The British genius for seeing the cloud attached to every silver lining was on display this week. Only 50 a week? That’s more like 17 in, one out, that is. We’ve been played by the French. What a load of rubbish. And so ever on.
A fairer assessment is that Keir Starmer has made a breakthrough, the first step towards solving an impossible problem. He has secured the agreement with Emmanuel Macron that Rishi Sunak tried for and failed. For the first time, the French government has agreed to take some small-boat migrants back.
I did not think that this was possible. I can see that it might objectively be in France’s interest to close the Channel route. It might mean that fewer migrants come to France in the hope of then making it to the UK, and it would mean clearing the tent city around Calais and squatter camps across northern France. But the benefit would be marginal, while politically it seemed unthinkable that Macron would want to give the British special treatment.
Yet he has.
I thought it was a clever idea when Kit Malthouse, the Conservative MP, suggested the “one in, one out” plan in February 2023. The idea was to send boat people back to France, while taking an equal number of genuine refugees, whose applications would be processed in France. But the end point would be that the Channel crossings would stop when migrants realised that they would be sent back, and the UK would quickly be freed from the requirement to take any refugees at all.
The idea was taken up by Robert Jenrick, then immigration minister, and, I am told, it was discussed by Sunak and Macron at their meeting in Paris the following month. It didn’t happen. Elegant as the Malthouse scheme seemed in theory, the practical questions were just too complicated.
Those problems remain. As does the political cost to Macron of appearing to break ranks with other EU leaders to give the British what they want. But the deal has been done.
Really, Starmer should be being carried shoulder-high through the streets of Dover with Nigel Farage leading the parade, while Jenrick makes a celebratory video of it for social media.
Instead, Farage has branded the deal a “humiliation” and the Tories have called it a “gimmick”. These are the same Tories who criticised Starmer for cancelling the Rwanda scheme, claiming that it had a deterrent effect even though no flights had taken off. The Rwanda scheme had a total capacity of a few hundred, so if the deal with France takes 50 a week, it will be more of a deterrent. Sadly, Kemi Badenoch’s letter of congratulation to the prime minister seems to have been lost in the second-class Saturday post.
The truth is that she and Jenrick – and above all Farage – have an interest in Starmer’s failure, so they will not praise the prime minister for achieving the first part of his impossible mission while there is still hope (for them) in the next part.
If the pilot scheme is approved by the EU – a big if – it is not going to stop the boats, but it would allow the British and French governments to test the machinery that could stop the boats. Every migrant selected for removal to France will have the right to go to court, which means a new fast-track legal channel alongside the existing overloaded system.
Without going full “talking the country down”, it has to be said that the chances of the Home Office making this work are low. But if it does work, the numbers could be increased. Obviously, the critics are right that returning a mere 5 per cent of arrivals is not much of a deterrent, any more than Rwanda would have been. But if the numbers could be raised to 50 per cent, things could start to change.
I am not saying that this is likely to happen. But Starmer has taken the first step towards it that I thought was impossible. Before this week I thought the government had no credible plan, and could be beaten by Farage, who has no credible plan either, but who can promise the moon on a stick. Now I can imagine Labour going into the next election with living standards rising, the NHS improving and the number of small boats significantly reduced.
That could be enough for Labour to win a second term. But if the small boats are still coming, I think the government is doomed. The stakes on the second part of Starmer’s impossible mission are that high.
