Labour's asylum plans challenge both left and right

And show the shambles the Conservatives have left us with

Anti-Labour propaganda from the Conservative party

Labour launched its asylum plan today and with it set a test for left and right. The right instantly disgraced itself, as it was always going to do. Rishi Sunak and the Conservative press denounced Labour’s proposal to cut a deal with the EU.

We would take a certain number of genuine refugees, who cases had been vetted by staff at British embassies in Europe, Labour is suggesting. In return, the EU would agree to take back all who crossed the Channel illegally.

Downing Street invented the fake fact that Labour would “accept 100,000 EU migrants every year”. As regular readers of Writing from London know, the real figure shadow ministers are talking about is closer to 40,000 – although nothing has been settled.

Sunak must hope that his bluster will distract attention from the collapse of his government asylum policy. It makes a nonsense of Conservative propaganda, and if doing so makes Labour’s case for it better than Keir Starmer can.

The right does not want the UK to take more refugees. Yet they are crossing the Channel in their tens of thousands. Under the law as it stands, they cannot be accepted as refugees, however genuine their claims are. Anyone who arrives illegally must be deported. But deported where?

Ministers cannot deport them to Rwanda, because the courts have blocked the policy. Even if the judges relent, Rwanda can only take a few hundred a year. Meanwhile, ministers cannot send people back to conflict zones or repressive states. So where will they send them?

There must be a deal with the EU. European countries must agree to take back people who have illegally crossed borders otherwise they will stay in the UK forever.

 Any honest observer must conclude that Labour’s policy is the only option.

The election of a Labour government will, however, raise questions for the left, which few are talking about today. The current government is so brutal and inept its opponents can unite against it. As everyone says, the government’s “illegal” label is a swindling term.  There are no legal routes for the most genuine of refugees from Syria, say, or Afghanistan or Eritrea. Anyone who arrives is an “illegal” even if they are a bona fide victim of persecution.

A Labour government will open legal routes.  British embassies in Paris and Brussels will judge asylum seekers claims and grant legal authorisations to enter the UK for a quota of deserving cases

But there will still be a quota. Police will still be arresting migrants, including genuine refugees, on the south coast beaches and seeking to deport them back to France with the minimum of delays.

Will activists accept a limit on the number or will they carry on fighting when Labour is in power?

The moral arguments for open borders are very effective. You can make a libertarian case that states have no right to constrain the movement of free human beings, or a utilitarian case that free movement leads to higher productivity, or an egalitarian case that rich countries should share their benefits with poor people.

But in terms of practical politics no society on earth freely accepts unrestricted migration and the British are no exception. It is easy to imagine that resistance hardening in the UK and across Europe as global warming encourages mass migration.

The removal of the Conservatives from power will cause jubilation among campaign groups working with asylum seekers. I do not want to deny them their pleasure. But when the cheers have died down, the hard questions will begin: do you support limits on migration? If so, what should they be?

To my mind these are questions that can only be answered within the EU, and migration is another reason for us rejoining as soon as we can.

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One of the odd features of today’s political fuss is that Labour’s policy has never been a secret to those few journalists who actually think its part of our job to talk to opposition politicians!

Here is my last piece, which sets out in detail the awesome scale of the mess the Conservatives have made.

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The hard questions about migration will begin when the Tory clown show ends

Nick Cohen 21 Aug 2023

Rishi Sunak has finally admitted the obvious. He accepted today that his promise to “stop the boats” was not a promise in the normal meaning of the word.  It was more of an aspiration that was closer to a New Year’s resolution than an unbreakable vow the prime minister could never and would never break.