Recent UK governments have tried many different methods to achieve proper border control—more so to appear active than to deliver real results—all in vain. Recent efforts to ‘smash the gangs’ behind illegal crossings, or to send back one migrant for every illegal arrival, have been particularly farcical.
But former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott stressed this week that the solution is easy: just pick up migrants trying to cross the Channel and send them back to the country they came from.
Abbott popularised the ‘stop the boats’ soundbite, now a major feature of the British political lexicon, during his successful 2013 election campaign. He told the BBC on Wednesday:
You could certainly pick up people in the English Channel, hold them on some kind of a mother ship and send them back to the land from which they’ve come on some quiet and moonless night.
I think there are all sorts of things that a determined government could do to absolutely stop these boats once and for all.
“You could certainly pick up people in the English Channel, hold them on some kind of a mothership & send them back to the land from which they’ve come on some quiet and moonless night”
Abbott was addressing his comments not to the ruling Labour government, perhaps considering this to be a total lost cause, but to the opposition Conservative Party. Despite spending 14 years in power, the Conservatives proved ineffectual not only on border control but on nearly everything else.
Australia, of course, is not a member of the ECHR.
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_.
