Keir Starmer went into the last election with not a shred of a policy on stopping the boats, beyond some vague promise to “smash the gangs” through “international co-operation”.
He might as well have talked about smashing the Mafia or smashing the drug gangs.
The results of so glaring a policy vacuum are there for all to see record numbers arriving in small boats, a growing resentment on the part of the settled population finally erupting in riots and death in the channel including that of children.
And still Starmer offers nothing and still the boats come with all the consequences to racial harmony, the health service, law and order and the general infrastructure.
Surely even he is not sufficiently afflicted with political myopia as to fail to see the consequences? What happens when we run out of hotel spaces?
When the government raises taxes to the sky in its Budget and continues to shell out public money to fund unlawful immigration?
His first hundred days may have been a mess but four and a half more years of uncontrolled illegal migration promises an impenetrable morass.
“One thing is for certain: the electorate has been provided with a deterrent from voting Labour,” says Ann Widdecombe
PA
If Labour showed a fraction of the determination with which it quelled the riots in quelling the boats, then the future would look quite different.
And how did it quell the riots and prevent outbreaks of copycat rioting? By producing one heck of a deterrent: swift and severe justice. So why not produce an equally severe deterrent to the boat migrants?
The essence of Reform’s policy has always been based on just that: turning the boats round so they do not arrive and for those that do nevertheless manage to arrive secure detention pending a return to their own countries of origin as we will deny each and every arrival the right to claim asylum on the grounds that they will all have come from a safe country, namely France.
It is not rocketing science and yes, it will necessitate resources but so do ever-increasing hotel bills and the unseen costs to our tourist industry of taking facilities out of circulation.
Meanwhile other routes to unlawful migration are still as busy as they ever were in lorries on cross channel ferries or coming through the tunnel, on aeroplanes where illegal migrants tear up their documents, without which they could not have boarded.
People who enter quite lawfully fail to leave and wait for the next amnesty.
There are answers there too: For example, immigration officers could meet the most likely planes and check that nobody lands without documents, there should be no more amnesties and there should be exit checks on those scheduled to leave.
As deterrents take effect, the numbers of those trying to play the system decline and so eventually do the resources needed.
Finally, there is perfectly lawful immigration which also needs curtailing, though not at the expense of health service workers.
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What links the solutions to all these uses and abuses is one thing: political will.
If the last government had a half-hearted approach, Starmer’s is one of giving up before he has even begun.
No wonder Macron takes our money and gives nothing in return. He also needs a deterrent and sending the boats back to France might just provide him with one.
One thing is for certain: the electorate has been provided with a deterrent from voting Labour.
