking some of MI5’s time away to tackle the people smugglers isn’t just unlikely to work —it’s likely to make public life more dangerous as they have to take their eye off the Islamist terrorists and focus on the ever-rising number of illegal migrants.
Finally, there’s Labour’s suggestion of a new fast-track system and returns unit. But the government has already done this with Albanians, returning large numbers there.
The problem is that many of the biggest groups on the small boats are now coming from countries like Afghanistan and Eritrea, where we can’t return people due to human rights laws. In fact there is a fast-track system for them already - it just exists to fast-track them to get asylum here.
There’s no way to return these people without repealing the Human Rights Act and leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), too, which so few people in our hapless political class are willing to countenance.
Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer himself, knows this deep down.
But he will simply do it, not only because of his own politics but because so few of the radical progressives in his party would ever allow him to.
That’s why the Rwanda scheme —which more Brits support than oppose— is so important. By offshoring those we cannot return we prevent them getting to stay here and provide a loud deterrent to millions of others considering the journey.
Paying thousands of pounds to illegally come to Britain is a bad deal if you end up in Kigali instead, clean and orderly as it might be.
And we’ve already seen some results.
Asylum seekers here have been going to Ireland instead, to avoid being sent to Rwanda. And lots of European countries are impressed. Italy already has their own offshoring deal with Albania and other countries - including France, Denmark and the Netherlands - now want to join in.
But instead of recognising this increasing consensus, instead of recognising the only way we will ever address this crisis and save lives is by having BOTH effective surveillance alongside a powerful deterrent, Starmer has said Labour will end the Rwanda scheme “straight away”, thereby removing any possible deterrent.
The day a Labour government is elected will be the day Britain sends a big, loud message to people-smugglers and illegal migrants around the world that Britain is now completely open for business.
If Labour do so they’ll also have another big problem on their hands. Under the Nationality and Borders Act, those who arrive here illegally have no right to claim asylum. That means thousands of illegal immigrants are trapped in a legal limbo.
Without the right to claim asylum, they can’t stay.
But until the Rwanda scheme is fully operational they also can’t be removed either.
In the meantime they are being fed and housed by the government, paid for by the British taxpayer, because they are destitute.
They are given a phone, a cash card, free healthcare on the NHS, a place in local schools if they need one, and a comfortable hotel room or private accommodation —which is exactly why even the French say that Britain is a “soft touch” when it comes to this issue.
So, without the Rwanda scheme, Labour will have thousands of illegal migrants on their hands. They’ll most likely give in to the human rights lawyers and repeal the Act but that means a de facto amnesty for those arriving here illegally, which will, again, incentivise many more people to risk their lives by trying to enter Britain illegally.
That’s a hefty carrot with no remaining Rwanda stick.
Others usually say at this point that if tackling the gangs won't work, then the best option for Britain is simply to establish more safe and legal routes.
Britain already has a number of such routes, for those from Hong Kong, Ukraine and Afghanistan. One Labour MP recently suggested a new route for Palestinians.
But none of those routes have reduced the numbers trying to enter Britain illegally, so far. And even if we did roll out new routes that were open to all, what would stop those who didn't meet the criteria or exceeded any cap on numbers from coming illegally anyway? Paying a few thousand pounds to cross the Channel, with a high chance you'll be granted asylum or at least not removed seems like a good deal.
So, not only do I think Labour’s plans won’t solve things; I think they’ll make them much, much worse. The illegal migration crisis will intensify. More adults and children will lose their lives in the Channel. And the British people will feel ever more disillusioned, despondent and distrustful.
Millions of ordinary people will end up feeling as though they’ve been completely betrayed by the big parties, neither of which appear seriously interested in protecting and preserving our own national borders. And, in the end, that will not only weaken, rather than strengthen our politics but, ultimately, our country too.
Of course a Labour government will increase the traffic, those looking to move here will pick up the vibe that Britain is open. The rest of Europe will quietly move their own migrants to northern France. The media and political class will do nothing, until we all notice tent cities sprining up in St James' Park and the leafy garden squares of Islington. Not sure what happens then, I don't know.
Most people feel an instinctive empathy for genuine asylum-seekers fleeing for their lives and are happy for their country to do what it can for them – within the bounds of realism. Very few are implacably opposed even to economic migration per se. What rankles about the bleeding heart pro-immigration lobby and their parasitic ‘human rights’ lawyer enablers is the wholesale disregard of the interests of the wider host population. What rankles is how the virtue-signalling vanities of a university-educated chattering class have imposed costs borne primarily - not by themselves personally but by the non-‘opinion forming’ classes lower down the social scale. What rankles above all perhaps is their foolish and reckless assumption that the civilisation that has succoured them will still be there however much they mess with its cohesiveness and however much they undermine it with their ‘globalist’ sentimentalities. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-migrants