Tuesday, August 5th, is the first day of the British government’s already unpopular ‘one-in, one-out‘ Channel crossings plan.
Under the official pilot for the scheme, an adult ‘small boats’ migrant with an inadmissible asylum claim in the UK could be returned to France. In exchange, subject to formal security checks, a migrant held in France with a demonstrable connection to Britain would be sent on, over the English Channel, legally.
While the agreement was between Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Emmanuel Macron during the latter’s state visit to Britain, it required the agreement of France’s European Union partners to go ahead. An acceptable consensus has now been established.
Yet this does not mean that the scheme will be any more of a deterrent than the ‘Rwanda Plan’ of hapless former PM Rishi Sunak.
Critics of the plan point to its sheer (and wilful) underestimation of the problem. Each week, weather permitting, new records for the number of migrants reaching British shores are reached and broken. The scheme will do little to dissipate the strong public sense, amid a migration-led population boom, that the problem is out of control.
