Who remembers Labour’s ‘flagship policy’—if you’ll pardon the expression—to stop the boats?
Was it the ‘Rwanda Plan’? No, that was the brainchild of former PM the hapless Rishi Sunak—first blocked by lawyers and then scrapped by Labour. Was it that Keir Starmer would use his ‘forensic’ experience as Director of Public Prosecutions to ‘smash the gangs’? Formally, yes. (How’s that working out for him?) Did a ‘banned list’ naming some top suspected people traffickers appear on a government webpage? Maybe it did, although I can’t find the link.
No, Labour’s main migration deterrent is the ‘one in, one out’ plan. Agreed between Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron, the programme would take a ‘small boat’ Channel crosser arriving from France—typically an undocumented male claiming asylum—and exchange them for a similar person held in France but with a demonstrable link to the UK.
While observers were understandably twitchy about the proportions and principles involved, many seemed prepared to give the scheme a chance. Sure enough, early last month, the first group of Channel migrants was detained and set up to be readied ‘within three days’ for removal back to France.
Forty days later, the first such group of detainees was scheduled for removal back to the European continent. They were not necessarily drawn from the initial 155 detained on August 7th, but an increasingly frustrated British public would happily say adieu to them anyway. However, unease about any such action happening increased when it transpired that the government had switched from chartering deportation flights to booking individual seats with Air France. Sacre bleu!
Anyway, now the absurd truth is out. While Monday, September 15th saw skills minister Jacqui Smith skillfully refuse to provide numbers for this week’s flights, we now know that, to date, the number is zero.
Legal challenges on behalf of the handful of migrants scheduled to be on the plane proved temporarily successful, so the first outbound contingent stayed in the UK. Only their empty airline seats made the significantly less perilous legal journey out of England and back over Britain’s coastal waters. Tons in, none out.
Philosophy corner: if a ‘one in, one out’ deportation flight takes off with no deportees onboard, is it really a ‘One In, One Out’ deportation flight?
