Home Office ministers have in recent days introduced a new Border Security, Asylum, and Immigration Bill, claiming it will address the small boats crisis.
The details of the legislation reveal that the Government is rolling back significant portions of the Illegal Migration Act, a Conservative law passed in 2023 which stipulated that nearly all individuals entering the country illegally would be ineligible for settled status and, ultimately, citizenship. Labour is now abolishing laws requiring illegal migrants to undergo scientific age verification checks — including the clause stating they are to be treated as adults if they refuse.
Cursed by a common language, British politics follow North American trends almost inexorably. As William Atkinson has noted for ConservativeHome, “politics is tracking its American equivalent at a delay of four years or so: for Trump in 2016 take Boris Johnson in 2019, for Biden in 2020 take Starmer in 2024.”
It’s unfortunate, as our politicians would gain far more by studying the events of similarly sized nations with similarly sized economies facing similar problems than a continental superpower with a vast wealth of natural resources. There is more of Britain in a page of Houellebecq than in a series of The West Wing.
Attitudes toward migration across Europe are increasingly firming. Two years ago, Aris Roussinos noted that Britain was emerging as a liberal exception, and Europe’s drift Rightwards on migration has only increased since then.
In reaction to a knife attack by a Syrian migrant in Solingen last summer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz unveiled plans to speed up deportations and reduce benefits for certain asylum seekers. Meanwhile, in France, former prime minister Michel Barnier urged a revision of EU deportation policies to fast-track expulsions. After Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni initiated the creation of new detention centers in Albania, 15 other EU countries have asked the European Commission to explore similar approaches.
But the Washington-on-Thames tendency will always win out. Hence, Keir Starmer’s immigration policy seems to owe more to Joe Biden’s disastrous liberalisation efforts than the attempts of moderate centrist Europeans such as Donald Tusk to re-establish control. While Starmer promised to reduce migration by “smashing the gangs”, the reality of his plan is far more mundane — and far more managerialist.
Labour’s criticism of Tory immigration failures was always on more solid ground when it talked about process, rather than principle. Starmer’s “Ming vase” strategy meant that talk about reducing the asylum backlog and cost of migrant hotels was preferred to discussions about absolute numbers, and this has continued in government.
One of Labour’s first acts in office was to fast-track 90,000 migrants planned for deportation to Rwanda to claim asylum in the UK. The Refugee Council estimated that 70% — around 60,000 — would be granted asylum. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner also scrapped plans by her predecessor Michael Gove to introduce a “UK connection test” to limit social housing to those resident for at least 10 years, largely to reduce the cost of migrant hotels. Likewise, Labour’s new plans are aimed at speeding up processing — focusing on the target of reducing the backlog, rather than finding genuine claims. Prioritising short-term cost-cutting over long-term strategy is a huge mistake.
Somewhere between a quarter and a third of all illegal migrants in Europe already reside in Britain. When European attitudes are hardening, Labour’s softening of powers means the UK will become not only the most desirable option, given its generous treatment of illegal arrivals, but the easiest as well. When combined with a path to citizenship, increased migration flows are inevitable. Far from merely copying Biden’s methods, Starmer seems set on copying his fate, too: a running crisis at the border fuelling an increasingly incensed electorate. A British Trump may not be far behind.
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SubscribeI find it difficult to comprehend just how daft the British government is.
I find it hard to comprehend how daft the English are. Then I remember they are force fed the Left’s narrative in the media every day, and now in school too. The Right has been denigrated for as long as I can remember. You have to be very brave to declare you are right wing. Hardy anyone does. The consequence is an open goal for the Left. England is now a Far Left experiment. The only question is will it survive the treatment. I just don’t know.
You read the legislation proposal KE? I suspect not.
You may still not agree, but don’t just believe what you read here on Unherd. It’s as much propaganda as real investigative reportage.
You read the legislation proposal KE?
The description of the policies given above is quite accurate. Keir is just following the Blair SOP of creating artificial growth by pushing up asset prices and squeezing wages – essentially sacrificing the country’s long term future and the quality of life of its citizens for the sake of short term political gain. Your grandchildren won’t forgive you.
Dare I suggest there will be no grandchildren since their hypothetical parents cannot afford to buy a home offering the stability to create and nurture them. As you say, this is far from a new gig, but it is a time-expired one, and.we can all see it.
When the virtue signalling academics I occasionally work with moan about Reform, I tell them to.be grateful. i.sense Farage is the overflow pipe.containing anger at the level of a determination for Executive Order-style change rather than pitchforks. But the pitchforks may yet win.
It’s quite deliberate. It’s the end-game of the Leftist project which began with “the march through the institutions”.
In those areas of the country where migrants – the vast majority illegal by any common sense definition of the word – are being ‘settled’ local populations are becoming increasingly unsettled, and something will have to give. I’m not sure where the breaking point will be. Last summer’s riots were a foretaste, and not just about the immediate impact of the Southport murders.
Successive governments over the past 30 years are responsible for this, voted in to “clear the other lot out” but all equally venal, incompetent and in the case of Labour, intent on teaching the population a lesson in pseudo-philosophical propaganda; see also today’s article on mid-wit Rachel Reeves.
The worst is yet to come, but where it leaves us when the dam of rage finally breaks, who knows?
There are only three scenarios: decolonisation, the breakup of the continent into different ethnographic and religious states, or total defeat, where the Third World colonial settler project wipes out native Europeans. I suspect option two is the most likely in the long term, as the veneer of leftist ‘multicultural’ propaganda wears away and the trance is broken forever.
The only people I see who are fit to fight around here, are so rammed on skunk that I doubt there’s much to worry about. Their main skill is headbutting ASDA Express windowpanes and squaring up to lamp-posts.
The whites are predominately unfit, coasting along on a number of prescribed mood-altering medications, and inclined to be nervous or teary.
Nothing will change until the middle class suburbs are affected. Look at how long the US suburban middle class were indifferent to their government’s open borders policy and look at how quickly that changed when the buses started arriving from the South.
Exactly true.
Mass legal migration has been the norm for 20 years with ever corrosive effects.
Now it is biting on GP appointments School places and NhS waiting lists. These are all White Liberal Middle Class obsessions so about time they came to the parry.
I don’t think ‘daft’ is the word. Daft is bumbling incompetence, essentially good but silly. The far-left are driven by spite and hate, either race or class hate, depending on what one you’re talking to.
Everything they do is about ‘rubbing noses in it’ and daring people to notice. Hate, in other words.
To be fair, when I call someone “daft” I do usually mean “irremediably dumb”, but I absolutely see your point.
I find it difficult to comprehend just how daft the British government is.
You think this is all a big mistake?!
Daft is an unusual word to use on this context, but I liked it. I see its critics’ point, but one of the problems is that many of those responsible genuinely believe that their actions are benign and praiseworthy.
“Somewhere between a quarter and a third of all illegal migrants in Europe already reside in Britain.”
My shoulders sag in utter despair!
Ironic, if we accept that a significant reason for brexit was fear of Europe opening the doors wide to further immigration.
Europe never opened its doors. Individual states like Merkel’s Germany took a v humanitarian view of Syrian refugee crisis for historical reasons – which of course many Germans disagree with. But the EU itself never changed it’s laws on external migration.
What the UK did was increase it’s legal migration from elsewhere in the World and assume the Channel insulated us from illegal so we could withdraw from working more closely with European partners on that problem – both as a result of Brexit. The former was a decision to essentially increase the cultural diversity of the Nation too. Probably not what many Brexiteers would have wanted but the inevitable result of dishonesty and/or stupidity.
People who thought Brexit would end mass immigration misunderstood the motives behind it. Our immigration policies are essentially a form of asset stripping whereby the suburban middle class converts the social and environmental assets of the nation into private wealth for itself whilst paying little heed to the disastrous consequences for people who don’t have degrees. Labour is the party of that class – hence its enthusiasm for this particular form of class war. But the Tories need those votes too.
Put the comfort blanket narrative away HB. Doesn’t wash.
Bojo opened up the worldwide Visas after his big GE election win. You almost certainly voted for him, as probably did most of the UnHerd regular commentators. And then you probably defended him on other stuff for quite some time because he’d deceived you. You were warned. Whether ignorance or stupidity only you know.
Yep, I voted for Boris as you did because the alternative was far, far worse. But I had no illusions. Interesting you never try to deal with my substantive points?
The Left are intent on destroying the social fabric and unity of our country. That’s a given
Are they smiling inside as they do it? That’s what I’ve always wondered.
It’ll destroy them too in the end. But they’ll blame something else for it, it cant be their fault because they meant well. As long as your intentions are good it’s not your fault if the outcome is catastrophic.
With their policies maybe they expect Britain to become an undesirable migration option anyway?
It’s already happening I think. Aren’t many of the Poles going back home?. That itself leaves a skills gap. The English have effectively deskilled themselves over the last twenty years.
The proposed Bill focuses on Border security and creating new Offences to better target the big business that is trafficking. It’s difficult to see much wrong in these and in fact begs questions why hadn’t these holes been closed before.
Whether it goes far enough on ‘deterrence’ is more what the Author zeroes in on. Clearly what has to happen, and be better publicised when it does, is an increase in ‘return’ numbers. Trump’s Stephen Miller may not actually deliver the ‘returnee’ numbers of Obama (Trump returned less than Obama in first term), but he knows the optics count hence allowed pictures showing shackled returnees lined up to board a flight. Whether one gets squeamish about the image one can make a case for the deterrence element behind such publicity.
Labour have paused asylum claims from Syrians, so depending on what happens over next 6-12months many that previously might have been granted asylum won’t be. We may find a number start to return of own volition too.
The Rwanda type deterrence was always chimerical. We’d have got grifted good and proper, and the Big Business behind the trafficking wouldn’t have been deterred. A Rwanda option would have reached saturation point v quickly and then what? We assume the poor sods trying to get to the UK more up to date with the specifics of our legislation than the marketing of the Traffickers.
And of course as we all know the Boat arrivals far outweighed by the growth in industry visa requested arrivals turbocharged by 14 years of immigration dishonesty from the Right.
‘The Right’? The Tory governments of the past 14 years have mostly been soft left.
But you’re right that the eye-watering levels of legal immigration is the bigger issue. The illegal boat crossings are just more viscerally potent for voters.
Labour paused Syrians but give 90,000 a free pass to a British passport
Next all those who out stayed their visa will be given a British passport
after the mess Labour has made even the public sector will not vote Labour
If Starmer can’t get 16 year old the vote and the migrants Labour believe they are toast. The only fly in Starmers ointment is the Muslim party
Would you care to provide a link to 90k Syrians getting a Passport in the first 6mths of Lab govt? Total rubbish. We need to see the evidence to support this or be left with impression how easily you are played.
The threat posed by the ‘boat people’ is less to do with numbers than with the fact that, for the most part, we have no idea who they are and, having few or no usable skills as well as a predominantly mediaeval world view they are likely both to be state dependent forever and to make a disproportionate contribution to the crime statistics. But who cares – none of that affects Richmond, Highgate or Putney, eh?.
I suspect HB all your experience of the people who have come on the Boats is 2nd and 3rd hand and you too easily want to tar them all as the same.
There will be some wrong uns though.
The issue therefore is what one then does. Remember they aren’t allowed to work so until processed so they are a cost on the State for that period. And how many holding centres did the Tories build? Was always quite deliberate to put them in Hotels in sensitive areas to weaponise the issue. The Right knew what it was doing.
As you know from prior discourse, I strongly favour ID cards. Wouldn’t solve the issue but would be some deterrence to disappearing into black market. Disappointed Starmer not pushed this to date.
I suspect HB all your experience of the people who have come on the Boats is 2nd and 3rd hand
Unlike yours, eh? Do try not to be quite so pompous.
So why give the illegal grifting MENAPS the right to gain citizenship? Why fast track the 90k? Why take away the automatic categorisation as an adult if one refuses dental age verification?
Because Labour want them here. Labour want to further destroy the fabric of the country. Labour want to Islamify Britain asap as they think the Islamic block will vote for them.
Labour are enemies of the British people.
You need to get out more UR and stop quivering under the bed sheets.
Somewhere between a quarter and a third of all illegal migrants in Europe already reside in Britain.
How convenient for continental Europe. The UK is providing a service for all these EU countries. An offshore hotel; much as if Trump used Greenland to house all the illegal aliens in the USA.
Surely this UK service is a lever that Starmer could use in any negotiations with the EU. Should the French be paying the UK for dealing with the Channel migrants rather than the other way around?
What is there left to say? Demented.
My last day in this country. I only just realised . . . I will be back to mop up and take more stuff to the East, but that’s probably me done here. Good article to read before the slog to the airport.
Well what do you expect? If you are leaving someone will have to do the job you left.
No one knows the trouble we’re in.
Watch Silenced. It will open your eyes. And you’ll see how difficult it’s going to be to get out of this mess.
It’s about the media. Part of which is Unherd.
It’s worse than that. A strong part of Labour’s analysis is based on future electoral success: their estimate that migrants will somehow feel ‘grateful’. They’ve worked-out that the ‘youth quake’ is, especially for young men, pointing towards Reform not Labour.
This leaves them floundering for a natural constituency now that “We all hate the Tories” has lost its resonance.
Labour favours replacement of the white English working class with former colonial subjects. I actually doubt there is anyone in the party who really opposes this programme. Those from the working class within their structure have been encultured into believing in this project.
The Labour government is effectively an enemy of the British people today. The conservatives are worse and the LibDems are a woke joke.
Politicians today are so far out of touch with the electorate that you can only assume they just don’t care.
The whole of the British State needs gutting very much like Trump and Musk are doing right now in the US.
The vicelike grip of the Law and the Legal system Blair instigated over our democracy must end.
End asylum. It’s a total racket.
To any young man or woman who wants a future… emigrate.