Americans have a saying that when you’re
up to your waist (although they generally refer to a similarly-located part of
the anatomy) in alligators, it’s difficult to remember that your original
objective was to drain the swamp. In less expressive language, sometimes, even
if people start a project with a clear objective, the practical difficulties
encountered along the way can assume such a significance that the aim becomes
more of a distant aspiration: killing alligators becomes an end in itself.
To the surprise of no-one except the current
and previous governments, reducing net immigration (assuming one thinks that to
be a problem in the first place), turns out to be rather more complex than
their rhetoric has ever suggested. ‘Stopping the boats’ is really just one –
and not a particularly large one at that, in the scheme of things – element of
the problem. Short of starting a war with France by forcibly landing people
back on French beaches, deliberately killing the occupants of the boats, or simply
ignoring international commitments and regulations such as the law of the seas,
there isn’t actually any way of stopping the boats at all. Once they enter UK territorial
waters, the UK government has a legal obligation to ensure the safety of the
occupants, and prior to that point, the French government has a similar
responsibility.
Sir Warmonger’s latest wheeze
to address the issue is to make an agreement with France for a ‘one in, one out’
policy, initially capped at a maximum of 50 each way per week. The
mathematically competent (a category which obviously excludes government
ministers) will immediately note two things about this proposal. The first is
that minus one plus one nets out to nil; the proposal would reduce the total
net migration into the UK by precisely zero. And the second is that 2600 a year
is around 6% of the total number making the crossing; a proposal to swap 6% of
those making the journey for a different 6% is supposed to deter the other 94%
from even trying, presumably by encouraging them to wait to see if they can get
into the select 6% who will be allowed a safe crossing. Clearly, the PM hopes
that those members of the electorate salivating over the prospect of deporting
people in chains are as mathematically challenged as himself.
Interestingly, one of the main arguments
put forward by those who think that the use of force, detention, and deterrence
to stop people crossing is the wrong approach has been that a better alternative
is to allow safe crossing and perform a proper assessment of asylum claims
before deciding whether or not to deport. The proposal looks a lot like doing exactly
that, except on such a small scale as to make no difference. It’s all a form of
scope creep in reverse. Reduce net migration becomes stop the boats becomes
stop some of the boats becomes swap some of those arriving by boat for some
others who didn’t get in a boat. Then, it can be declared to be a huge success.
Just about the only certainty is that absolutely no alligators get killed in
the process. I suppose the animal rights lobby might be pleased about that,
even if the alligators were only ever an allusion.
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