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Sir Keir Starmer was as good as his word. No sooner had he and Yvette Cooper, his Home Secretary, got going in their new roles than the Rwanda scheme was no more. Over two years of parliamentary time, three acts of parliament and £270 million to the Rwanda government – not a penny of which will be returned (who can blame them?) and Rwanda was in the bin.
Sir Keir can argue all he likes that it was all in the Labour manifesto and that he had been telling us for some time what he would do with the Tory scheme, if elected. But to chuck it on the first day in office, before even consulting the experts who have been dealing with the problem for six years – and without anything to put in its place, smacks of hubris. And, dare we say, uncharacteristically impulsive for an ultra-cautious lawyer.
While we at MW have said from the outset that ‘Rwanda’ was not the complete answer to the problem, we did think it would discourage some migrants from attempting the illegal, and dangerous, Channel crossing. As it is, there is now nothing to prompt migrants or traffickers to stop and think. The boats will keep coming and the 600 migrants who made it over in the past week will be joined by many thousands more. Sadly, more will also lose their lives, as four wretched souls did on Friday.
So, what now? Sir Keir has already said it will take time to smash the gangs. Yep, you can say that again Prime Minister. What’s more, you won’t, Prime Minister. The gangs will continue to flourish. The easy money to be made from an inexhaustible supply of people (mostly young men) will spawn more and more gangs by the time of the next election. Knowing that once in the UK you are here to stay – whatever the mode of travel – and speeding up the processing of asylum applications and quickly moving on those being housed in hotels will only incentivise those prepared to jump into small boats to get here. The numbers are limitless. All the traffickers will hear is ‘kerching’ as their bank balances overflow.
Meanwhile, Neil Basu, the former Assistant Commissioner and head of counter terrorism at the Met, earmarked to head the new Border Security Command, turned down the invitation to apply for the job. We do wonder if Mr Basu cast an eye over what he would have been tasked to do and immediately saw that he was onto a hiding to nothing.
So far (and we realise it has only been nine days since the election), it has all been about illegal immigration and asylum. We have heard little about legal migration. Early on in the election campaign, Yvette Cooper acknowledged that immigration was too high and should come down but she didn’t say how this would be done. There seems to be an expectation that it will happen without any government action, beyond improving the points-based system (PBS). It won’t and as we keep saying, the catastrophic levels of net migration will continue for the foreseeable future.
Millions of people will be added to our population (20 million by the mid-2040s if net migration settles at around 600,000 per annum). Rachel Reeves’s house-building plans – in the unlikely event of their ever materialising – will still leave us significantly short of what is needed. Meanwhile, the nature of our society will change irreversibly. We will be writing a lot about legal migration and its consequences in the coming months.
This is a preview of Migration Watch’s free weekly newsletter. Please consider signing up to the newsletter directly, you can do so here and will receive an email copy of the newsletter every Friday and will receive an email copy of the newsletter every Friday as soon as it is released