Sunak laying out his plan to stop the boats (Image: Getty)
The electorate is sick to the back teeth of PMs and various Home Secretaries promising to “stop the boats” then doing beggar all to stop the boats apart from throwing a few extra million quid at France who are laughing in our faces.
Last year 46,000 arrived illegally by boat. This year, if it continues at the current rate, it’ll be 80,000. And that is simply unsustainable – for our health services, for social care, for housing.
We literally can’t do it any more.
Not when it’s costing £7m a day to put these people up in four-star hotels complete with waitress service.
Not when it’s causing angst in towns, cities and villages all over Britain that suddenly find themselves with hundreds of boat people (lots of them 20-something male economic migrants) jettisoned into their communities.
And no these people aren’t racist or hard right (as the hard Left are fond of branding them). They’re simply expressing their concerns about uncontrolled immigration and, as British citizens, they surely have equal rights to the people coming here illegally. Although there must be days it doesn’t feel like that to them.
So Rishi’s plan? He says he’ll make it impossible for anyone entering the UK illegally to apply for asylum.
And he’s introducing laws which would mean people who come here on boats can be detained and then swiftly removed.
So far so good. He also says those people who do arrive here illegally won’t ever be allowed to come back.
Rishi also insists that, while he won’t break international laws to enforce his new measures, he WILL push them to the limit.
Good. Because Europe already does exactly that.
France and Germany have no problem with illegal migrants coming from safe countries like Albania – they just turf them straight out.
We haven’t been able to do that because human rights lawyers have been exploiting and manipulating our modern slavery laws which allow them to stay.
It’s rumored Rishi has been working with a specialist team for months to ensure these new laws cannot be exploited by charities and these human rights lawyers in the way previous ones have been.
Predictably his plans are being lambasted by Labor who, when they get into power, will ensure we have open borders and mass immigration to create the truly multicultural society they have always believed Britain should be.
An MP recently said he’d actually seen Labour’s draft immigration policy which said exactly that.
Starmer has already slated Rishi’s plan as unworkable and, of course, he wants it to be not least because he knows if it works the Tories will romp the next election.
And let’s not forget Sir Keir is the man who signed a petition to stop the deportation of a bunch of killers, rapists and paedophiles. He’s happy for them all to be here.
As for the human rights lawyers and refugee charities, they’re screaming that tens of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution will be inhumanely locked up and detained.
First off, there aren’t tens of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution.
We know that nearly half of the people arriving here have come from safe countries like Albania and should not be allowed here at all. But they’re all modern slaves apparently.
Second, those who have fled war-torn countries have passed through three or four safe countries before they get to Britain. So many are picking and choosing where they want to go.
And safe, legal routes into this country already exist for people coming from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong. Britain has, quite rightly, granted 190,000 visas to Ukrainians in the last 12 months.
A government insider said this week that being afforded British citizenship is not a human right – it’s a privilege. And he’s right.
Just because people land here it doesn’t automatically mean it’s their right to stay – especially when they came here illegally.
It remains to be seen whether Rishi’s plan will work but I admire the balls it took to do this.
And to make it work he knows he’s got to get into a dogfight with the forces of the liberal establishment which is no easy task.
But, he must also know that if he does this work he will have the majority of the British people behind him.
Because the only people who will oppose these laws are the woke, elitist Left whose lives are never touched by mass immigration.
It’s the working class who can’t get houses, can’t get a doctor’s appointment thanks to the uncontrolled influx of people arriving here.
What Rishi must do now is find a safe country where those arriving can be taken immediately (at least until the Rwanda court case is over). And he needs to talk to Macron this week about an immediate returns policy.
Because for too long immigration policy has been dictated by human rights lawyers and the Left-leaning liberal elite who actually believe that every single person on those boats is fleeing death and persecution, even though statistics have proven that they aren’t. But it suits them to believe that.
A government source this week said: “It’s bad enough that illegal migrants abuse our asylum system to frustrate their removal. But it’s far worse that they can settle here permanently and become a citizen.”
And however much this country is currently at odds with Rishi and the Tories at the moment the vast majority can agree on THAT!
This plan is make or break for Rishi. He knows it. We know it. Let’s hope he’s got the steel to see it through…..
