UK Edition
The art of politics often boils down to how convincingly a person can state something they wish were true, regardless of its merits.
The Tories are not currently a “low tax economy” party, but shouting it from the rafters at Conservative Party conference last month still brought the Prime Minister rapturous applause. The NHS is, on almost every measurable datapoint, not the envy of the world – but say it from the heart, and the polls will reward you.
But this art can only take politicians so far. Sometimes the facts are too tragic, too stark, to pretend the situation is anything but dire – and it seems this penny has finally dropped in regards to the UK’s worsening Channel crisis.
It shouldn’t have taken this long for the political classes to wake up. While Home Secretary Priti Patel has made endless pledges in the past two years to reduce dangerous dinghy-boat journeys, 55 people have died trying to cross the Channel.
But last week’s record catastrophe – 27 people drowning off the coast of France – has placed a global spotlight on our humanitarian crisis, and the failures of successive governments to come up with adequate, life-saving solutions.
This has accelerated British and French officials into problem-solving mode, but ugly politics stand in the way of answers. Politicians who have run on a platform of “taking back control” of borders (read: Boris Johnson), or who are facing an election year which will focus heavily on immigration (read: Emmanuel Macron) are not in the mood to compromise.
While France remains hesitant to see migrants returned to French shores if they have attempted the journey, and Britain remains nervous about creating legal pathways for more people to arrive, options remain limited. We can already see signs of pivoting to the tried and tested narrative that virtually everyone can agree on: a crackdown on people smugglers to bring these dangerous voyages to a halt.
Such a crackdown might be noble in its own right: smugglers profit off the desperation of some of the world’s most vulnerable people, and send countless of them to their graves. But it’s not a silver-bullet solution. Just as politics stands in the way of solutions to the Channel crisis, so does simple economics.
The hard truth is that a crackdown on smuggling across the Channel will not stop desperate migrants and refugees from trying to come to Britain; they will instead look for other ways.
The harrowing 2019 discovery of 39 Vietnamese migrants dead in the back of a lorry remains a stark reminder that Channel crossings are by no means the only path through which undocumented migrants try to come to the UK.
Gritty economic reality dictates that demand for other entry points will rise, which may lead to even riskier journeys to the UK: one of the reasons why so many more people are crossing the Channel in small boats is that heat-sensing technologies have made it far harder for them to jump into lorries and make the journey that way.
Harsher punishments for smugglers will certainly make some reconsider the dirty business they conduct. But for those who keep going, demand will be higher, and their income will rise. The higher the risk, the higher the fees – and the result for many will be more expensive and more dangerous treks to Britain.
Moreover, it places migrants further at the mercy of smugglers. Women and girls are especially vulnerable to exploitation. To name just one example, 80pc of Nigerian women who attempt to cross the Mediterranean end up victims of sex trafficking, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
None of this means dangerous Channel crossings should be tolerated, or go unmitigated. But a crackdown in one area can lead inadvertently to worsening conditions in others, if safer pathways are not created.
This is what makes the proposal of a “humanitarian visa” from a group of cross-party MPs (minus the Conservatives) so appealing.
The only realistic way to undermine demand for illegal services is to create new, legal pathways that cut smugglers out of the process. Currently a proposed amendment to the Nationality and Borders bill, such a visa, would allow for refugees who have a good claim to be in the UK instead of France and give them the opportunity for safe passage.
It would be a tough political sell for this Government. It has indeed been a point of pride that it abolished most pathways for “low-skilled” people to come to the UK in its latest immigration reforms.
But it was flagged when these reforms came in – by NGOs, charities, and the House of Lords – that the risk of pushing migration “underground” was set to increase: and this was before labour shortages really started to bite, making matters significantly worse.
Another set of reforms is now needed: not just to create better, safer and legal pathways for those who are determined to come to Britain, but to allow people to flourish here once they arrive.
Comprehensive reform should include allowing asylum seekers to work while waiting for their application to be processed, amounting to nearly £100m net gains according to a report from the Lift the Ban coalition.
But for any of this to happen, politicians must start prioritising the realities of the situation above what they simply wish it to be. It’s a lot to ask in politics, but nothing at all compared to the lives it might save.
Kate Andrews is economics editor at The Spectator
The best way to beat the Channel traffickers is to let refugees enter the UK legally
Creating formal routes for migrants to come to Britain is the best way to undermine demand for people smuggling