Protesters hold placards as they gather outside the Home Office in central London on June 13, 2022, to demonstrate against the UK government’s intention to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda.
Nilas Halle’n / AFP
Critics say “no government will be able to get deportations off the ground” so long as Britain remains in the convention.
It has already been proved time and again, but now it should be clear even to Keir Starmer himself that all this talk about tackling illegal migration is futile without reevaluating Britain’s ties to various legal institutions.
That is, following the news that legal challenges meant a small group of migrants set to be deported on Monday and Tuesday—as part of the (so far, so bad) ‘one in, one out’ migration deal with France—ended up staying in the UK. As our assistant news editor Graham Barnfield brilliantly posed earlier today, “if a ‘one in, one out’ deportation flight takes off with no deportees onboard, is it really a ‘One In, One Out’ deportation flight?”
Zia Yusuf, the head of policy at Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, said this latest failure “is of no surprise to anyone,” and that “without leaving the ECHR, disapplying international treaties like the 1951 Refugee Convention and a total legal reset, no government will be able to get deportations off the ground.”
Yusuf added in a post on social media that “it would be funny were it not so tragic.”
Starmer’s “one in one out” deportation policy has collapsed after getting to a total of…
We at europeanconservative.com have repeatedly highlighted Britain’s continued membership of the Strasbourg-based European Convention on Human Rights—one of the favourite tools of those supporting illegal migration—as a major block for effective border control. But Starmer insists Britain will never leave under his watch.
The Telegraph also reported that protests from charities helped stop the deportations from taking place. Restore Britain, which was set up by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, said it has filed freedom of information requests with the Home Office to find out which charities were involved.
Broadcaster Martin Daubney complained that the fiasco showed “we’ve become a joke country, with activists and NGOs leading our feeble government by the nose!”
Perhaps officials will try—and, no doubt, fail—again tomorrow.
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
