Labour’s border crisis is getting worse, not better
My view on Britain’s escalating border crisis
MATT GOODWIN
As I said in my first State of the Nation with Matt Goodwin monologue tonight, which you can watch above, Britain’s border crisis is getting worse, not better.
Just look at the latest depressing numbers.
Between December 25-28, another 1,485 illegal migrants crossed into the UK on small boats, making a mockery of our claim to be a self-governing, sovereign nation which has “taken back control” of our borders.
In fact, this marks the busiest Christmas period for the small boat crossings since records began, in 2018.
Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and their hapless Labour government were supposed to stop this crisis. Instead, they’re putting it on steroids.
This year alone, astonishingly, nearly 40,000 illegal migrants entered Britain while breaking our laws, 20% higher than the equivalent figure last year.
And since 2018, under both Labour and the Tories, the old parties, more than 150,000 illegal migrants have entered and stayed in Britain.
There is simply no evidence that Labour’s plan is working.
Who is entering Britain illegally?
Most of them are young men.
Many of them are from predominantly Muslim nations.
We don’t know who they are.
And we don’t know what they believe.
What we do know, though, is what these numbers reflect —that Labour’s plan to “smash the gangs”, which I predicted back in May, is simply not working.
And why would it work?
We have no active deterrent in place, nothing to deter would-be illegal migrants from making the journey.
Having dumped Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda plan, claiming that it was a waste of money while simultaneously not even bothering to wait and see if it had an effect, Labour have just left a huge open goal in its place.
They’ve even removed the policy that if you arrive in Britain illegally then you simply will not be allowed to stay in the country.
Instead, Starmer’s Labour government has created new incentives for illegal migrants to come, which is why the numbers are once again climbing.
They’ve approved around two-thirds of applications for asylum, essentially putting a big, flashing neon sign on the White Cliffs of Dover that reads:
“If you make it here we will probably let you stay”.
And they’ve done next to nothing to stop Britain being portrayed by people smugglers and indeed other European nations, like France, as a “soft touch”.
Which we are.
Why wouldn’t you try and enter Britain illegally if you knew that on arrival you will be given a cash card, a smart phone, welfare, free legal aid, a nice hotel room or private accommodation, free healthcare, and a place in school for your kids?
The entire system, in other words, is currently designed to incentivise rather than disincentivise more crossings.
And so, in turn, the costs of this crisis—both human and economic—are rocketing.
This year, nearly 80 illegal migrants have lost their lives or gone missing in the Channel, making it the deadliest year on record.
It’s a tragedy.
I’m sorry to say it but all those lost lives are not just on the gangs —they’re on our utterly hapless politicians on both the Left and Right who have consistently failed to get their arms around this crisis.
And then come the eye-watering economic costs that are left, as usual, for the hardworking British taxpayers to cover, which put simply are spiralling completely out of control.
At exactly the same time as hardworking British workers and taxpayers are being bombarded by the worst cost-of-living crisis since the Second World War, they are now also having to stump up £5.4 BILLION pounds a year to cover the escalating costs of our broken asylum system.
£5.4 billion a year!
And some estimate that the true cost is much higher, suggesting Britain has spent around £18 billion on this crisis in the last few years.
To put that number of £18 billion in perspective we just nabbed winter fuel payments off British pensioners to save £1.5 billion, and just smashed family farms up and down the country to save £500 million.
It’s not right.
It’s not fair.
And it’s certainly not treating the British people with the respect they deserve.
As I’ve said before, a country that cannot protect its own borders and territorial integrity is not a serious country, while a nation that refuses to prioritise the safety and security of its own people is not a serious nation.
Which is exactly why the British people are so frustrated and fed-up.
According to one recent poll, by YouGov, nearly 70% of British people now think that the immigration issue is being handled “badly”.
I’m surprised it’s not even higher if I’m honest.
Meanwhile, only 12% of Brits think Keir Starmer and the Labour government have been “successful” in office.
It’s only been five months since the general election but already, shaped by things like watching the embarrassing inability the once great British state to stop migrants entering the country illegally on ramshackle dinghies, the people have had enough.
These numbers, in short, are utterly dire for Keir Starmer and his Labour government.
They not only reflect how, in my view at least, the British people have zero faith in Labour to solve this crisis but are now also losing faith and confidence in the entire political and legal system to solve it.
And that is a very dangerous place for any nation-state to be.
So my view is this.
Labour, the political class, the people who run our country have to change direction.
And they have to change it now because the current plan is a disaster.
Unless something changes, and changes soon, the numbers and costs of this crisis will just continue to spiral.
In turn, the rising tide of anger and alienation out there in the country will just get stronger and stronger —possibly pushing us into a repeat of what we saw this summer with the sudden outbreak of riots and protests.
What does a change of direction mean, exactly?
Look, I’ve said it before.
It means leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
It means reforming if not repealing the Human Rights Act and replacing these laws with a new regime that ensures British courts and British judges cannot be overruled by foreign courts.
It means reinstalling the principle that if you arrive in Britain illegally, if your first act on entering our community is to break our laws, then you simply cannot be allowed to stay in this community.
And it means having an active deterrent, like the Rwanda plan but stronger —one that makes it crystal clear to everybody around the world that these islands are no longer a soft touch, that we will always put our laws and our courts first.
Yes. We are a fair and tolerant people.
Everybody knows this —everybody, that is, except the radical minority of woke progressives who insist on berating everybody on the West as “racist”.
We will happily help a small number of genuine refugees, as we have helped the Hong-Kongers, Ukrainians and others.
But look, this is also a country, a nation, a culture, a people that also value the importance of fair play —of playing by the rules and respecting the laws of our land.
I understand this.
The British people understand this.
So why don’t our leaders?
This article (Labour’s border crisis is getting worse, not better) was created and published by Matt Goodwin and is republished here under “Fair Use”
*****
RELATED
2024: A Year Peppered With Alarming Migration Numbers
Regarding immigration – legal and illegal – it has been a year of lows, followed by yet more lows.
In his New Year message, Rishi Sunak promised decisive action in 2024 “to stop the boats and break the business model of the criminal gangs.” He made no mention of legal migration, perhaps thinking that if a semblance of control could be demonstrated over illegal Channel crossings by the end of 2024, he would be able to persuade the electorate that he could do the same with ballooning legal migration, possibly even reverting to the longstanding Tory promise to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands”.
However, in due course it became clear that the real reason for keeping schtum was more likely to have been, as we were later to find out, that legal migration was completely out of control.
By the end of November, five months after Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party swept into office, we were told by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that net migration had risen to an astonishing 906,000 in the year to June 2023, with an inflow of well over a million long-term migrants. As 2024 wore on, one appalling statistic was followed by one that was even worse. When in late November the ONS published the migration data for the year to June 2024 and the revised figures for the preceding year, Sir Keir Starmer mocked the Tory record, accusing them of using Brexit to turn Britain into an “open borders experiment”.
And yet, when a week later he revealed his “plan for change” with its six “milestones”, immigration didn’t feature in any of them. It was only after being pressed repeatedly by reporters that he said both legal and illegal migration would be driven down with “a serious plan”, that would include measures “to smash the gangs” behind illegal Channel crossings.
Turning the tide?
We have still to learn what the plan is. Note how Rishi Sunak’s slogan of, “breaking the business model of the traffickers” had transitioned into a catchier, “smash the gangs”. The latter will of course fail, just as the former did. The only strategy that will work is one that makes clear you will not be able to stay in the UK if you make your way here illegally, and that you will be quickly removed.
Last Saturday, The Times lead editorial “Turning the Tide”, pointed to the government’s non-existent, policies to stop the boats. It also referred to the very high legal net migration. The editorial prompted a letter to the editor from our president, Lord Andrew Green of Deddington and David Coleman, Emeritus Professor of Demography at Oxford University – joint founders of Migration Watch. The Times have chosen not to publish the letter which, we believe, reflects the views of millions of people. Here it is in full:
Sir,
Your remarkable editorial “Turning the Tide” (28 December) is most timely. It draws attention to the absence, under the new government, of any effective policies to reduce the number of cross Channel arrivals seeking asylum in the UK. Even more importantly, it points also to legal net migration which has now approached one million a year.
In the short term this will add severe additional pressures on housing, health and education. In the longer term it will, unless very strong measures are taken, change the whole scale and nature of our society. It is already a question of when, not whether, the indigenous population of England will become a minority.
The public can sense this which no doubt explains why about 60% want to see immigration reduced. Very firm government action is needed soon if we are to avoid serious social tensions.
Hear, hear!
Turning to illegal Channel crossings, you will recall the Safety of Rwanda Bill. This was of course intended to ensure illegal immigrants could be flown to Rwanda – the cornerstone of the Tory government’s plan to deal with illegal immigration. The original plan hit a brick wall in the courts, because of “human rights” concerns. James Cleverly struck a revised deal with Rwanda’s president, addressing the judges’ criticisms. The “Safety of Rwanda Act”, despite the best efforts of the House of Lords, eventually made it onto the statute book. And yet, for all the noise and political capital spent, the promised forced returns lined up, it was all put on hold pending the election, only to become the first policy scrapped soon after 4th July.
Enter Farage: the game-changer?
Let’s leave aside Nigel Farage’s electrifying return to frontline politics to lead Reform and ignite an otherwise dull election campaign. Who didn’t think the Tories would lose badly and a Labour Party, led by a less-than sparkling lawyer, with little political nous, would win with a hefty majority?
More importantly for us was that Farage really understood (like quite a lot of Conservative politicians and even some Labour ones) how most of the electorate felt about mass immigration and illegal immigration, its impact, and what they wanted done about it.
Sadly, Sir Keir Starmer and his ministers, like most of their immediate predecessors, simply don’t get it. Or choose to ignore the will and wishes of the people who put them in office.
Starmer’s promises and realities and what can we expect in 2025?
So, what has Sir Keir actually delivered since stepping into No. 10? When it comes to illegal immigration, not much. He scrapped the Rwanda plan outright and replaced it with a fast-tracked asylum system – which, as we at Migration Watch have pointed out, is essentially an amnesty in disguise. Unsurprisingly, this has only fuelled more boats, more crossings, and more chaos.
Since 2018, over 150,000 illegal migrants have crossed the English Channel – and this year’s numbers are up by 25% on last year. With nothing to act as a deterrent and the prospect of comfortable accommodation, free medical and dental attention as well as pocket money and little prospect of being returned, we expect at least the number who came over illegally to come again in 2025. By this time next year we could even be knocking on 200,000 since 2018. Packing planes with volunteers, by offering £3,000 per man, woman and child, as has mostly happened so far, is not going to deter anyone.
As for the much more problematic legal migration, we don’t see significant reductions in the offing while existing immigration legislation and rules remain in place. There will be little control or reduction of net migration. The measures introduced by the Tories and kept in place by Labour will lead to a modest reduction of inflows but nothing like enough. For that to happen, employers and universities cannot continue to have a free hand to bring in as many overseas workers and students as they like.
The Home Office has to be much firmer with those who spin out their temporary stay. The two-year post study work route must end. The scope to bring dependants has to be constrained. A cap on overall numbers is essential. The government’s objective has to be to drive down net migration, as close as possible, to zero. Our aim should be balanced migration. Otherwise, the result will be as Lord Green and Professor Emeritus Coleman eloquently describe in their letter to The Times.
This article (2024: a year peppered with alarming migration numbers) was created and published by Migration Watch UK and is republished here under “Fair Use”
Featured image: bloomberg.com
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