Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to scrap the Rwanda plan will lead to “open season” for small boats crossings, a former Border Force chief has said.
Kevin Saunders, who was Chief Immigration Officer covering Calais and Dunkirk, told Times Radio: “The trouble is he [Sir Keir Starmer] is being very negative about Rwanda. Well, that’s fine. He’s bound to be.
“But we don’t have anything from him about how they’re going to stop the boats. It’s going to be open season.”
We have a nice little test in fact. When Rwanda was threatened did crossings fall? And now the threat is lifted, will they rise again?
It’s possible to hope that someone’s collecting the evidence, y’know?
Standard economics would say that the incentive to commit – or not commit – a crime depends on hte likelihood of getting caught and the punishment if you are. So, as the threat of deportation to Africa – with whatever probability that had – is lifted there should be an increase in the incentive to paddle over.
The interesting bit will be well, is that analysis correct?
With the sour-faced “refugees welcome” shrew back as Home Secretary it will be interesting to see if she walks the walk. My strong suspicion is that she’s all talk.
Had planeloads of illegals actually been being flown to Uganda the cancellation might have had some effect.
But since it was all bogged down in the bureaucracy from the word ‘go’, I doubt if it’ll make much difference.
I’m sure “official statistics” will show that Sir Kneeler’s “ruthless” reputation will be sufficient to deter any refugees from even thinking that now the UK is an easier soft touch than Sunak’s mob.
As a side note, I’m told by a friend that the NHS has magically been galvanised into action with several doctors of our aquaintance coming in to the local hospital yesterday, the first time they’ve worked on a Saturday for 14 years. Just shows how hyper efficient a Labour minister can be as opposed to an idle, fat capitalist Tory who secretly wants to sell the NHS to Donald Trump, that famous alleged (!) rapist…
I can’t find my “Ton of Sarcasm” emoji that is essential for this comment.
‘Kevin Saunders, who was Chief Immigration Officer covering Calais and Dunkirk, told Times Radio: “The trouble is he [Sir Keir Starmer] is being very negative about Rwanda. Well, that’s fine. He’s bound to be.
“But we don’t have anything from him about how they’re going to stop the boats. It’s going to be open season.”’
As a former Border Force chief, surely he is happy with that?
“It’s going to be open season.”
Well done, Nige!
“My strong suspicion is that she’s all talk.”
I fear you’re right – and we are the ones whose place is to listen. As for small boat frequency, it’s always been more sensitive to the weather than to political statements. Pray for really bad summer.
Standard economics would say that the incentive to commit – or not commit – a crime depends on hte likelihood of getting caught and the punishment if you are.
Yeah well, economists aren’t criminals. Or maybe it’s criminals aren’t economists? Whatever. If only.
Yes, very well done. That was an amazing achievement in just 4 weeks.
My recollection of the chapter on politics from Pinker’s The Blank Slate is that he seemed to rank the inability to grasp the logic of deterrent and the admissibility of a distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor as the two greatest mental blocks afflicting dogmatic adherents of the utopian vision.
BIS,
“Yeah well, economists aren’t criminals. Or maybe it’s criminals aren’t economists? Whatever. If only.”
The reason why Japan has a lot less graffiti and theft than the UK is that you get punished for it. First time is a caution, second time is community service, third time, you get a short prison sentence. Fourth time, you get a longer prison sentence. They also spend something like 20% more on policing, but it’s not a huge amount.
Some countries seem to not suffer from much in the way of illegal immigrants. I don’t think China has much of a problem, neither does Japan, North Korea. Any one in the UK thought to ask why?
Theo,
Stop being such an entitled drip. Farage’s achievement was not only astonishing in its own right, but will also have helped the Conservatives.
– Reform voters would have stayed at home in most cases, which would have meant a higher vote share for Labour
– Reform + Cons got more votes than Labour, so bad for Starmer and something for the right to build on
Nothing will change unless the incentives change.
A change of clothes and a bar of soap and that’s it. No hotel. A Nansen style passport clearly marked No Recourse to Public Funds, No Family Reunion permitted in UK, etc.
It won’t stop al of them, but it will reduce the numbers. Currently we are importing fighting age muslims at a rate of half the British army per year, and that’s not a good thing.
There’s only 30,000 people breaking into the country, what about the 1,200,000 people legally entering?
LOOK, SQUIRREL!
Sink the ships.
“ Yeah well, economists aren’t criminals. Or maybe it’s criminals aren’t economists? Whatever. If only.”
I remember listening to a very senior Scottish barrister talking about the sort of petty criminals who were repeat offenders he dealt with. He reckoned that the problem is they have no time horizon so talk of a couple of years in prison if they did it again meant nothing to them, they might as well have said 2 minutes.
It’s also why they lead such chaotic lives, the rents due on Friday is similarly meaningless.
Personally, I’m praying for a glorious summer and great white sharks in huge numbers turning up at the illegal immigrant buffet in the Channel.
Sir Kneels-a-lot Starmer might not frighten them, but having their boat and then kids eaten by sharks would do a world of good.
“Interesting” is one word for it; much like the iceberg gash along the side of the Titanic was interesting.
There doesn’t seem to much attention being paid to the fact that the UK now has four independent Islamic MPs elected by Muslims on specifically Islamic issues. Forget Reform (which got five seats, lol), that’s the political earthquake to come out of this election.
The boats, of course, will carry on as a distraction to the millions coming here legally.
The most wholehearted celebrations of Labour’s Potemkin landslide were on the beaches of Calais.
“Or maybe it’s criminals aren’t economists?”
But see the section on the drug dealer in Freakonomics.
There doesn’t seem to much attention being paid to the fact that the UK now has four independent Islamic MPs elected by Muslims on specifically Islamic issues. Forget Reform (which got five seats, lol), that’s the political earthquake to come out of this election.
You voted Tory, lol.
Starmer says he will tackle the illegal invaders with a crackdown on the criminal gangs operating the boats.
Hmmm.
There’s no point operating such a migrant-smuggling criminal gang inside Britain, as the customer is already here, so not a customer. The customers of the gangs are in France, so that’s where the gangs operate.
So it would only make sense to operate such undercover police investigations in France, where the gangs and their customers are.
So Starmer is stating he intends to operate undercover police investigations in France. Has anyone told the Frenchies?
A Nansen style passport clearly marked No Recourse to Public Funds,
Why anyone would think that would deter “fighting age muslims” beats me.
These are third world people. If you’ve ever had to deal with third world people, they may have time horizons in the past that stretch back generations but their future time horizons are extremely short. It’s the reason the places they come are third world. They’ve had the same time as we have since Ug was banging rocks in a cave by the future M25. That they aren’t in the same place as we are is they don’t cooperate with an eye to the future. Your “fighting age muslims” will be safe housed in the Muslim community. They won’t need public funds. Although if they need public services they can always swap identities with cousin Ali. They’ll have a bed & be fed & that’s probably more than where they came from. Their future Allah will provide. Could contain your money, your daughter or your home.
BiND – I remember listening to a very senior Scottish barrister talking about the sort of petty criminals who were repeat offenders he dealt with. He reckoned that the problem is they have no time horizon so talk of a couple of years in prison if they did it again meant nothing to them, they might as well have said 2 minutes.
It’s also why they lead such chaotic lives, the rents due on Friday is similarly meaningless
Yarp, this bears repeating:
Requiem for the lotus eaters
July 5, 2024 | Henry Hill | ToryDiary
[…]
Perhaps the most telling explanation for why Rishi Sunak made his bizarre decision to call the snap election now is the prisons crisis, and few issues better encapsulate how we have set and primed this political timebomb over the past 14 years.
Since 2010 we have closed 17 prisons. Four of these are currently tourist attractions, as prisons. One of those, HMP Lancaster, was at the time of closure the second-best performing prison, in terms of recidivism rates, in the entire country. It was shut for no better reason than that Ken Clarke had wanted to close it in the 1990s, and didn’t think it appropriate to have a jail in a castle.
This programme has been pursued despite the abject failure to build even replacements for the cells we were shutting. The scale of the failure of the prisons programme actually boggles the mind:
“A 2015 commitment to invest “£1.3 billion to create 10,000 new prison places by 2020” has, according to the Public Accounts Committee, produced just 206 (with 3,500 on the way in some form).”
Prison works. By removing a relatively tiny percentage of the population from general circulation, crime plummets, living standards go up, potential victims go un- beaten or murdered, and everybody benefits (including violent or sex offender crims, who belong in jail). For a miniscule percentage of what they spaffed on Covid or HS2 or one aircraft carrier we could have a much higher trust, lower crime society. One where grooming gangs, rapists, paedophiles and all types of violent scumbag are kept off our streets and away from our children’s schools for the long term.
Instead, the Conservatives rammed our country full of millions of immigrants while defunding prisons and defanging the criminal justice system (unless you’re a white man who prints stickers saying “It’s OK to be White”, then they’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks. That acid throwing ‘migrant’ got a suspended sentence for sexual assault, but the guy who thought it was OK to be white is in prison and the last I heard, social workers took his children away.)
Like the deliberately created border crisis, they can’t claim to be ignorant of the consequences of their actions or inactions, so the only reasonable explanation is that the Conservatives deliberately did this to harm our society.
Don’t worry, our new Home Secretary has a plan to stop the boats:
“Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has set out the first steps towards setting up a UK Border Security Command, which the government hopes will reduce small boat crossings in the English Channel.
Work to recruit an “exceptional leader” to head the body will begin on Monday, with the government preparing a bill to create counter-terror powers aimed at tackling organised immigration crime.” (BBC)
If only the Tories had thought about finding an ”exceptional leader”, presumably one who also ticks all the DEI boxes, they wouldn’t have been nearly wiped out.
@philip – proposals + “Currently we are importing fighting age muslims at a rate of half the British army per year,”
I suggest you think a bit more deeply on this. Which is better for the country: importing all those men who are secure in the knowledge that their families are safe abroad but feel like they are unwelcome outsiders here, or importing the same men who know that their familes are here open to retribution but fell welcomed and part of our society?
Charles – Which is better for the country: importing all those men who are secure in the knowledge that their families are safe abroad but feel like they are unwelcome outsiders here, or importing the same men who know that their familes are here open to retribution but fell welcomed and part of our society?
Not importing them, natch.
Charles – have you ever seen a biker gang in a zombie movie and thought “bloody nice chaps, I simply must welcome them to the village fair”?
Charles
How about
” Not being here at all.”
Or
“On a boat to South Georgia.” ?
– You voted Tory, lol.
Another statement from Steve based on nothing.
It’s a change to read Charles coming out with something sensible. And you’re willing to take the retribution on the families, Charles? Handle the job personally? Rape the wives & strangle the children or the other way round?
Not importing any of them.
on the subject of being beastly to people who deserve it and possibly mistreatment of the families of people who need to be painfully memory holed,
I recommend watching a film called Unthinkable. Samuel L Jackson and Carrie Ann Moss.
Make sure to watch the unedited version because otherwise the ending is slightly but significantly different.
“I suggest you think a bit more deeply on this. Which is better for the country: importing all those men who are secure in the knowledge that their families are safe abroad but feel like they are unwelcome outsiders here, or importing the same men who know that their familes are here open to retribution but fell welcomed and part of our society?”
Thats got to be one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever seen suggested in regard to immigration. That its better to bring all the families of the immigrants here so that if the men misbehave then we can take retribution on the women and children.
Whats the penal tariff going to be then Charles, if Abdul rapes and/or murders a native, what do we get to do to his family? Hang draw and quarter them perhaps?
PJF – Another statement from Steve based on nothing.
Based on your statements that you’re now lying about. Sad!
Haven’t seen “Unthinkable”, but have read a short story where, in an attempt to cut crime, the normal systems of punishment are changed. If someone commits a crime, someone close to the offender is punished instead, sometimes in a similar manner to the original offence. A man shoots a store clerk during a robbery, killing him. The son of the offender is shot, in front of him, and his bank account emptied. The wife of a rapist is, herself, raped in front of her husband. The thinking behind this policy is to show criminals that the personal consequences can be directly related to their crime. The rapist, and other criminals are ostracised by their families, plus they have to live with those consequences. The story ends with a huge question mark regarding a crime committed by the son of the State Governor who instigated the policy.
Penseivat,
I’ve occasionally wondered what people who demand that Israel makes a proportionate response meant, they never specify what they mean beyond a bit of hand waving. Perhaps Israeli soldiers should have been allowed to rape and torture the same number of women in Gaza, shoot the same number of children and adults etc.