PETER HITCHENS: We CAN smash the smuggling gangs. But it’ll cost a lot of money... and pride

Last week I visited an old colleague who now lives very close to the beaches where migrants come ashore, night and day, along the Channel coast. For her and her neighbours, it has now become usual, though it will never be normal.

She described to me the extraordinary shock of seeing large numbers of young men (most of them are young men), walking confidently ashore and sometimes moving on into the roads and private gardens of those who live close to the sea.

I spent a part of my childhood living very close to the south coast of this country, and I viewed the sea as a protection against the world beyond it. I had in my mind the history we used to be taught, about the Armada and Napoleon Bonaparte – and the much more recent history of the Second World War.

Nobody could come here unless we let them. It was a moat, not an open front door.

This has now changed for ever. People-smugglers have realised that the Channel is in fact very easy to cross. They are confident that no civilised, law-governed country can act effectively against migrants – once they have put to sea.

People-smugglers have realised that the Channel is in fact very easy to cross

People-smugglers have realised that the Channel is in fact very easy to cross

Mainly this crisis is the fault of the Blair Creature and his imitator David Cameron. With their half-witted military adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, they began a colossal movement of economic migrants into Europe from Africa and the Middle East. This is now unlikely ever to stop, though crucially it can be prevented from continuing here.

Repeated schemes aimed at ending the arrival of such migrants in this country, from ‘pushback’ to exile in Rwanda, have pretty much come to nothing.

If things go on as they are, the machinery of the British state will simply become the servant of the migrants, lifting them from their dangerous dinghies and delivering them safely to our shores, where most of them will stay.

In fact, there is a remedy. It is perfectly legal and totally practicable but it will cost us a lot of money and quite a bit of pride. We have to treat the Channel as if it was a land border with France, for it might as well be. And that means we must co-operate far more closely with France to keep it closed.

I will make myself unpopular here. Too bad. I rather admire the French. Yes, I can laugh at them as well, but despite all the jokes about ‘surrender monkeys’, they are a fierce and battle-hardened nation, especially under the right leadership. Look up the history of their defence of Verdun in 1916 if you doubt it. They have a powerful and pretty ruthless state machine, when they choose to use it.

They are very tough about protecting their interests, tougher than we are, often rightly refusing to be pushed about by the Americans. They are the only country in Europe which equals our record of surviving for so many centuries as an identifiable, continuous state and a serious power.

Repeated schemes aimed at ending the arrival of such migrants in this country, from ‘pushback’ to exile in Rwanda, have pretty much come to nothing

Repeated schemes aimed at ending the arrival of such migrants in this country, from ‘pushback’ to exile in Rwanda, have pretty much come to nothing

I think we have to persuade them that it is in their interests as well as ours to ensure that migrants stop embarking from their shores and setting out into the Channel. Yes, this will involve a great deal of money, much more than we now spend, because a real effort to smash the smuggling rings for good will involve thousands of police over many months – and it will need to be maintained for a long time afterwards to make sure it does not revive.

But this will be real defence against an actual danger to our borders, not empty posturing. Look at what we are spending and have spent on two gigantic aircraft carriers, which still have no planes of their own and which conk out when they go to sea. Wouldn’t making our coast secure again be a better use of such money?

And it will involve a great deal of diplomacy, conducted by people who treat France’s leaders with respect in public and in private. Is that such a high price to pay for such a worthwhile aim? I do not think so.

 

A persecution we'd condemn in Russia

When the Government was considering its spiteful, despotic plan to persecute video blogger Graham Phillips, officials plainly advised Ministers that the action would interfere with his human rights – rights which the Government ceaselessly claims to defend.

Yet they went ahead. Mr Phillips publishes blogs which defy the largely accepted view about Ukraine. As a result, he has been subjected to severe and damaging sanctions, without any hearing.

In an internal memo seen by me, a civil servant points out ‘the proposed imposition of an asset freeze would have a considerable impact on his ability to withdraw funds and access essential personal services in the UK’. They say this will interfere with his Human Rights, ‘including his rights under Article 8 (family life/private life) and Article 1 of Protocol 1 (property rights)’.

It then states ‘there may also be interference with his Article 10 rights to freedom of expression’. I’ll say.

It fails to mention that the sanctions rip up his most basic freedoms under Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, which forbid punishment without a fair trial before an impartial jury.

I have now seen some of the Government’s ‘case’ against Mr Phillips, much of which consists of cuttings from The Guardian and The Times. It contains allegations which Mr Phillips would have strongly denied if he had been able to do so in court.

He has been punished without trial for expressing views which the state does not like. Isn’t this the sort of thing we condemn in Russia?

God bless the free speech campaigner Toby Young who has spoken out against this unBritish abuse. But where are the other voices?

 

If Emily's free to speak out, why can't I?

Can I just explain something to the broadcaster Emily Maitlis, now moaning about being mildly reproved for an obviously non-impartial outburst on the BBC, when she used to work there?

The BBC is heavily biased towards her Left-liberal view. Senior BBC figures, from former boss Mark Thompson to major former presenters such as Andrew Marr and John Humphrys, all admit that the Corporation seethes with Lefty liberalism. Newsnight, the programme on which Ms Maitlis famously let rip against Dominic Cummings, is no exception.

Ms Maitlis’s attack on Mr Cummings just went a bit too far even for the BBC, and she was gently rebuked, not bundled off into the outer darkness

Ms Maitlis’s attack on Mr Cummings just went a bit too far even for the BBC, and she was gently rebuked, not bundled off into the outer darkness

Ms Maitlis’s attack on Mr Cummings just went a bit too far even for the BBC, and she was gently rebuked, not bundled off into the outer darkness.

In the BBC which I would like to see, Ms Maitlis should be allowed to say what she likes. But so should people like me, who are kept to the margins of broadcasting. Neither of us should be required to pretend we are impartial. But if people such as me were allowed to behave on air as she did, I suspect Ms Maitlis would be among the first to flood the BBC with enraged complaints. The liberal elite wants freedom for its own view. I want true impartiality. Not the pretence of it.

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