Immigration: policy barnstorming
RICHARD NORTH
Amid the torrent of (half-baked) policy announcements from Burnham, one issue notably absent from his list has been any statement on immigration – specifically to dinghy illegals outbound from France.
However, with Thursday’s highly publicised invasion of the Spanish enclave by (largely) Moroccan citizens – estimated at nearly 60,000 – that measured silence has come to an abrupt halt as Burnham has been forced to respond to the crisis in the Mediterranean.
So far, though, what he has had to say has not been particularly encouraging. Choosing the white cliffs of Dover for another tiresome video, The Replacement resorted to his usual stratagem of uttering essentially meaningless soundbites as a substitute for anything of substance.
“Rather than play politics with the issue”, he tells us, “we will just deal with it head on, grip it”, which amounts to his government being “relentless” in curbing the number of people arriving in the UK on small boats.
But, unless anyone should think that that means he is going to stop the “invasion”, he quickly adds that “We also need to build a system that offers safe routes for people as well, because that also takes away the selling point of the gangs”.
It doesn’t, of course. The many who would not qualify for “safe” access will continue to use the Channel route and the net effect of this line of thinking might simply be to see an overall increase in the number of so-called asylum seekers reaching these shores.
Yet, there is one clear outcome from the reluctance of Burnham to offer anything specific by way of new control measures. It has given the embattled Reform UK the opportunity to resuscitate its hard line policy on dealing with cross-Channel illegal immigrants.
The Telegraph has the details in an article headed: “Reform pledges to use Navy to stop Ceuta-style ‘invasion’”, the sub-head telling us that the “Party says its ‘Operation Fortress’ would intercept all migrant boats and return them to France or Belgium”
The essence of this is that Reform UK would use the Royal Navy to make the Channel “impenetrable” to small-boat migrants, launching “the biggest military operation in the English Channel since the Second World War to force boats back to France”.
This becomes part of what is grandly called “Operation Fortress”, relying on the precedent set by the Spanish authorities which have, without ceremony, kicked the larger number – around 53,000 – of the Ceuta invaders out of the enclave, back to Morocco, from where they have come.
Reform thinks that the Ceuta situation underlines the “urgency” of its plans for the UK, but home secretary Shabana Mahmood insists that copying the Spanish approach is not possible, and that it was “trickier” to tackle crossings in the Channel.
She argues that the situation in Ceuta is unique to those particular circumstances. Morocco and Spain share a land border, and therefore they have a mutual agreement on the control of migrants.
Through a skein of bilateral treaties – originally rooted in a 1991 Friendship Treaty, a 1992 readmission pact, and modern security updates – Spain relies heavily on Morocco to act as the gatekeeper to Europe’s only land borders with Africa in both Ceuta and Melilla.
Under bilateral readmission rules, Morocco agrees to fast-track the return of its own citizens and, under specific legal conditions, third-country nationals who have entered the Spanish enclaves illegally via Moroccan territory.
What normally happens is that the Moroccan police prevent their own citizens – and migrants passing through – from approaching the border zone so that, in normal times, the flow of illegals into the enclaves is but a trickle, with the migrants being quickly returned.
In this case, though – the Guardian tells us – there has been speculation that the Moroccan authorities deliberately allowed migrants access to the border, to signal their displeasure at Spanish prime minister Sánchez’s recent visit to Algeria in support of efforts to free the disputed territory of Western Sahara from Moroccan occupation.
This has happened before, although not on such a large scale. In May 2021, Rabat loosened border controls, allowing 10,000 people to cross into Ceuta over the course of two days, during a diplomatic standoff triggered after Madrid had allowed a Western Sahara independence leader to be treated for Covid-19 in Spain.
That this may have been behind the incursion is supported by witness statements garnered by the Guardian, which have the Moroccan police shouting at would-be border crossers to “Go, go, go! Run now, run into Spain”.
The night before that they had been beating people who had approached the border but, on the Thursday morning, they were letting people through.
Crucially, it was noted that the police were only allowing Moroccans to cross over. All the sub-Saharan migrants were being pushed back by force. Essentially, the Moroccan government was using its own population as a bioweapon to make a political point.
Thus, Mahmood is arguing that the situation is very different to the smuggling trade that crosses the whole of the Channel, transitioning from French to English waters. “That makes the work that we do different and trickier in many ways”, she says.
She is, of course, right. There are only the sketchiest of parallels but, undeterred, we are told by Reform that its Operation Fortress would intercept any unauthorised boats and detain their occupants, giving them water and food and a medical assessment before returning them under escort on Navy vessels.
This comes from Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesman, who says that: “Britain is being invaded. Tory and Labour governments responded with a free ferry service and free hotels”.
Thus, he asserts, “Nigel Farage will order His Majesty’s Royal Navy to ensure that not a single unauthorised vessel crossing the English Channel makes it to the shores of the United Kingdom. Those who attempt it will be intercepted by our Armed Forces and returned to France”.
The party would set up a joint military command with units from the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, RAF and British Army as well as a surveillance command to track incoming boats. It would pass emergency legislation “as necessary” to give the joint command any further required powers.
And, for all that, the party insists that its plan would be in line with international law and that it would both halt small boat arrivals and act as a humanitarian response.
As an aside, Dan Hodges in the Mail on Sunday has been reviewing the parlous state of Reform and, of Zia Yusuf, he writes that he was described to him by one insider as “completely out of control”. The press office have no idea what he’s going to do or say.
We can’t even be sure, therefore, that Operation Fortress is in fact settled policy and that it isn’t going to be ditched at some time by Farage when his is challenged on it – which seems to happen to an awful lot of Reform policies.
As it stands, the formal Reform policy is set out in its document Operation Restoring Justice which has the party making asylum claims inadmissible if a person enters the country illegally.
Returns agreements would be negotiated with multiple countries and rapid deportation would be arranged. There is no mention of so-called turnbacks in this policy.
This, therefore, looks very much like Yusuf making up policy on the hoof, to capitalise on a topical issue, despite there being no usable lessons. And we have been there before.
Contrary to assertions, turnbacks would breach international law – specifically the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS). In the former case, escorting migrant boats back into French waters without the explicit permission of the French authorities would be an egregious breach of the principle of innocent passage.
Thus, although one Telegraph commentator argues that the chaos in Ceuta “has presented a gift to Reform” which will allow Farage’s party to make hay, the opportunity will quickly turn to dust. All it takes is the realisation that this is another example of Reform’s policy barnstorming, without reference to the real world.
Burnham, for all his vacuity, has nothing to fear.
See Related Article Below
They are NOT Asylum Seekers. They are Weapons Of War
Let’s talk about migration as blackmail and greyzone warfare
ALEX PHILLIPS
The most dangerous organisation in the world is The UN.
As scores of men ransacked the border of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and proceeded to storm the streets shouting Allahu Akbar, smashing windows, scaling balconies, burning cars and brandishing uprooted road signs as poleaxes, Antonio Guterres, its achingly sanctimonious chief, called on the rights and dignity of those involved to be respected.
Not the terrified residents barricaded in their houses. Not the trembling women being swarmed by throngs of alien men. Not the shopkeepers whose stores were being looted. Not the 80,000 people of Ceuta which was assimilated under the Hispanic monarchy in 1580. As a Portuguese you’d think Guterres would lay testimony to the fact the enclave has been an Iberian territory for over half a millennia. As a Socialist, his wont to see that claim destroyed is simmeringly apparent.
Never mind them. They have to prostrate before the beatified invaders. Guterres quietly auto-anointed the feral barbarians (historically apt) attacking force Holier Than Thou refugees.
Except this time, what was really going on was in plain sight.
When the snaking exodus of potential terrorists, woman-stoners, criminals and chancers bulldozed its way across the European continent a decade ago at Mutti Merkel’s twisted invitation, they were leaving warzones. Never mind whether these neo-denizens of our land may have been the ones trying to establish a psychotic death cult caliphate, we must presume them all innocent regardless of the grave threat and murderous intent they may represent. But they were coming from terror riddled, cluster bombed hellholes.
This time, the storming of the borders, with upwards of 60,000 mainly young men overcoming the seemingly abandoned checkpoints, abetted by a sophisticated choreography bussing in swarms by the truck load to the border while Moroccan police provided directional semaphor, was coming from a country that welcomes 200 shorthaul passenger flights a day via 35 European holiday airlines, ferrying the masses in for a spot of sightseeing and sunbathing.
Rabat flexing its muscles against Madrid after Sanchez started getting cosy with Algeria? Nope. Refugees.
Cut throat cartels backed by the anti-Western alliance of Iran, Russia and China coordinating a synchronised storming of Europe’s frontiers? Nope. Refugees.
I can only conclude the UN’s socialist Shahs are determined to execute the erasure of European Civilisation. (Someone is bound to comment with a link to the 2000 document on Replacement Migration published by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs in the United Nations Secretarit. I’ll save them the hassle).
The gaslighting and lies this time were so audacious you’d think the backlash would be strident from corners of media and governance that had bought into the faux narrative of obligation to provide sanctuary to the peril of their own people for a decade, but could not toe the line anymore. Of course not.
The same journalists who write the copy on grooming gangs, sexual assaults, car rammings, radical imams, vape shops, Kurdish barbours and street beheadings utterly refuse to connect the dots.
We have seen Russia and Belarus transit swarthy migrant men, rabid, armed and determined, to the Polish borders to rattle the chicken wire fortified fences. Thankfully tear gas and rubber bullets were the welcome wagon. Never mind. The Belarussians are reportedly digging tunnels to subterraneously undermine the reinforcements. If they do manage to cave through, no doubt they will automatically be recategorised as refugees by Guterres.
We have seen millions flown from Subsaharan Africa and the Middle East to Central America to push through the Southern border of the United States. A wall was built and the unpicking of a decade of flagrant fecklessness is painstakingly underway to the predictable bleeding heart backlash of the brainwashed intellegentia.
We have heard the IRGC brag about penetrating the UK with terrorists and operatives via illegal routes and channel crossings.
We have had it reported the Taliban make millions from false documents, or toll-demanding checkpoints along trafficking routes. Scripts purchased for a scalp to hand to British authorities: Dear Mohammed, We will kill you if you stay, Love, The Taliban
We know the Африканский корпус, or Afrikanskiy korpus is the Wagner mercenary occupying force advancing Russian ‘interests’ in Africa, staging coups, usurping critical minerals and enabling streams of mainly Muslim men to traverse the Sahel to inundate Europe.
Mass Migration is Warfare.
And we are allowing it to happen.
And yet with such faux benign glee have the establishment voices derided Reform UK’s plans for Operation Fortress – the recently announced strategy to deploy the military into the Channel to turn around the boats (we intercept almost every single one already – but fail to turn them back to France).
Haha! Yah Boo Sucks! They jeer, jabbing at their Bête Noir Farage as he tries to reverse a real time invasion. The French won’t allow it, you fool! They mock with pigeon chested perverse delectation, delighting in the boat loads of Maghrebians and Arabs breaking into our country, establishing a multibillion pound blackmarket of trafficking, drug dealing, organ harvesting, slavery, money laundering and dormant terrorism on every high street across the land.
They must have missed the front pages last year when the future probable Premier Ministre de France came to Britain to meet Farage and pledge to take back boats in the post-Macron era.
No. They can’t admit there could be a solution to the infinity crisis, lest revealing there always was a simple out as our civilisation is being laid to waste.
Why is it that the ghost shackles of supranational legislation continues to condone their obstinacy in refusing to admit to their wanton failure? Do they not know the function of government is to propose, repeal or amend any and all legislation in defense of the realm? Would they rather their communities torn apart, than admit they may have been wrong?
We need to make it clear
Words matter.
So shout it loud and shout it always.
Illegal immigration is warfare.
And anyone enabling it is a terrorist.
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(UKR)