Why Nigel Farage is to blame for the small boats migrant crisis
Martin Shipton
You wouldn’t know it from the way he is weaponising the issue for his own political ends, but if there’s one person more responsible for the “small boats” migration crisis than anyone else, it’s Nigel Farage.
Yet far from being blamed, as he should be, for a situation where migrants – both legal and illegal – are risking their lives to reach Britain’s shores, many misguidedly see him as the one blameless politician prepared to call out the incompetence of successive governments.
How has such an absurd position arisen?
The answer lies in the reticence of other political parties, especially Labour, to be upfront about the truth, the failure of most news outlets to hold Farage to account and the dishonest narratives that are awash on social media.
The Dublin Regulation
The fact is that Brexit has made the English Channel more vulnerable to small boat crossings because it has removed the UK from an agreed mechanism that ensured asylum seekers arriving from another EU country could be returned to it to have their applications for asylum processed.
This provision was initially negotiated between EU members back in 1990 and is known as the Dublin Regulation. It remains in force, but because of Brexit we are no longer a party to it.
What does that mean in practice? Before Brexit, when the UK was in the EU, the UK could send asylum seekers back to the EU country that they entered first after escaping persecution in their homeland.
Naturally, the UK could also receive asylum seekers if it was the first country of entry. All this happened automatically under the Dublin Regulation, linked to a shared EU database called Eurodac.
Eurodac is a fingerprint database that helps manage asylum applications and facilitates the implementation of the Dublin Regulation. It stores and compares fingerprints of asylum seekers and irregular migrants to determine which EU member state is responsible for examining an asylum claim. Eurodac also supports law enforcement efforts in investigating, detecting, and preventing terrorism and serious crime.
When someone applies for asylum or is apprehended while crossing an external border illegally, their fingerprints are taken and entered into Eurodac. The database is used by all 27 EU member states and four associated countries: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
Since Brexit the Dublin Regulation has no longer applied to the UK, with the consequence that the UK cannot automatically return asylum seekers to EU countries based on where they first entered.
There is no legal mechanism to send people back unless the UK has a bilateral agreement with that specific EU country – and it doesn’t with most – or the person voluntarily returns.
Channel crossings
Inevitably, there has been an increase in Channel crossings. Since there’s no easy legal way to return people to France or elsewhere, more asylum seekers attempt dangerous boat journeys.
Much media – and social media – attention has been devoted to the workings of a bilateral agreement between the UK and France under which France is being paid to apprehend and take responsibility for migrants seeking to cross to the UK. Under the terms of a new bilateral agreement, for every small boat migrant returned to France, the UK is supposed to process and admit one lawful migrant.
As could easily have been predicted, right-wing tabloids and social media “influencers” have wheeled out anti-French rhetoric to blame France for not doing enough for the millions of pounds it is being paid. But hardly anyone is mentioning that the UK has been put at a considerable disadvantage because of Brexit. And Farage, who did more than anyone to bring Brexit about, is given a free pass whenever he takes to the airwaves to rant about small boats, blaming anyone but himself.
With the help of cowardly politicians from other parties, especially Labour, and cynical news outlets that know his name pulls in viewers and readers, he has created the myth that he is the one politician prepared to stick his neck out and tell the truth about small boat illegal immigrants.
Shamefully, there are plenty of right wing journalists happy to inflame public anger by repeating that a significant proportion of the small boat migrants are rapists, terrorists and other kinds of criminals. Some go as far as to endorse comments made by a woman who encouraged people to burn down hotels providing accommodation for asylum seekers.
But why on earth are politicians from other parties, whose supporters are being lured by Farage’s phoney charisma and lies to the extent that Reform UK is now leading the polls, afraid of calling him out?
‘Lexit’
The Labour Party at Westminster was pathetic in its handling of Brexit, both before and after the referendum. Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership it wasn’t prepared to articulate robustly the economic and geopolitical arguments that made Britain’s membership of the EU a no-brainer. Some in the party clung to a “Lexit” fantasy that imagined a UK outside the EU could create socialism in one country, while others were content to throw in their political lot with racists who whinged about EU citizens being allowed to work in the UK (while ignoring the right of UK citizens to work in other EU countries).
After the Brexit referendum, and Boris Johnson’s “Get Brexit Done” general election victory, the new Labour leader Keir Starmer ordered his MPs to vote for a Brexit he knew would be damaging, thus compromising the party’s credibility if it sought to argue later against its negative impacts as they inevitably emerged. True to expectations, Starmer and his ministers now never mention Brexit at all, despite the fact that there is a wealth of evidence to show it is harming the economy.
Exploitation
So we now have a mad situation where despite most people recognising that Brexit has been bad for Britain – with just 29% in the latest poll saying they would vote to stay out of the EU if there was another referendum – the government of the day will have none of it, and Reform UK, which also doesn’t want to talk about Brexit for obvious reasons, is leading in the polls.
Farage’s successful exploitation of the small boats issue, leading millions to believe he is the hero rather than the villain of the piece, demonstrates what a dangerous demagogue he is. Given the chance, he will follow a Trumpian agenda in Wales and the UK as a whole, slashing public services and pushing policies that favour his party’s wealthy donors.
It’s time for his free pass to end. He must not be allowed to subvert our democracy with his lies. It’s the responsibility of politicians and journalists to call him out.
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Brilliant article Martin. Completely agree with you. Shameless exploitation by Garage and deform and spineless politicians in other parties. Pandering to his whims on the boats and grooming gangs.
Absolutely right, Amir
And now all those people protesting about immigration need to be told loud and clear that (most of them I guess) actually created the issue by voting for Brexit in the first place. So they should protest about themselves.
Quite right, but they won’t. They will always blame someone else. Like little children.
The other relevant factor, which seems to be very rarely mentioned by anyone, is the reality that, just to maintain the population, each couple needs to have, on average, around 2.2 children – the 0.2 to allow statistically for people who remain single or for whatever other reason don’t have children. And I see that at the present time British couples on average are having 1.6 children. The reasons for that, in terms of plain domestic economics these days, are pretty obvious: two incomes needed to make ends meet, coupled with the highest childcare costs of any country in Europe.… Read more »
There’s a third option that dare not speak its name. The reason we need more workers is to pay for the spiralling cost of older people. Reducing that cost would remove the need for immigration or people having more kids than they really want. Perhaps we could set up a massive retirement colony on uninhabited island in the tropics.
Or, maybe, compulsory euthanasia at some age stipulated by the powers that be? Who knows, given the way that things seem currently to be going?!
Quite relevant for me, as I’ll hit the age of 80 at the end of this month!
We all know why Johnson tried to let Covid rip but I prefer the voluntary option of swapping your ever-diminishing state pension for two decades in a Dominican Republic all-inclusive retirement resort.
What – leave Wales?!
Obviously demand here would be low but I was thinking more about the poor souls stuck in a Birmingham high-rise or next to the Swindon ring road, ignored by family, with no community since Thatcher abolished such things, and now forced to choose between heating and eating.
You have a point. But way back in the early 1960s when I was a teenager in Manchester, I remember a mate of mine taking me to see his elderly widowed nan, who lived about eight floors up in a new high-rise ‘overspill’ block in the Pennine foothills of what was then north-eastern Cheshire. Her old terraced house in inner-city Manchester, now over ten miles away, had been demolished as part of a slum clearance project, and her bright new council flat to me seemed really nice, with spectacular views across the moors. But, having been cut loose from everything… Read more »
Do you not think that the Dominican Republic might object to that? Do you not think they are aware of the burden placed on Spanish social services by thousands of retired Brits living and growing old there, without any family support? Why would they want that in the Dominican Republic?
What you are describing is nothing more than a Ponzi investment scheme – i.e. it only works if the numbers continue to escalate. It is a short-term solution to a long-term problem unless you advocate forcibly removing these people when they themselves reach retirement age. Continuous long-term population growth at the current rate is quite evidently not sustainable: net immigration over the last three years (2022+2023+2024) totals 2.2 million. This is about the same as the population of the UK’s 2nd largest city (Birmingham). Do you believe we can build a new Birmingham every three years? Did you factor the… Read more »
The state pension is a Ponzi scheme. Nothing new about that. I notice you don’t offer any solutions.
The solution is to return the national insurance system to its original intent – i.e. remove the ability of the government to use national insurance to pay for things that should be paid for out of taxation and return welfare to a safety net for a small number of deserving cases. We prevented companies stealing from their company pension scheme decades ago, but we still have a situation where the government helps itself to national insurance any time it chooses. I notice you haven’t told me where or when the new Birmingham will be built to accommodate net migration, nor… Read more »
I think your Birmingham question was meant for John as my solution was to reduce the burdensome cost of older people.
Birmingham is in England not Cymru it’s not our problem.The problem Cymru faces is mass uncontrolled Immigration from the East of its Border.
Funny how people who advocate free movement of people across Europe often have a different view of free movement within the UK.
You mean the Brexiteers that demand free movement for economic migrant retirees priced out of England.
Free movement across Europe will also apply to Wales when we join the EU.
Any EU citizen would then be able to live and work in Wales, and Welsh citizens as EU citizens would be able to live and work in any EU country.
England would have to join the EU to have the same privileges.
That is fair.
Sorry to disappoint you John, but Farage has called for couples to have more children.
Presumably, he’s trying to recruit fewer Onanists to Reform.
I’d not seen that. Well, maybe – just for once! – he might be right on that one.
You’re on a slippery slope !
😉
I assume you’re referring to controlled migration of individuals with skills required in the UK, which this article isnt about. Also need to consider the number of individuals coming into the country, along with their depends and the cost of this. Interesting that the number dependant on the state has risen by 1 million during the Labour government alone, employment is down whilst the state has grown by 1.6 million net over the last 2 years alone. Immigration and ‘birth rates’ are clearly not the only variables that need to be considered for the sake of the long-term prospects of… Read more »
I was simply alluding to the cold hard fact of the statistics. ‘Skills required in the UK’, while by no means unimportant, are essentially secondary to the fact that, as matters now currently stand, without inward migration the working population is inexorably set to decline.
With the inevitable consequence that an ever-increasing number of economically inactive citizens would need to be supported by a diminishing number of economically active taxpayers.
Everyone should share this article with all their friends on social media.
UK Labour could easily bring back the Brexit issue by starting the process of rejoining the EU and highlighting, big time, the hurt Brexit is now doing to the UK economy. Yes, the party would risk taking part of the blame for the predicament we are in and also losing some leave voters (though there aren’t many that’ll admit they voted leave these days!) but nothing compared to the hurt to Farage and Reform if the debate resurfaced. Ultimately, Farage and his lies are the reason there are so many small boats crossing the channel and why the country’s economy… Read more »
I couldn’t agree more, Steve D.
There are two further issues that are rarely discussed: European Union procurement policy is to buy from its’ members – so limited supply-chain in Northern Africa, so that region economy is contracting, so higher levels of migrants travelling to Southern Europe. UK voted Brexit, so could support the economic development of Northern Africa – but instead UK government is obsessed with single sourcing major public sector contracts to amazon / google / microsoft (at expense of UK organisations) and allowing them to register their profits in low tax havens such as Dublin. Secondly, France segregates its’ economic migrants and has… Read more »
The causes of migration are important and should be addressed (Cameron’s meddling in Libya was a big contributor) but this is separate to the specific point that the UK was more insulated than the rest of Europe thanks to a combination of the Channel and Dublin. What we’re seeing now is just what Europe has always experienced in recent years. In that sense, Brexit has made us more European.
You do your research. We will figure out how to fix the economy, cost of living crisis, public services and the UK in general. But, nothing is more important to you than the boats.
Reopening the Brexit debate might feel cathartic, but it risks alienating voters, reigniting division, and giving Farage the conflict he thrives on— Our beloved Labour’s path to progress lies in fixing Brexit’s damage pragmatically, not relitigating the past
But Garage blames everyone else except himself for the small boat debacle. Rejoining the EU will stop the boats. Brexit has demonstrated that we have no real control over our borders.
There’s will be a new agreement to replace the Dublin agreement in 2026 where all EU members will have the responsibility to share the immigration problem equally to ensure fair distribution.
Ireland is a member of the European Union yet migration there has reached overwhelming proportions in a very short time, so perhaps remaining in the EU would have made no difference or even exacerbated the situation!
It’s almost ridiculous having a discussion about rejoining – zero chance of the EU even entering into ascension talks whilst Reform are likely to win a majority at the next GE. It’ll be 15-20 years until this is a serious proposition. I agree, it’s just damage limitation until then
Next GE years away. Deform feeds on division, rich people’s money and oil and gas. Eventually , Allah willing, it will get so bloated and either float away or burst.
We don’t need to rejoin. We just need a Swiss style deal that gives us the economic and security benefits we had before. The political integration project is totally separate.
We have been denied this choice. It’s undemocratic.
Who denied this choice?
The 2016 referendum should’ve had multiple options to choose from, especially when so many on both sides were promising we wouldn’t leave the single market and customs union.
Agreed. It was all or nothing.
Without “all” being defined. Why didn’t we leave Eurovision, Euromillions and UEFA? That makes as much sense as leaving EFTA which isn’t run by the EU.
The article fails to note that many supporters of Jeremy Corbyn spent time and effort campaigning for Remain. Many of those who whinged afterwards did not.
The leader’s support was begrudging. There can be no doubt this made the difference between a narrow loss and a win. Corbyn wasn’t just leader of a political party. He was the leader of the official opposition. He failed to step up to that responsibility and is responsible for everything that happened as a result. Not just Brexit, but Trump, Farage, Reform, Ukraine and Gaza. None of these would’ve played out as they have had Remain triumphed. The only question is this. Did he implicitly back Leave out of narrow minded ignorance, or was he intending to nudge the world… Read more »
So you did nothing, you just moan. Ive no patience.
The question is about Mr Corbyn.
Did he implicitly back Leave out of narrow minded ignorance, or was he intending to nudge the world to WW3 and armageddon, in the hope of rebuilding a socialist utopia from the smoking glowing ruins of humanity?
Because those waiting for disaster before changing the world should ask themselves this. What guarantee is there that humanity would even be rebuilt with the desired political system?
The survivors in the next cave might be die hard Thatcherites, and their anti-society message of every man for themselves and survival of the fittest might win the day.
I see that conspiracy theorists are not confined to the far right. Corbyn did not ‘implicitly back Leave’, he opposed it. He was not blindly enthusiastic, but how could he have been after EU policies had wrecked tens of millions of lives through austerity? We had to make the case that another Europe was possible. in my campaigning for Remain (of which of course you have no recollection), I never met anyone who said, ‘I’m voting Leave because that’s what Corbyn really wants’. Racism promoted by Farage was an issue, and Corbyn has always challenged that, unlike the craven submission… Read more »
It’s about time the left-left took some responsibility for Boris Johnson.
Corbyn didn’t need to be blindly enthusiastic about the EU. He just needed to communicate the urgency of voting against the billionaire’s project to rollback rights and protections, and the dangers of letting unbridled Toryism run riot without the restrictions of EU membership.
He, more than most, knew what they would be capable of having sat next to them for decades.
So why focus on EU imperfections? It makes no sense unless he wanted it to happen.
Repeating Cameron and Osborne in eulogising the EU would have destroyed all credibility. Labour’s 2017 position of accepting the referendum result but seeking a new partnership with the EU was not very contentious at the time among the 40% who voted Labour (3 million more than did so last year). As I remember Keir Starmer arguing at a meeting in Cardiff in 2018, to do otherwise would destroy belief in democracy. It was the campaign to reverse the people’s 2016 vote that proved so damaging in 2019, giving us Johnson and a hard Brexit. Despite winning more votes then than… Read more »
All of that would’ve been irrelevant if Mr Corbyn had used his privileged platform to explain that we needed the EU to keep the Tories muzzled. We can only speculate why instead he chose to release the hounds.
Reversing the referendum was impossible but the 5 conditions proposed by Labour in January 2019 would have ‘muzzled the Tories’, which was why Theresa May would not accept them.
Corbyn’s biggest problem in 2019 was not the EU. It was being stabbed in the back by many of his own MPs, who preferred to keep the Tories in power than have Corbyn as PM.
In 2019 he was still responsible for Brexit.
Brexit had already been decided. If Labour’s right wing had focused on softening the terms that might have been winnable but their priority was bringing Corbyn down.
Because he was responsible for Brexit. That made his brand toxic. It cost Labour the 2017 election because many remainers couldn’t get behind a dishonest Leaver.
Your attempts to rewrite history are becoming more and more desperate. Labour’s 2017 manifesto pledge of respecting the referendum result and seeking a new partnership caused little controversy. The idea that large number of people refused to vote Labour because in your imagination Corbyn wanted to leave the EU is pure fantasy.
You’re forgetting that Labour won 3 million more votes in 2017 than it did last year. We would never have achieved that by refusing to acknowledge the referendum.
Constantly trying to conflate the causes of the referendum result with what followed is dishonest. What followed would be completely irrelevant if the leader of the official opposition had done their job and explained to the unsure that the choice was between more of the same (with potential to improve the partnership by building support with like-minded parties in other member states) vs something very much worse. Millions will never forgive Corbyn for enabling the second choice.
Campaigning for ‘more of the same’ would have been an utter disaster, both for the attempt to stay in the EU and for the Labour Party. That you can even suggest it confirms how disconnected you were from the arguments in 2016. The very word ‘Remain’ was a liability. I was briefly involved in the group Another Europe is Possible, which sought to offer a progressive alternative within the EU to the policies followed by the bloc’s leaders. But it was too little too late. A fairer criticism would be that with our attention focused on ending austerity and war,… Read more »
In what world is more of the same worse than worse?
Please share your successes in convincing those on zero hour contracts or queuing at foodbanks to vote Remain for ‘more of the same’.
Oh, I forgot. You didn’t do anything in 2016 so you won’t have any experiences to share.
“don’t let the billionaires win”
How hard was that?
Yes, argued that. But in truth the billionaires were split on the issue.
Only those willing to pay fair taxes were happy with continued membership because the EU was gunning for the aggressive tax avoiders. Why Mr Corbyn was uncomfortable with that is anyone’s guess.
Again, check your facts. There certainly were wealthy people who saw the opportunity to profit from Leave, but a large majority of big businesses, organisations representing them, and the main global institutions of the financial establishment backed Remain. As of course did Cameron and Osborne.
This was a serious problem for those of us trying to argue that Remain was in the interest of those whose lives had been ruined by EU-encouraged austerity.
“Billionaires” refers to super wealthy individuals who are increasingly controlling the global narrative, not corporations with over a billion pound turnover.
You seem unable to see the world except through conspiracy theories. Billionaires were a less significant force in the 2016 referendum than you imagine.
Far more important was the complacency of those who could not grasp why people whose lives had been ruined by EU austerity would not want to remain as they were. Only recognising that had any possibility of winning them round, certainly not ‘more of the same’.
Yet the Corbynistas all blame the right wing media for his 2017 and 2019 losses. Media outlets owned by .. billionaires. It can’t both be true that billionaires kept Corbyn out of power but had no influence on the UK leaving an economic partnership that was coming for their aggressive tax avoidance.
Labour in 2017 beat all expectations, despite media hostility, winning 3 million more votes than Labour could last year.
2019 was difficult (although Corbyn still won more votes than would Starmer) but our biggest difficulty was not the media but internal sabotage by MPs and others who preferred a hard Brexit to a Corbyn government.
And Hillary won the popular vote.
It’s not about the number of votes. It’s about winning, because being in government is the only way to change things.
Wrong.
If it hadn’t been for movements like the Chartists or the suffragettes, we wouldn’t even have the right to choose a government.
There is great disillusionment because changing government has changed so little. No new government has ever lost support as quickly as Starmer’s.
Of course it’s about winning. But since you raise reform, none of the last decade would’ve happened had Labour backed AV in 2011. So you can add Ed Milliband to Labour’s pro-worse blame list if that makes you feel better. Because by now, under AV, it’s likely that a left-left party would already exist and be in coalition government with other left and centre left parties, and actually influencing government policy rather than waving banners and chanting. It’s only under FPTP that elections can only be won by an opposition party pitching from the centre ground. Also the 2011 vote… Read more »
I admit I wasn’t keen on AV in 2011, as it seemed designed to keep the austerity-backing LibDems in power. But FPTP has clearly had its day, although the list system chosen for Senedd elections shifts power from the electorate to party machines, and seems to have few supporters except for Labour MSs who think it will help them retain their seats.
Public protest is vital in a democracy. Arresting pensioners for carrying cardboard is a disgrace.
“I can’t back something that’s in my best interests because someone who I don’t agree with also supports it”
That is exactly why the left-left will remain in electoral purgatory. Grab your placards because there’s no future in government.
Your words not mine. Strategy in 2016 was influenced by the experience of the Scottish referendum two years earlier, when Labour had run a campaign indistinguishable from that of the Tories and had been rewarded with electoral catastrophe the following year. Of course Corbyn did not want to repeat that.
Why did it need to be the same campaign? The Blues could focus on reduced red tape, cheaper prices and smaller more efficient government. The Reds could sell a message of solidarity and partnership in a range of global progressive causes including tackling the billionaires avoiding tax, the solid employment protections the Cons couldn’t erode, and the protectionism keeping jobs safe from unfair global competition. But when you look back even further than 2011 you start to see a pattern of behaviour in the left-left, a learned helplessness that’s kept the Tories in power for most of the last one… Read more »
Let’s try again with some facts. The EU has never taxed billionaires: Oxfam has this year launched a campaign for it to do so. The EU was destroying jobs through austerity not protecting them: in 2016, 20 million people were unemployed across the EU. But Corbyn still made the case for Remain, putting protection of workers’ rights against the Tories at the heart of it. I was largely motivated by the need to stop the far right in what became a plebiscite on migration in the final weeks, an issue on which Corbyn was far stronger than other senior Labour… Read more »
This was the direction of travel in 2016:
https://www.internationaltaxreview.com/article/2a68raha94goaj1qeyqne/eu-2016-the-year-of-eu-corporate-tax-reform-and-fiscal-transparency
It was a direct threat to the London’s status as the global capital of dirty money.
https://www.ft.com/video/d3bafb94-9dbd-4c1e-8016-8cd8331960f1
So we had to leave.
You forget that Cameron had already negotiated opt-outs for the City.
Are you obsessed with 2016 because you can’t face today’s reality of a UK government that has failed to deliver anything of substantial benefit in over a year in office, preferring to indulge in racism and repression?
An opt-out that Labour was free to remove.
Again, the EU was gunning for the tax avoiders and Corbyn preferred to help the billionaires keep more of their money.
Labour was not in government. If we had been, we would not have needed the EU to tell us to tax billionaires, which the EU has talked about but not done.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-wealth-eu-surges-nearly-eu400-million-day-2024-new-billionaire-nearly
Er, seriously? An opt-out can be un-opted out at any time. One government cannot bind the next.
And it’s about global transparency. You can’t tax what you don’t know about. This is why it needs to be done through global partnerships.
Because billionaires will be able to avoid tax until all the non-failed states come together and agree they shouldn’t. Europe in lockstep would’ve been a leading force for change in this area.
And if the EU didn’t follow through it’s because the UK left and without London and the UK tax havens on board it’s just a bit pointless.
The EU certainly has the size and economic power to take on big capital, one reason I voted Remain. But it cannot do that while it is dominated by right-wing politicians, including those from parties that once claimed to represent working people. The idea that the EU would have taxed billionaires if only the UK hadn’t left is nonsense. The UK was a persistent obstacle to such steps, and would have continued to be so under both the Tories and Starmer/Reeves, elected under the pretence that they would do something for ordinary people but in practice only serve the rich… Read more »
If the EU did it without London, London would benefit from capital flight to familiar territory just 26 miles over the water. It had to be a European project to avoid regional pain. And the lurch to the right in Europe was part of a global shift triggered by Brexit which means that’s also Corbyn’s fault. You know it’s fair to say, when all is said and done at the end of the day, that the least well-off would be better off, the marginalised less marginalised, the oldest not choosing between heating and eating, and the workers more empowered if… Read more »
Corbyn didn’t even go to university. Put your prejudices away. If there had been a left government in Britain, it would have backed a Europe-wide plan to increase taxes on the wealthy that included the UK, whether or not we were in the EU. Reeves could propose that today if she wanted to, but of course she won’t. Even more of the oldest (and disabled people) would have to choose between heating and eating if protests, public opinion, and residual decency in some Labour MPs, had not forced Reeves to reverse her plans to cut winter fuel payments and PIPs.… Read more »
Seems to me you’d rather get rid of this government and have the RefCon alliance make these choices. Because that’s the alternative on the table. And the left-left have always preferred worse over more of the same. Because when someone enters politics professionally they should be prepared to do whatever is necessary to gain power to deliver some of the change they want to see. If they are not prepared to do whatever is necessary, such as appealing to voters they don’t really agree with, or doing deals with political opponents, they gift power to those that are prepared to… Read more »
It’s interesting that you are readier to do deals with political opponents than to tolerate the presence of dissidents within the Labour Party. Corbyn and Sultana would never have had to launch their new party if they and so many more of us had not been driven out. I was never a supporter of New Labour, but the first year of Blair’s government delivered real progressive change in several areas, such as FOI, HRA, Good Friday agreement, devolution, minimum wage, all of which were delivered despite Brown sticking to the budget limits he inherited from Ken Clark. Starmer has achieved… Read more »
The so-called broad church parties, both Labour and Conservative, are a huge problem for our democracy. Think about it from the voters perspective. Someone wants Corbynism but gets Blairism. Someone else wants to be governed by so-called One Nation Conservatives and ends up with Boris Johnson or Liz Truss. And worst of all the switch between the political extremes of a single party can happen within a parliament and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. It’s very bad democracy. The Cons are now splitting into traditional conservatives and libertarian extremists, aka dark and light blues, so voters will finally… Read more »
So drop the rhetoric about splitting the vote.
‘To govern’ but to what end? Surely the whole purpose of Labour has been to improve people’s lives. Now that has been abandoned.
I’ve never made a point about splitting the vote. If London Labour want to benefit from this they should use this as a reason to change the voting system. Without Corbyn’s party it’d look like an anti-Reform stitch up but now it can be sold on voter fairness with all this extra choice on offer.
And right now, simply not being a Tory government is good enough for many. It’s only the left-left that miss them.
Apologies, I misread the implications of your earlier comment ‘Seems to me you’d rather get rid of this government and have the RefCon alliance make these choices. Because that’s the alternative on the table.’ as ‘splitting the vote has been a common attack from Labour on the ‘Your Party’ initiative. All the opinion polls indicate that ‘simply not being a Tory government’ is good enough for a declining proportion of voters. Reeves quickly ended any honeymoon period, and the polls suggest only half of those who voted Labour last year would do so now. London Labour may think it has… Read more »
Bryce, suggesting Brexit encouraged the US to vote for Trump, enabled Putin to invade Ukraine and caused the conflict in Gaza is patently absurd! Would you be so kind as to explain how you got to these conclusions? Were you aware that the US also voted for Trump in 2016 (i.e. before Brexit), that Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 (i.e. before Brexit), and that there has been conflict between Gaza and Israel since Hamas took control in 2007 (i.e. long before Brexit)?
You’ll notice that immediately after Brexit Farage was paraded by the Trump campaign team at his Nuremberg rallies. That meant his message of taking back control was a genuine vote winner in the US. It’s likely that resonated enough with Americans, who all know about the evil motherland, to nudge him to victory. Remember Hillary won the popular vote. That’s how close it was.
The rest is just a result of the chaos that followed.
Brexit was helpful to Trump, although it’s unlikely it was decisive, so it’s a pity you did nothing to help Remain win.
Brexit didn’t cause Ukraine or Gaza, both of which crises have their own deep roots. Read some history.
I wasn’t the leader of Her Maj’s Official Opposition.
And I didn’t say Brexit caused them. I said “none of these would’ve played out as they have” had Trump not been elected.
Words matter.
And Brexit was in June 2016 and Trump won in November 2016.
The referendum may have been in 2016, but you may remember it took a few more years before anything actually changed. Regardless, I think you overestimate how much attention the American public pays to British politics – I spend a fair amount of time in the US, so speak from some experience here.
…and your justification for claiming the invasion of Ukraine and Gaza were caused by Brexit is what exactly?
If it wasn’t influential Team Trump wouldn’t have paraded Farage around.
And without Trump, Russia would’ve stopped at Crimea, and the right-wing lunatics running the Israeli government wouldn’t have had a hall pass to raze Gaza to the ground.
Putin invaded Crimea when Obama was in the Whitehouse. Putin invaded Ukraine again when Biden was in the Whitehouse.
Similarly, Israel invaded Gaza in 2014 (Obama) and again in 2023 (Biden).
Somehow you blame Trump for all of this and extrapolate that blame to Farage. Remarkable.
Putin would’ve stopped at Crimea without Trump destabilising and weakening the global order. And if you don’t see that Israel has taken its Gaza strategy to a totally new level under Trump then your ostrich head is well and truly buried.
The Dublin agreement sounded good in principle but didn’t work in practice. UK received more transfers than it sent back! There was nothing ‘automatic’ about it, we had to apply to other countries who would, more often than not reject our request. Farage is the symptom of illegal immigration NOT the cause
Hahaha Farage is the symptom same as Boris with his promise of Net Zero Migration.
I do believe that Nigel will be the next PM and reality will tell him he’s as much chance of stopping the boats as King Canute had of stopping the Sea.
It’s spelt Cnut. If you’re using it in a sentence containing Nigel or Farage, make sure your spell check is off!
I shall also remember that if I have to mention ringleaders of Migrant Hotel Protests and Far Right YouTube Auditors.
We received more than we sent back because they weren’t coming because it was a deterrent. We left and no small boat crossings turned into 45,000. Do you really need this explaining?
Ok explain this…
2018:
Incoming requests 1,940 (1,215 implemented 33%)
Outgoing requests 5,510 (209 implemented 4%)
As others have said before small boats migrants used other methods (e.g. trucks)
So 1,215 in and 5,302 not transferred out (yet). Plus the 299 small boat arrivals (which may be double counted).
That’s a net increase of 6,815 asylum seekers or bona fide refugees in 2018, inside the Dublin deterrent.
Fast forward to 2022, two years after Johnson’s deal kicks in and we have 45,774 small boat arrivals.
45,774 asylum seekers is nearly 7 times greater than 6,815.
Which was the better arrangement?
And it’s not so that arrivals have switched methods because there’s a corresponding increase in the number claiming asylum.
Only people who want to claim asylum openly arrive on a boat intending to be picked up by the authorities. Those who just want to break in to work off the books don’t want to be spotted because they’ll be deported. They are still arriving in the backs of lorries.
What changed was that inside Dublin anyone who arrived with a genuine claim could be immediately returned to the first safe country for processing and if successful end up anywhere in Europe. There’s no point risking life and big money on the crossing to reach the UK only to end up in Germany. Outside Dublin anyone reaching the UK with a legitimate claim gets to stay in the UK. Suddenly risking life and money on the crossing is worth it. It may be that not many were actually returned but the threat was credible enough to act as a real… Read more »
We were able to return immigrants to Calais, now we have to keep them all because of Farage.
This article fails to address the ‘pull’ factors that bring migrants here in the first place, free housing, food, clothing, cash, phones the list could go on.
Plus the fact that it isn’t necessary to send those that are deemed ineligible to remain here back to an EU country, they can be returned to the country of origin.
Don’t believe everything that GBeebies News tells you.Migrants in hotels only recive a benefit of £9 a week.Refugees and Asylum Seekers would love to work but the law prevents them until their residential status is approved.
…but they do receive the benefit of free food and accommodation – that costs an awful lot more than £9 per week! In fact it is currently costing the country £40 million per week, during a period in which the country is struggling to balance the books even though the government is raising taxes and cutting spending.
Does HST2,a blank cheque book for Zelensky and the tax payer bail out of the Banks Ring any bells with you? I can tell you that it’s costing the tax payer a much larger fee than the £40 million a week you have mentioned to pay the benefits of work shy Brits who have no intention of ever doing an honest days work. Maybe if there were safe routes for Migrants as there are for people from the Ukraine then there would be no need to put these people in hotels in the First Place. If anything I’m more concerned… Read more »
Your assumption that I get my thoughts from gbn come across as ignorant and rude. Believe it or not a mere woman can have their own views not have to hear or read them!
The pull factor was the same in 2016 but we didn’t need hotels then. What changed?
Calais.
Those that think it has nothing to do with Brexit are in denial.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1171253/small-boat-channel-crossings-in-the-uk
299 small boat crossings in 2018.
The number rises to 1843 in 2019 as some chance their luck when May’s deal turns into chaos.
As Johnson’s oven ready deal kicks in this number jumps to 8466 but covid restrictions mask the true impact of his deal.
Easing of restrictions result in 28,526 crossings in 2021, jumping to 45,774 in 2022.
Meanwhile numbers arriving into Europe have remained below their 2015 peak. All that changed was our relationship with Europe.
Interesting article. However, it’s worth stressing ‘Dublin III’ never really worked that well for the Uk, when we were in the EU. first of all, we had to accept migrants from Greece and Italy to balance the load, so under the system we were a net receiver of migrants. The number we sent back to, for example, France was small, we’re talking only a few hundred per year, well under 10% of those we had hoped to return. The primary reason for this was that migrants had to be returned within 3 months, after which the UK became responsible for… Read more »
We received more than we sent back because they weren’t coming because it was a deterrent. We left the deterrent and no small boat crossings turned into 45,000. What more evidence do you need that it was working?
What a ridiculous thing to say that the Dublin treaty helped us, at least look at the figures before spouting this nonsense.
The UK accepted more incoming transfers than it sent out. For example,
in 2019, the UK accepted about 714 incoming Dublin transfers but removed only around 263 people.
Yet the number of arrivals has rocketed after 2019
And to avoid accepting 714 vetted refugees genuinely fleeing war and persecution from Europe you’ve created a situation where 45,000 unknowns are turning up to claim asylum as the international rules require them to do.
Give yourself a pat on the back.
Do you think the french would accept 45000 people back if we had still been in the EU? Of course not, and it’ll be easy to delay the return each of those migrants by 3 months so they would be UK’s responsibility anyway.
The reasons for the increase are numerous but the main one was some of the other European routes had a strong clamp down, meaning fewer migrants ended up in Southern and eastern European nations
There wouldn’t be 45,000 to return with a deterrent. There are only 45,000 because we removed the deterrent. Do you know how deterrent works?
Sorry, that’s a delusional viewpoint. i can’t imagine any migrant knew about ‘Dublin III’ especially when people in the UK barely understand the protocols that emerged from it, based on the comments in this forum
If we had learned anything over the past few years we know that professional gangs are running a lot of the operations, status move to parts of Europe where it’s easier to make money
Professional gangs exploited a new opportunity that did not exist before. What changed was that inside Dublin anyone who arrived with a genuine claim could be immediately returned to the first safe country for processing and if successful end up anywhere in Europe. There’s no point risking life and big money on the crossing to reach the UK only to end up in Germany. Outside Dublin anyone reaching the UK with a legitimate claim gets to stay in the UK. Suddenly risking life and money on the crossing is worth it. It may be that not many were actually returned… Read more »
I think you’ve read too much stuff online. I’m guessing you, your friends or family members don’t work in the area of immigration enforcement. Sorry, but you’re talking about the theory of Dublin III as perhaps how it was presented in the Guardian, not how it worked in practice. Dublin III didn’t work for the UK for the reason listed above.
We didn’t need hotels in 2016.
Only one thing changed. Boris Johnson took us out of a returns agreement.
Farage actually loves the boats, the more that arrive the more grist for his hate mongering mill. Where would he be without them?
Spot on Martin.
Another Daft argument that Corbyn didn’t do anything ,you are suggesting that the voters would have voted remain which wasn’t the case given the Tories and big money interests inside and outside the UK arranged a campaign based on lies which the voters fell for .
“Jeremy Corbyn Allies ‘Sabotaged’ Labour’s In Campaign On The EU Referendum, Critics Claim”
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jeremy-corbyn-allies-sabotaged-labour-in-campaign-and-fuelled-brexit_uk_576eb1b5e4b0d2571149bb1f
If you don’t think political parties can influence voters, which includes persuading them to vote at all, what’s the point of anyone campaigning for anything.
Anti-Corbyn MPs tried to blame Corbyn for their own failure to challenge racism. Labour members gave a decisive rebuttal to the claims in this article by re-electing Corbyn as leader with an even bigger majority.
EU Law: migrants landing in an EU country have to register within 7 days of landing
EU Law: it is illegal to move in Schengen areas without a passport.
If the EU followed their own laws migrantsshould be arrested. Exactly as a I would be. Once arrested they would the responsibility of the country in which they had been arrested.
Every migrant crossing the channel in small boats are not from Iraq or Syria or any other country. They are migrants from EU. EU is unable or unwilling to apply it’s own laws and is therefore a failed state.
If you want to influence their rules you need to be a member. Why should they stop people passing through to a third country? What’s in it for them?
I agree with the author’s sentiments; but it’s a bit of a stretch to blame Farage alone. The referendum wasn’t actually much about Europe in my view. It was more about disillusioned people voting the opposite of what most mainstream politicians wanted. Allied to a truly awful and complacent Remain campaign (in Wales and the UK) and an effective use of b*llsh*t from Leave. It’s depressing that history may repeat itself next year. Farage may be a charlatan; but if events teach us anything, attacking him without articulating an alternative is completely ineffective.
Wonder how the leave lot got so much traction. farage was the figure head, this action benefited putin to a great degree. Have to wonder who was yanking whose strings. Willingly or a dup? He runs away now from question on it, It scares him.
I’d love to find out that Russia was behind it all but until there’s leaked verified footage of Mr Farage receiving a briefcase of cash in the Kremlin we’ll have to assume that a large proportion of the electorate knew what they were voting for and actually wanted things to get worse.
Is your determination to blame everything on Brexit a response to the guilt you feel for having done nothing to stop it in 2016?
How did Brexit benefit Putin? Putin never had any respect for the EU regardless of whether the UK was in it or not. Putin only respects two things – military might and, to a lesser extent, sanctions. The EU has none of the former and economic sanctions can be deployed together regardless of whether we are a member of the EU. Were you aware that Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014? Can you tell me what the EU did about it?
It weakened Europe. That’s good for someone who wants to rebuild the USSR.
It is clear enough that the EU is not an influential player in resolution of the Ukraine conflict, just the same as it wasn’t influential in 2014. Many European countries (EU members and non-members alike) have donated military equipment and skills over the last couple of years, but these decisions are made independent of Brussels. If Ukraine had to wait for the EU to come to a consensus before sending military aid, they would still be waiting for the first shipment. Intervention in Ukraine would be governed by the Common Foreign and Security Policy which requires unanimous agreement of the… Read more »
It still weakened Europe.
Let’s not forget that the worst thing about small boats is that people are risking their lives in them.
Which wouldn’t be happening if Corbyn had done his job properly in 2016.
As you couldn’t be bothered to campaign in 2016, stop blaming others. The decisive factor was not Labour voters (who followed Corbyn and voted heavily for Remain) but those who had not voted in recent elections but turned out to vote heavily for Leave. It was impossible to explain to them how great their lives were under the EU, because for millions they weren’t. Only a critical stance had any chance of winning them round. We had to try to explain why remaining in the EU did not mean remaining in the dire straits of their lives. It wasn’t easy.… Read more »
What was the point of dancing in the street if Corbyn and Farage were in cahoots?
I think you meant to say Starmer and Farage, as Labour has adopted Reform’s agenda on migration. Corbyn has consistently opposed everything Farage stands for.
Except Farage would be a footnote in history today if Corbyn had done his job.
Whether Corbyn’s support for Farage was intentional or accidental doesn’t really matter. The result was the same and completely foreseeable to someone with Corbyn’s decades of experience in SW1.
You must be really worried about Corbyn’s return to the forefront of politics. The old lie that criticising Israel is antisemitic won’t wash any more, so try to blame him for Brexit.
i guess you have no ideas about how to tackle today’s problems.
Today’s problems are global and need to be tackled with strong international partnerships. A true progressive would want to be working closely with other progressives around the world, and particularly within Europe. Only regressives like Farage and Corbyn want to walk away from that. The only thing worse than an open regressive like Farage is a fake progressive like Corbyn.
I see your true colours are coming out: teal rather than red.
Today’s problems certainly are global, a comment I have frequently made against the more isolationist variants of nationalism I sometimes see here. That is why ‘Your Party’ will seek to build links with others who also put people, planet and peace above profit and power, such as La France Insoumise, Occupy Democrats, or the worldwide movement against genocide in Gaza.
“don’t vote for worse”
No progressive struggles to sell that message.
Do you ever talk to anyone outside your bubble?
The point is about the ambivalence of those selling it, not how well received it is.
Messaging is all about how it is received. Try it some time.
Messaging can’t be received if a clear “don’t vote for worse” is replaced by the radio silence and occasional embarrassed mumbling we got from Team Corbyn
Some of us got out and tried to win the vote; you and so many others just indulged in lazy complacency. That’s what lost the vote.
I’m baffled by this suggestion that Dear Leader doesn’t need to shoulder any of the blame. Why doesn’t the buck of Labour’s lacklustre campaign stop with him? That’s the whole point of a leader. Fact is, it’s all part of a much bigger problem in UK politics – this need for a cult leader who can do no wrong. Not just Corbyn, but Thatcher, Farage, Blair and Johnson. Because there’s an immaturity in political discourse. The tantrums, defensiveness, denial and contorted justifications are like kids who’ve not yet discovered their parents are imperfect being told they’re imperfect. It’s time to… Read more »
You demonstrate very well the immaturity of political discourse. ‘Tantrums, defensiveness, denial and contorted justifications’ describes accurately your comments in this thread.
If our elected lawmakers had not let us all down, we would not be in the mess we find ourselves in today.
“If our elected lawmakers had not let us all down, we would not be in the mess we find ourselves in today”
Including, of course, the Leader of the Opposition in 2016.
Corbyn did better than most. If you want to blame those who claimed they supported Remain for not winning, start with Cameron and Osborne.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48039984
Between three and four million of Corbyn’s voters backed Leave. Leave won by less than 1.3m. I don’t need to blame Cameron or Osborne for that.
You can’t blame all that on Corbyn, who despite being leader had quite limited control on how the party functioned. Many of those who after the referendum were eager to denounce him had done little or nothing to win the vote. Welsh Labour discouraged canvassers in the 2016 Senedd election from making the case for Remain.
Yet it’s repeatedly claimed that Corbyn won more votes than Starmer. But if 4 million ignored Corbyn in 2016 how can it be claimed that Corbyn personally won their vote in 2017 and 2019? Either he was influential or he wasn’t.
You’re scraping the barrel now. At least 2/3 of Labour’s 2015 voters chose Remain. You keep ignoring those who had not voted in 2015 because they were disillusioned. The referendum turnout was several percentage points above that in the 2015 GE. Those extra voters were never going to be convinced by ‘more of the same’.
As leader, Corbyn had influence but never control over the party. Most of his MPs and of those employed by the party sought to sabotage much of what he tried to do.
As pointed out elsewhere the “more of the same” message did just fine in 2011.
By 2016, there had been 5 more years of austerity.
What good is a political faction if it can’t even make the case for voting reform.
People at the time said AV isn’t good enough and they only want PR so rejected AV. Now we have PR in Wales and people are screaming that the very proportional party lists aren’t democratic enough and we should have STV. Which is just AV with multiple winners.
So everyone who rejected AV in 2011 because they didn’t like the Dems should go sit in a corner and have a long hard think about the avoidable mess they caused.
Did you actively campaign for AV in 2011, or did you sit that out as well?
The big issue in 2011 was not the EU but austerity. Preserving the Tory-LibDem coalition in power indefinitely did not seem a great idea.
Do you now acknowledge this was a mistake?
We’ll never know how 2015 would’ve played out under AV but assuming another Con-Lib coalition is completely unjustified. It might have been Lab-Lib-Green if people could vote for what they really wanted before having to vote tactically. Or even Lab-Green.
Instead your short-term self-interested myopic political strategy gave us a decade of unbridled Toryism.
Or is this denial another example of the left-left’s self-destructive pattern of behaviour that is never going to change.
Was AV ever a serious proposal in 2011? Nobody seemed very interested in it, not even the LibDems, who would have preferred PR. Pre-Corbyn Labour was all over the place on it. Only 42% of the electorate voted in the referendum, with fewer than a third in favour.
Predicting how changes in electoral systems will work out is difficult. You omit the possibility of a Tory-UKIP coalition.
Austerity was not just a short-term concern. It has blighted the lives of millions of people, and continues to do so in the guise of Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules.
I already pointed out that PR was in vogue and this damaged the AV case but now everyone wants STV because PR isn’t democratic enough. That just highlights the weakness of the opposition. But seriously, even if PR was the best option, what kind of progressive turns down better in favour of worse, just because it isn’t the best? Is this how the left-left work in their day-to-day life? They want a two week holiday in the Algarve but there’s only a ten day trip to the Balearics left in their budget so they just stay at home and watch… Read more »
You can’t blame the left for the AV referendum. ‘No to AV’ was led by Margaret Beckett, never a Corbyn supporter. Facts please.
Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats were and are the only parties that are consistent with their positive message.
Leaving the EU would be a disaster and make the majority of people poorer and strengthen those that wish to remove our democratic rights.
They were proved be be correct !
Not seeing the correlation between leaving the EU and the boat crossings. Yes, being part of the EU would provide an avenue for returning migrants that come via this route, but does not explain WHY they are coming over in the first place – cant imagine they are thanking BREXIT per se for this, rather the financial / health benefits of doing so
There were no small boat crossings in 2016. That’s the correlation.
Yes agree on timing but this also probably ties in with the wider refugee crisis in europe of a million migrants in 2015 as a broader cause
If it was related to numbers arriving into Europe why didn’t we see any small boat crossings in 2015? Those numbers have been well down since that crisis.
And to those that say only arrival methods changed, why didn’t we need hotels in 2016?
All that changed is Johnson took us out of a returns agreement because Farage formed the Brexit Party to force him into a rock hard no-cooperation Brexit.