Forum Topic

Labour Are Opening The Doors Again

Home Secretary Cooper, speaking in the Chamber this afternoon, has announced that the Rwanda plan is being scrapped.  So Starmer, like Blair before him in 2004, will in effect be opening the U.K. to unfettered immigration again.

Sue Hammond ● 561d32 Comments

A landslide majority in the House of Commons.404 out of 650 seats = ~62%62% is a majority no?If you have a problem with the FPTP voting system (everyone should!) then lend your weight to the call for a better system using a form of Proportional Representation.

John Kettlekey ● 559d

Glad to hear that 34% is a landslide. That means the 52% in brexit was somewhat more than a landslide yet people still say it wasnt an overwhelming vote to keave.Personally I cpuldnt give a flying fBut very interesting how figures can  be misrepresented to support ones particular case.

Andy Pike ● 560d

Being a politician involves compromise just as choosing a political party to vote for involves compromise.I'd think very few people's views in the UK align absolutely 100% with any particular party, but the majority still vote.Likewise I doubt any politician aligns 100% with their party's views on every single subject.

John Kettlekey ● 560d

"Expecting our politicians to be great at doing the job and having a completely squeaky clean past probably just beyond the pale."Indeed, but it seems to me that expecting some consistency in their treatment is "probably just beyond the pale", too. From:-"Fifty infamous moments that shame Jeremy Corbyn: The list of incidents that call into question the Labour leader's credentials to be prime minister"33. Opposed proscription of extreme Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7783193/Fifty-infamous-moments-shame-Jeremy-Corbyn.html"Yet he was elected as PM with a landslide majority."And after all those years in Corbyn's cabinet.

David Ainsworth ● 560d

> I don't understand your first point. I did not state that there was never a good chance of ending up in Africa. In your post dated 22/07/24 19:18:00:-"There was never an intention to send thousands of migrants to Rwanda. The purpose of the scheme was only to send some migrants there in order to discourage others from attempting to cross the Channel."> In asserting that the great majority of migrants would be willing to take the risk of being sent to Rwanda, you are perhaps forgetting that they have to pay large sums to the smugglers, sums which they can barely afford. Why would they pay that kind of money if they believed that they were not going to be allowed to stay in the UK and may be sent to Rwanda?Maybe because the smugglers lie to them in order to get them to pay large sums of money to risk their lives in barely seaworthy craft.You seem to be approaching this from the basis that the smugglers are an honest business.

John Kettlekey ● 560d

Yet he was elected as PM with a landslide majority.Expecting our politicians to be great at doing the job and having a completely squeaky clean past probably just beyond the pale.

John Kettlekey ● 560d

What about the elderly couple from Feltham or Sunbury area took in one. He went and killed somebody. Are we safe. Even the 2 men in suit cases dumped in Bristol, who are you taking in. What about the couple took a young lady in and she went off with the young ladies husband.

Barbara Stevens ● 560d

Pixie Balls Cooper ( she who famously said she would take in a couple of refugees 10 or so years ago, but still hasnt) said yesterday that granting asylum to those in the current queue would save money by moving them out of private hotels.She didn't say where they would be moving to once asylum is granted. I dont mean towns or cities but where are the properties to move them to? Or will they grant asylum but carry on housing them in the hotels ad infinitum, whilst we await the 300,000 new homes to be built each year over the next 5

Andy Pike ● 560d

Thank you for that (although not directly illegal immigration). He chose to do it and took the money. So not planning to be P.M. at that point. He (& other concerned people) would have slaughtered Corbyn if Corbyn had done such a thing.

David Ainsworth ● 560d

"Or are you suggesting we do that with a bunch of boats, sacrifice a few hundred/thousand lives and hope that this gruesome message somehow gets back to the others attempting to get in and they'll change their mind?"Certainly would get back and probably would work. I suppose that we have not reached that stage yet, but I cannot see what will stop it. And why does our Border Force look so gentle? We need something like this:-https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2022/04/000_328F9XE-640x400.jpg

David Ainsworth ● 560d

I don't understand your first point. I did not state that there was never a good chance of ending up in Africa. On the contrary, I said that the Rwanda scheme would have given migrants a reason to believe that they might be sent to Africa. This was also the opinion of the Irish minister who attributed the influx of migrants from NI to the Irish Republic to the fear of being sent to Rwanda. In asserting that the great majority of migrants would be willing to take the risk of being sent to Rwanda, you are perhaps forgetting that they have to pay large sums to the smugglers, sums which they can barely afford. Why would they pay that kind of money if they believed that they were not going to be allowed to stay in the UK and may be sent to Rwanda?As a result of Labour's decision to scrap the scheme the business model of the evil traffickers has received a boost. They can plausibly tell their clients that once they have been rescued from the Channel by the Coastguard, they will taken to Britain where they will be granted asylum along with the 100 000 who are already here.

Steven Rose ● 560d

> They are not going to hand over huge sums to the smuggling gangs if they believe there is a good chance of ending up in Africa. You've already illustrated the point. As you've already stated there was never a "good chance of ending up in Africa" and so it wasn't really a viable deterrent. The vast majority of people seeking to come to the UK illegally are willing to do so even with a small risk of being shipped off to Rwanda.A viable deterrent has to be both likely to happen and severe enough that people will think twice. Being flown to Rwanda was neither.If anything the long period of time spent being housed in appalling conditions whilst awaiting purposely glacial processing was more of a deterrent, and that was also an unspoken part of the previous Government's plan.Many migrants have walked hundreds or thousands of miles to get to France to try to make it to the UK. Many hundreds of thousands have been housed by other countries along the way, or had different destinations. But the ones trying to get to the UK are willing to risk giving their money to some trafficker that has very little concern for their safety. They'll simply be (over-)loaded into makeshift boats without enough life-vests and with hopefully enough fuel to make it to the UK. It's not as if the smugglers go with them or only get paid if the people make it safely to the UK. The smugglers do just enough to convince them that it is their only option, take the money, and then look for the next set of people to convince that it's safe and that there's the sunlit uplands of the UK await.Millions of people break the law every day (speeding, drink/drug driving, using phones whilst driving, jumping red lights - in cars and on bicycles) as the deterrent is weak. There's very little enforcement and the punishment is simply an annoyance to most (a fine or similar).The Tories had 14 years to do something better than what they came up with and they failed. If Labour don't come up with anything suitable in 5 years of being in power then shame on them, but I'm willing to bet they do improve the situation long before they are voted out.

John Kettlekey ● 560d

I am not sure you understand the concept of a deterrent. Prison, for example, is a deterrent. The aim is not to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of people.  The idea is to send a few people to jail so as to dissuade others from committing crime. In the same way the aim of the Rwanda scheme was not to send hundreds of thousands of migrants to Africa but to deter migrants from trying to enter the country illegally in the first place. The migrants are not stupid. They are not going to hand over huge sums to the smuggling gangs if they believe there is a good chance of ending up in Africa. Nor are they ignorant. Contrary to your view, the migrants are well aware of Labour’s decision to scrap the Rwanda scheme. Indeed migrants at Calais who were interviewed just before the election said they were waiting for a change of government before making the trip. What is to stop them now?

Steven Rose ● 561d

> why not secure the bordersWhat do you actually mean by this?The vast majority of people that make it to the UK beaches are already picked up by Border patrols. The problem is what you do with the people who do get here.You can't stop them landing as any attempt to do so will massively increase their chances of dying at sea.Or are you suggesting we do that with a bunch of boats, sacrifice a few hundred/thousand lives and hope that this gruesome message somehow gets back to the others attempting to get in and they'll change their mind?If the UK really did nothing to prevent things (e.g. we stopped patrolling and just let people in without even attempting to capture them upon arrival) then you'd see a huge influx of trafficking as it would become a lot less risky for the smugglers and those who they are trying to smuggle in.

John Kettlekey ● 561d

"UK Conservatives planned to spend 10 billion pounds on Rwanda migrant scheme, minister says"https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-rwanda-asylum-scheme-has-cost-700-million-pounds-says-minister-2024-07-22/If the Tories were willing to spend that sort of money, surely it would be simpler just to give it to the migrants to f- off somewhere else?

David Ainsworth ● 561d

Simple question - do we have the infrastructure eg housing, doctors, schools for this level if immigration?  If we don’t have the infrastructure what is the point in “stopping the gangs” which we know won’t work, why not secure the borders and have a real deterrent.No let’s create another task force, defence review and today another quango for skills.

Robert Wheeler ● 561d

Would it surprise you to find out that the vast majority of people committing shoplifting are in the country legally?The biggest cause of the rise in petty crime in UK (including Putney) is the previous Government's austerity policy.We'll see what the new Government can do to address this, but it's hardly something that's going to be fixed overnight.

John Kettlekey ● 561d

Keir Starmer, before his appointment as DPP, was a radical lawyer at Doughty Street Chambers which specialised in human rights cases. In 2008 he led a team of lawyers at the EHCR on behalf of an Islamist organisation, Hizb ut Tahrir, in an (unsuccessful) attempt to overturn the decision of the German authorities to ban the group because of antisemitic leaflets they had produced. Starmer had no obligation to take the case and he later admitted he was paid for doing so. Hizb ut Tahir, which has links to the Muslim Brotherhood, has the stated aim of uniting all Muslim countries under a caliphate. Once established the caliphates will expand into non-Muslim areas through ‘invitation’ and jihad. Hizb ut Tahrir has been banned in the UK, Germany, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia and throughout the Middle East (with the exception of Lebanon, Yemen and the UAE.

Steven Rose ● 561d

> There was never an intention to send thousands of migrants to Rwanda. The purpose of the scheme was only to send some migrants there in order to discourage others from attempting to cross the Channel. The idea was to break the business model of the people traffickers. Migrants would be unlikely to hand over huge sums to the smugglers to get to Britain  if they thought there was a good chance of ending up in Africa.If the idea was never to send everyone entering illegally off to Rwanda then surely the smugglers would know this and then everyone know the scheme was a mostly empty threat.I think most people trying to enter the UK illegally would continue to try and do so even if there was a tiny chance they would get sent to Rwanda. At the point they are fleeing their own countries they don't really care.More importantly, the vast majority of people attempting to come to the UK will have absolutely no idea about the Rwanda scheme, and if even if they did they'd be willing to take the risk.This, amongst many other things, was why the plan was fundamentally flawed.The simple fact that you knew "there was never an intention to send thousands of migrans to Rwanda" is exactly why. The scheme would do absolutely nothing to stop the people traffickers.

John Kettlekey ● 561d

In 2023 1.2 million people migrated into the UK: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06077/100 people a day arriving illegally would represent 3% of the influx to the UK. So the vast majority are doing it perfectly legally.The previous Government didn't have any credible plan to address legal migration into the UK, so they focused people's attention on the tiny percentage of illegal migration to in an attempt to deflect."Stop the boats" is catchier than "Stop us giving out as many visas".> Even if a plane had been chartered and filled with failed asylum seekers it would never have taken off because there would be a legion of human rights lawyers all lodging last minute appeals for their respective clients, all being facilitated by legal aid and paid for by UK tax-payers.Many of the previous attempts to deport people were found to be illegal, hence the endless revisions to the Rwanda scheme to try and force things through and still they didn't achieve anything. 14 years in power and no solution.If any Government tries to do something illegal shouldn't they be held to account?If the previous Government wanted to prevent expensive legal cases then surely they should get better advice and not try to do the illegal things in the first place. You can't blame the "lefty liberal lawyers" for taking the Government to court at the public expense AND WINNING. Oh, and many of the cases were crowd funded so they weren't paid for on legal-aid, but don't let facts get in the way of another Daily Mail feeder line. And by losing the cases the previous Government had to cover much of the costs. So it's the previous Government's incompetence that cost the tax-payer unnecessarily.> However over 2000 illegal immigrants have arrived since Starmer took office and now he's flung the U.K. door wide open again we can expect many, many 1000's more. The previous Government conned you into worrying about the 2,000 that have arrived illegally in the last 20 days, not the ~65,000 that will have migrated to the UK legally in the same period.

John Kettlekey ● 561d

"his former career as a human rights lawyer probably made him a lot of money defending them!"And you know this definitely?

David Ainsworth ● 561d

Exactly Stephen. The number of boats did actually fall slightly when the Rwanda policy was still in the frame but now that deterrent (however small) has been removed the traffickers must be clapping their hands with joy. Starmer has never been an advocate for cracking down hard on illegal immigration because his former career as a human rights lawyer probably made him a lot of money defending them!  Hi wishy-washy comments on the subject since he became the party Leader it was obvious (to me anyway) that he would do this and probably give amnesty to those already here.

Sue Hammond ● 561d

Is it ethical to entice people to cross the channel, including lone children, with the risk of drowning?Is it ethical to create so many refugees in the first place?Our refugee policy seems to have many similarities with the Squid Games!"According to the UN-affiliated International Organization for Migration (IOM) the most recent deaths mean more than 20 people are known to have died while trying to cross the Channel this year."https:/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn08685l2q8o.amphttps://amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/11/home-office-faces-legal-action-over-children-missing-from-uk-asylum-hotels

Ed Robinson ● 561d

Why doesn't anybody get that all these illegals, we have more shoplifting more robberies and break ins. Shootings, stabbings, etc. Until it happens to you, you couldn't careless. Putney is getting really bad.  Monday's Werter Rd. 5 men who go to the church to get food. one then runs into Sainsbury's and nicks a box of lagers from right near the front door. My other half has got them on his phone 2 weeks on  trot. The Security know, the men on the stall outside know. but who does anything. They are something like Romanian not sure.

Barbara Stevens ● 561d

There was never an intention to send thousands of migrants to Rwanda. The purpose of the scheme was only to send some migrants there in order to discourage others from attempting to cross the Channel. The idea was to break the business model of the people traffickers. Migrants would be unlikely to hand over huge sums to the smugglers to get to Britain  if they thought there was a good chance of ending up in Africa.Contributors to the Forum have described the plan as ‘awful’ and ‘immoral’. Why? The casual assumption that Rwanda is some kind of hell hole, unfit as a destination for migrants, is actually quite racist. Rwanda is a member of the Commonwealth. King Charles even chaired a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government in Kigali. The UNHCR under the auspices of the African Union has sent migrants from Libya to Rwanda. Under the agreement with the UK the Rwandan government would have provided the migrants with a home and a job, which is more than they have sitting in camps around Calais.Labour had plenty of time in Opposition to come up with an alternative plan to halt illegal migration.  Smashing the smuggling gangs is not a plan, as Robert said. It’s a wish, a dream. Meanwhile Labour intends to grant asylum to the 100 000 migrants making up the current backlog, which will only encourage others to cross the Channel.

Steven Rose ● 561d

"Close the door, they're comin' through the windowClose the door, they're runnin' up the stairsClose the door, They're hangin' off the ceilingThose (Bah-dah-bah-dah-bah-dah) are everywhere"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNF_hGf627c

David Ainsworth ● 561d

I accept that the Rwanda plan proved to be an impotent and very costly waste of money because the opposition to it was far too strong. Even if a plane had been chartered and filled with failed asylum seekers it would never have taken off because there would be a legion of human rights lawyers all lodging last minute appeals for their respective clients, all being facilitated by legal aid and paid for by UK tax-payers. When Labour come up with a credible plan, which they currently do not have, and execute it, I will applaud this Government. However over 2000 illegal immigrants have arrived since Starmer took office and now he's flung the U.K. door wide open again we can expect many, many 1000's more.

Sue Hammond ● 561d

Well if the French could stop us fishing in their waters is it that hard to stop the small boats with illegals in coming here.

Barbara Stevens ● 561d

We can’t wait and see as over 100 illegal migrants are arriving daily.  Now some in yachts they have stolen from French harbours.Unfortunately Labour have no plan apart from sending yet more funds elsewhere to try and stop migrants.  You can’t stop drugs and you can’t stop migrants without a firm deterrent.  Rwanda was always a deterrent as the Irish Prime Minister has confirmed.

Robert Wheeler ● 561d

Being scrapped because it was an extortionate cost for the small numbers that it would send to Rwanda. That's aside from any legal, ethical, etc issues.

Michael Ixer ● 561d

More like classic FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) from the Daily Mail.Ignore it and move on.Rwanda was a terrible and expensive scheme that was doomed to failure. We'll wait and see what Labour are going to propose to put limits on immigration.

John Kettlekey ● 561d

You sound like the Daily Torygraph!

Philippa Bond ● 561d