“I don’t have a reputation for being particularly tough on immigration,” Ken Clarke wrote earlier this year, reminding readers of the Daily Telegraph of his liberal views on the subject – and of his troubled relationship with the post-Brexit leadership of the Conservative Party.
These words preceded an admission which surprised some observers (though it shouldn’t have, given Clarke’s record in government, particularly when he was Health Secretary, of taking tough decisions).
The purpose of the article was to support the Government’s policy of seeking to remove asylum seekers who arrive in small boats to Rwanda. Here is the heart of his argument: “people can make objections to the Rwanda scheme, they can point out legal complications with it, but they don’t have a plan of their own. So, the choice is between doing nothing and Rwanda”.
Clarke was on the money. There is a paper alternative, but not a practical one – namely, allowing people to apply for asylum from abroad, in the context of providing more “safe routes”. But as Henry Hill has pointed out on this site, “the problem is not merely how people are coming, but that they are coming, or attempting to come, in such numbers and such composition as they are and indeed would like to”.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated last year that the number of people forcibly displaced worldwide had exceeded 100 million for the first time. It goes without saying that only a small percentage of them want to come to Britain. But a tiny percentage can be a large figure. And under the terms of the Refugee Convention, we’d be obliged to accomodate any refugee who applied.
In any event, the economic model of packing a fragile craft with fit young men, charging them some £7000 a head, and transporting them across the channel can’t be disinvented. So were applications allowed from abroad, the result wouldn’t be the tidy transfer of asylum seekers from the beaches of Normandy to our consulates in France. Rather, given the UNHCR’s number and the potential demand, legal applications would begin to clock up and the boats would continue to sail.
And that, of course, is before taking into account the applications for asylum from outside France, as Britain opened up a mass of new “safe and legal routes”. How many of these do those who argue for them want? Would there be no limit of the number? Or were there to be a limit, how would it be enforced, given the Refugee Convention’s requirements?
These brutal realities set the scene for Labour’s asylum announcement yesterday. For obvious reasons, Sir Keir Starmer and company recognise that they can’t permanently duck producing a policy of their own. But the alternatives before them are a) Rwanda b) the discredited proposal above or c), the only option remaining – honestly conceding, in the absence of the Rwanda plan, open borders.
The solution that Sir Keir hit upon was a commonplace in modern politics, and one by no means confined to the Labour Party: namely, to insult the electorate’s intelligence. What do voters think of the people smugglers? They hate them. Great! Dream up a soundbite about treating them like terrorists. Say that Labour would freeze their assets and restrict their movements.
But there’s a problem. The smugglers tend to be based abroad. They don’t keep their money here, so their assets can’t readily be frozen. And they don’t live here, so their movements can’t easily be restricted. Never mind! Most voters aren’t across the detail. Just make the announcement anyway! Which leaves only one element of Labour’s policy standing: speeding up applications in Britain.
So the net result of the party’s approach would be more people granted asylum, faster – with those who weren’t doubtless not actually removed. You will point out that my summary doesn’t cover the element of Starmer’s plan that is gaining the most publicity: his admission that Labour will ultimately seek an EU-wide returns agreement for asylum seekers who come to Britain.
As it happens, the party’s press release didn’t mention such a scheme at all. What seems to have happened is that Sir Keir, pressed on the subject by the Times, to which he gave an interview unveiling Labour’s plans, said that returns “would be part of any discussions and negotiations with Europe”. Put on the spot, he didn’t rule out the “quid pro quo” of a Labour Government accepting a quota of entrants from the EU in exchange for a deal on returns.
A Europe-wide quota policy looks plausible on paper, and has a certain attraction to it. Confronted by a common problem of irregular arrivals from outside the continent, it makes sense for Europe’s countries to work together on border control. Up to a point, the Government is already doing so – having, for example, reached an agreement with Albania. The number of Albanian migrants from that country has fallen by more than 90 per cent this year.
Though most of the people smugglers and their assets are based abroad, Ministers are seeking, in co-operation with other countries, to do what they can to go after them. But Sir Keir knows perfectly well that the criminal gangs, compared to terror networks, are more numerous and their assets more fungible. And when it comes to returns, much would turn on numbers.
One calculation has it that the EU had over a million first-time asylum seekers last year, and that our share of any quota scheme would be 120,000 of them a year. I very much doubt that such an end product would be acceptable to most voters. But to engage in such calculations is to tilt at windmills. For EU countries can’t currently agree a returns scheme among themselves.
Since this is so, why would they be able to strike a deal with a third country – Brexit Britain, in this case – before having done so with each other? Rishi Sunak has already run up against this problem. On the one hand, Italy and Greece want relief from the asylum seekers turning up on their shores. On the other, Hungary and Poland are refusing to play ball.
Besides, the possibility of a quota agreement with the EU offers up a dangerous front for Starmer. The combination of Europe and immigration helped to fuel Brexit. It remains a dangerous combination for Labour in the midlands and northern marginals of provincial England. Economic co-operation with the EU is one thing; taking migrants is another.
Some will argue that a returns policy would only replace the Dublin Agreement. But the latter didn’t have EU quotas in it and didn’t work well in any event. In policy terms, Sir Keir’s proposals don’t add up. In political ones, therefore, Labour faces the perilous combination of the EU, migration and, in particular, small boats.
Until or unless a new option is conjured, the logic of the choice remains as Clarke put it – Rwanda or nothing. Sir Keir has swallowed much in his pursuit of power, but Rwanda is a mouthful too much for him, or at least for his party. So he’s trying to bluff his way out of the problem.