Best Of

I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them

So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.

Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government

You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.

There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them

No Big G, you haven’t.

I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour

No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.

You write primary legislation that's clearly declares that any migrant that can't show legitimate documents that indicates they are from an invited party (Ukraine, Hong Kong or have a specific invite as an Afghani translator) has no right to remain, no right of appeal and will be deported to a safe third country of the state's choosing should they refuse to return home voluntarily. Close all of the loopholes, close all of the challenges and deport them within days of their processing.

Declare that foreign criminals will be deported to their home nation of safe third country with no right of appeal, amend the HRA to specifically rule out any use of article 8 by non-citizen convicted criminals.

The government has a huge, huge majority. It needs to start using it or we'll get a Reform majority in 2029 and PM Nige.

That's what we'll get.

This thread shows they STILL don't get it, outside a very small handful.

I am sick to death of that argument. You, Leon and others have been trying to insist that everyone needs to get behind restrictive asylum and immigration policies because if we don't then something much worse will come for us. I'd rather have PM Nige than a Labour government which implements policies it doesn't believe in out of fear of it.

Lots of democrats said this about Trump, that Biden shouldn't bend on immigration and border control and that Trump would be preferable. How do you think those people feel today?

In any case, the Boriswave is only tangentially relevant. The immigration which is politically the most toxic is the boats. It was the failure to address that which most scuppered the Tories.
But as Gallowgate points out, there was no politically acceptable answer then. Rwanada was shouted down. I think the mood of the country has changed since then.

No, it’s both

People want the boats stopped ASAFP and they want immigration brought down to near-zero, and the Boriswave must be gently returned whence they came, not given ILR

The boats are the enraging symptom but the pathology is deeper and wider. And the voters have made it very clear they want this sorted NOW or next time Farage wins the keys to Number 10

As Dan Hodges put it, the politicians have been given a blatant final warning

Yes but you’re still not answering any of the difficult questions.

Are you actually proposing to machine gun boats in the channel? I mean it’s a possible solution but when the first kids get shot at by the Royal Navy there might be a backlash. Maybe not though?

In terms of “Rwanda” or equivalent, how much are we willing to pay to deport these people? What if it costs more than the hotels? I ask because the common complaint is that our services are on their arse and we’re paying for asylum seekers to sit in hotels. If we are still paying the same money or more to deport people by long haul flight and then paying the recipient country to host them, is that palatable? I don’t know. I don’t know the figures.

If there was an easy answer to this issue it would have been solved.

Oh do piss off. I’ve literally said “shooting the boats” is hideous, inhumane and mustn’t happen. It’s right up there. I wrote it

As for “Rwanda”, we are spending £4-5bn on hotels etc - and rising. Add in the long term fiscal drag of migrants who will always be a net negative on the economy and we’re talking billions more

Plus all the social fracturing and decay that comes with illegal immigration

So we can afford to spend a LOT on a version of Rwanda and still save vast amounts of money. What’s more as soon as we start doing this properly - despatching every single boat person to faraway dismal-place, then the boats will stop. Very quickly. No one will bother crossing if you can’t stay in Britain

Sorted

A huge number of successful businesses are run by migrants, and someone who is willing to travel half way across the world, with a channel crossing being just one dangerous element, suggests we're dealing with people who have huge drive. I worked with refugees before the boat crossings, but one thing that stood out consistently was that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work.

What's so beautiful in this post is that you can't see the rich irony in it.

You'll have to explain. The first few explanations for your comment that jumped to mind were pretty grim, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, that you have some more justifiable reason.

You are unable to work out that the one thing that stood out consistently, that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work, is because they are economic migrants.

That one popped into my head, but I thought I'd credit you with a little more intelligence. Sadly not. Maybe don't think the first thing that pops into your head is correct, and therefore no more thought is required*

Now consider you're an asylum seeker, coming from somewhere like Iraq, Syria, Iran or Afghanistan. You've made the journey to the UK. What do you want to do? Sit around in a hotel, with your little handout, doing nothing? Or perhaps you're desperate to do something with your days? It may be tricky to comprehend, but those people counting down, were also pretty grateful to have been "welcomed", and were keen to be contributing, rather than taking (and I wasn't in a position where they would benefit from telling me this - I got to know many refugees very well, and it may be difficult to believe, but that thought process of wanting to contribute was very common).

I am curious though. How would you want an asylum seeker to behave, to not be classed in a negative fashion? Surely the alternative to being desperate to work is that they were quite content to sit around and live off state handouts. I don't like to assume, but I find it hard to believe that's what you'd prefer.

*I'm only teasing of course. Your comment about the dense Liberal herd amused me (I do realise that there are plenty of people who appear not to understood your arguments today, so realise it wasn't aimed directly at me), and thought you'd enjoy a little in return. One of the beauties of this site, after all, is that it's not an echo chamber.

I'd want them to not come at all, they haven't been specifically invited. Put into a detention camp to await deportation to a designated safe third country or voluntary return to their home country if they don't want to end up in Rwanda.

No one who hasn't been specifically invited by the government to seek asylum, currently Hong Kongers, Ukrainians and about 3,000 Afghani translators is owed anything and certainly not entitled to remain in the country. It is our soft touch system that allows them to stay and this soft touch system is going to result in a Reform majority government and PM Nige. People are simply fed up, how many of the arrested terrorists do you think we're migrants? What have they added to the nation, enriched us by trying to bomb the Israeli embassy and costing us millions in surveillance, court cases and supermax prison time. Simply refuse them in the first place and deport them to a safe third country or they return home voluntarily. No right of appeal, no prolonged court cases, just refusal and deportation within a week of arrival.

Why not flip that question on its head and ask how many migrants are arrested terrorists? A fraction of a percentage is the answer and for that you think it's fine to withdraw any moral obligation to provide asylum?

How many murders and terrorist atrocities is it worth to allow asylum seekers from these countries that we have not invited to remain in the country. What if it was your wife, son, daughter or parents that were killed in the terrorist attack if the security services hadn't caught these ones? Would their deaths be acceptable losses?

How many deaths from IRA bombs was it worth for us to remain a society tolerant of Irish people or Catholics? Terrorists want us to be a fearful, suspicious, intolerant society because it's their best recruitment tool. You don't get to sow fear about asylum seekers because a few might be terrorists. That would be unacceptable if you applied that logic to any other group.

The difference being that the Irish and Catholic people were already here, asylum seekers aren't. We have no duty to invite those who wish us harm into the nation. You're saying we should invite terrorists into the country, put them up in hotels, give them priority NHS treatment all while they plot to blow us up. No thanks. I say we deport them and make sure no one we don't invite is allowed to remain in the country.

Downing Street is rethinking its controversial winter fuel payment cut amid growing anxiety at the top of government that the policy could wreak serious electoral damage, the Guardian has been told.

Keir Starmer’s senior team has been discussing for several weeks how to handle public anger over the policy, which bubbled over in last Thursday’s local elections, when the party lost two-thirds of the council seats it was defending.

While a full reversal of the cut is not expected, No 10 sources said they were considering whether to increase the £11,500 threshold over which pensioners are no longer eligible for the allowance.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/05/no-10-reviewing-winter-fuel-payment-cut-after-labour-slump-in-local-elections

This will end up with saving the square root of f##k all and they won't get any credit for reversing it. They could have increased the tax rich oldies pay in more stealthier ways and end up with more money.

I can see a repeat of Gordon Brown's 70p or whatever it was.

Downing Street is rethinking its controversial winter fuel payment cut amid growing anxiety at the top of government that the policy could wreak serious electoral damage, the Guardian has been told.

Keir Starmer’s senior team has been discussing for several weeks how to handle public anger over the policy, which bubbled over in last Thursday’s local elections, when the party lost two-thirds of the council seats it was defending.

While a full reversal of the cut is not expected, No 10 sources said they were considering whether to increase the £11,500 threshold over which pensioners are no longer eligible for the allowance.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/05/no-10-reviewing-winter-fuel-payment-cut-after-labour-slump-in-local-elections

This will end up with the savings being the the square root of f##k all and they won't get any credit for reversing it. They could have increased the tax rich oldies pay in more stealthier ways and end up with more money.