Illegal immigrants still come in their thousands. This will be the end of Rishi Sunak

An inflatable dinghy carrying migrants crosses the English Channel

I know it is up against some pretty strong competition from HS2 and the like, but has this or any government wasted so much money to so little effect as the millions Rishi Sunak has shelled out to the French supposedly to stop migrants crossing the Channel? The number of migrants arriving in Britain in small boats has hit a new record in the first three months of 2024. Over 4,600 have somehow managed to evade French patrols. When the weather warms up and calms down we can expect many thousands more.

Rishi Sunak’s government has achieved the very worst on illegal migration, by talking tough and then failing even slightly to deliver. If the Government had approached the issue of illegal migration by speaking like those mealy-mouthed charities who insist every single illegal migrant coming to Britain is “desperate”, and trying to claim that they would all prove a huge boon to the country, boosting the economy and enriching our culture, you might have disagreed with that very strongly but at least you could have had a certain respect for it – the outcome would be consistent with the ideology.

Instead, we have had one minister after another tub-thumping over illegal migration, telling us it would go to all lengths to stop the boats – but the end result is even more illegal migration than we started with.

There are two possibilities here. Either Rishi Sunak and his Home Office ministers are all secret agents working for the Refugee Council and are using tough talk as cover for what they are really trying to achieve. Or they are simply incompetent, lily-livered and too intellectually feeble to take on the human rights blob. I think I favour the latter explanation.

If we are going to pay the French a bean to try to stop the boats the deal should have one clear condition: that anyone landing on a British beach, or picked up in UK waters, should be automatically and instantly returned to France. There should be no legal aid, no bed and board, no nothing. The message would soon have got across that it is pointless trying to cross the Channel – you will be paying a trafficker and risking your life for no reason.

Many European leaders agree that asylum-seekers must claim asylum in the first country they reach, and so unless someone is on the run from Macron’s regime, they have no business crossing the Channel. All Britain and France would be doing would be to enforce that sentiment. If the European Court of Human Rights took a different view the government should tell it to stuff it, like other countries seem very happy to do on all manner of topics.

Instead, the Government has thrashed around and got absolutely nowhere. There have been no promised flights to Rwanda. The Government rattles its sabre at illegal migrants – and then puts them up in lovely hotels. We have a government which seems to be pleading to be put out of its misery at the earliest opportunity.

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