Labour prime minister Keir Starmer is wrong to suggest that the arrest of an alleged “significant supplier” of small boat equipment used for illegal Channel crossings shows “our approach to smashing criminal gangs is already having an impact.”
With close to 20,000 migrants having made this perilous journey since Starmer entered office just four months ago, SDP leader William Clouston dismissed the one-off arrest as “a trifling matter compared with the colossal incentives Starmer’s Labour offers illegals,” including “the British social wage and welfare system for life.”
Indeed, reports suggest that for every pound the British state spends on immigration enforcement, it spends £9 (€11.78) on supporting and accommodating asylum seekers.
Dominic Cummings, who was chief advisor to former Tory PM Boris Johnson, went further, describing Starmer as a “clown” for claiming that the nabbing of “one irrelevant middleman” will make a difference while “the government is [also] handing out private medical care to illegal immigrants.”
What’s more, political scientist Matthew Goodwin said he will “happily bet anybody in Westminster that this one people smuggler will be replaced by another people smuggler within days,” given the amount of money—literally thousands of pounds per migrant—involved in the business. Goodwin added that “we are playing Whac-A-Mole and calling it government policy.”
The 44-year-old Turkish suspect was detained in Amsterdam on Wednesday following a joint investigation by Dutch and Belgian authorities and the UK’s National Crime Agency. Equipment—including boats and engines—he is accused of supplying is said to have been involved in the transportation of thousands of people to the UK over recent years. He faces charges of human smuggling and is likely to be extradited to Belgium.
Nearly 150,000 migrants have entered Britain illegally over the past six years, during which time very much has been said but very little has been done to ensure control.
