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November 5, 2024 - 2:30pm
Keir Starmer has a plan for stopping illegal migration to the UK. But so did Rishi Sunak — and look what happened to him.
Starmer hopes to avoid the same fate by focusing on the people smugglers. In his speech to the Interpol General Assembly in Glasgow yesterday, the Prime Minister promised to treat the gangs “like terrorists”. He also pledged more money for the Border Security Command, plus a policy of closer cooperation with our European allies. The aim is to deal with the problem “upstream” and smash the gangs before they can send further dinghies across the Channel.
That sounds tough, but it won’t stop the people traffickers for the same reason we haven’t stopped the drug traffickers. As long as the demand exists, organised crime will always find some way of supplying it. Before the small boats, it was migrants stowing away on lorries, which means that, if necessary, the smugglers will find other conduits.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with trying to shut down specific smuggling operations. But unless we also tackle the “pull factors” — namely, the things that make Britain so attractive as a destination — then, in one form or another, the push will continue.
Making Britain less desirable would mean getting asylum seekers out of hotels and into purpose-built detention centres. Asylum criteria could be tightened to get acceptance rates down to continental levels. In the longer term, Starmer could even try where Tony Blair failed and introduce ID cards, though this has its own downsides. Combined with a crackdown on rogue businesses and landlords, this would make it much harder for migrants to disappear into black-market employment and slum accommodation. Above all, deportation needs to become the norm for everyone who shouldn’t be in this country.
The trouble for Starmer is that these measures would be unpopular with his Labour colleagues. He’s already walking a tightrope between party unrest on one side and losing Labour voters to Reform UK on the other.
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SubscribeBritain’s Directorate of Special Forces easily has the capability to locate and neutralise the people smuggling gangs, and could do so secretly… Evidently this is not happening- one has to ask as to why this is?
one has to ask as to why this is?
It’s quite simple: as with so many problems in contemporary Britain, Richmond profits while Rotherham pays. And Richmond controls the media.
Richmond controls more than the media…..
Probably because, unlike Russia,we don’t go in for assassinations in foreign countries. r
Are you saying we don’t have 00 agents licensed to kill. Surely James Bond 007 is based on fact. I am shocked to hear we were woke back in the Cold War years.
Keir Starmer’s small boats plan won’t fix UK immigration crisis
It’s not intended to.
He may want to stop the gangs, but as a fully-fledged and highly principled human-rights lawyer he loves the poor helpless economic migrants. They’re no problem; we can easily pay for them by taxing the rich (who are all reactionary, racist, transphobic, Islamophobia swine). Two Tier hates money and loves working people, like illegal migrants, left-wing professional demonstrators and of course fellow human-rights leeches.
Leeches in general.
He hates money so much, but somehow it keeps sticking to him like sh!t to a blanket, as my dear old ex-navy dad used to say. Whaddaguy.
My mate Simon from Yorkshire had a phrase which sums up my feelings towards Sir Keir: he’s got a face you’d never tire of. Punching.
Why does the author assume that Starmer wants to ‘fix’ anything?
The normie problem is intractable
All it needs is intermittent RN coast guard escorting small boats back to the shores of France. Job done.
Pay privateers to sink the boats, I’m getting restless at work and fancy a new challenge
I’m not joking BTW
Or sink the boats and give the occupants a sporting chance! The bonus to this idea is that all the detritus will attract marine life, boosting the channel’s fish numbers! Win win!
Apparently France might impound our border staff boats if we try that. I suggested using cheaper boats. Let them keep them.
Perhaps we could use our submarine fleet, come up underneath the dingys until they are beached on top, then take them safely back to France a top a British sub.
Peter franklin correctly states that the UK must tackle the pull factors in order to reduce illegal immigration and he is also correct in saying that solutions such as ID cards, a crackdown in employers hiring illegal immigrants and offshore processing are all expensive and/or political dynamite. But the article does not mention the pull factor that we can control, namely applying the rules for granting asylum in the same way as European nations, such as France, apply them. In France in 2023, 31.4% of first instance asylum decisions were in favour of the asylum seeker. In the UK, in the same period, the grant rate was 63%.
In other words, by crossing the Channel, an asylum seeker can double his chances of success. We use the same asylum rules as the French, but the difference is that the UK tribunals have effectively been instructed to be wilfully gullible in their interpretation of those rules. This is simple to fix.
Maybe his plan is to make the economy so bad that immigrants won’t want to come anymore. Problem solved.
I just read this on the BBC.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yrg1kqzl2o
Eighteen members of a people-smuggling gang accused of arranging thousands of small boat English Channel crossings have been jailed in France
At the very bottom of the article is the statement:
The complex trial involved multiple European nations and police forces, and generated 67 tonnes of paperwork.
So jailing just eighteen people, generated 67 tonnes of paper work.
This is absolutely obscene.
Surely we need to cut down on the paperwork in that case.
Where do they even keep it.
Who files this sh*t.
How many people, working for how long, does it take to generate 67 tonnes of paperwork.
How many ring binders did they use.
How much does 67 tonnes of paper cost.
Note that this gang was smashed in 2022. The boats kept coming.
People were too busy doing the paperwork from the last lot to bother processing anymore.
67 tons of bog paper would be needed by the people smugglers if special forces were engaged!
Perhaps we should start stacking up the paperwork this is generating around the cornish coast. Use it as border wall. 67 tonnes has got to be a good start.
: – )
Starmer doesn’t actually want to sort this out, hence why he just uses that dumb phrase of ‘smash the gangs’. He is instead fast tracking all asylum applications Iraq and Afghanistan and thereby encouraging more. This man is driven solely by his hatred of this country and the Tories are the same.
Starmer could be used to bore illegal immigrants into leaving?
It is a fundamental error to assume that Starmer actually wants the measures to reduce asylum claims. He doesn’t. He is pulling his usual trick of appearing to say what people want, while doing something quite different. 70% of the bogus asylum claims are accepted. Starmer simply can accept them via France to “smash the gangs”.
It is as though you “smashed” the drugs trade by making it legal.
And yet the uncomfortable truth is that Meloni has achieved progress by making her country less welcoming. Really? Of the three examples Peter Franklin gives just one is a Meloni initiative and that is being challenged by the Italian courts. Perhaps we call this Trumpian progress!
He can’t fix his own Party’s slide back into racism, how can he in all conscience send those poor wee lost souls adrift in the Channel.