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To be frank simply making it impossible to claim asylum if you arrive by boat across the channel is simple legally and morally justifiable, I think.

Didn’t Braverman propose that?

No idea

The whole idea was incompatible with the UN convention on asylum. It would be impossible to implement without either leaving or renegotiating that treaty.

Don’t really care either way on that front. What are they going to do? To me that seems the fairest way. If you want to claim asylum you can do so through British embassies. It isn’t arbitrary and it isn’t complicated - if you arrive by small boat you can’t have asylum. If you go through the proper channels then maybe you can.

Just pointing out that your claim that it is “simple legally” is not entirely accurate. Our current treaty obligations say that any claim for asylum can be made regardless of how they entered the national territory.

I mean simple legally in terms of domestic administration. I don’t really care about international law myself as frankly it’s entirely voluntary.

Is it?

OK, so we decide to break the law in a specific and limited way. We have our planeload of asylum seekers ready to deport.

To.....?

We rely on international agreements for said plane of asylum seekers to be allowed to land and then be offloaded.

Tell me which international agreement relating to asylum we rely on to send people back to their own countries? I don’t know the answer but I am asking you if you know.

You know when you go to the airport and you don't have a ticket? Or a passport? Or a visa where needed? You aren't allowed to board because you won't be allowed to disembark.

I can't tell you what the specific agreements are but its self-evident that sovereign nations do not allow other sovereign nations to just dump people in their territory without due process.

What do you envisage? We stick a load of people from random nations onto a plane and fly them to France? And they are allowed to land and throw people off the plane with no paperwork or process?

Build a huge concentration camp for them in east Falkland. Safe but basic and cold and bleak

As soon as these migrants realise they really ain’t getting into Britain the boats will stop immediately

You just need to punish the first few thousand and deterrence will take care of the rest for eternity

No one bothers to try and get to Australia any more because they know they can’t get in

Are there not countless small islands in the British Isles we could use?

Summerisle?

To be frank simply making it impossible to claim asylum if you arrive by boat across the channel is simple legally and morally justifiable, I think.

Lets play the scenario. We would then need to ensure that we catch everyone coming on these boats and then detain them securely and then process them through the home office officials and then through the courts and then send them away to a place willing to accept them.

As we know people do not want to have refugees warehoused anywhere - we can't jail them, local Tory MPs object to disused airbases, the "put them in tents" argument needs a gulag creating somewhere and nobody will want it where they are. And then we need to pay an army of officials to quickly process the paperwork and then asylum courts to formally declare them illegal and then a diplomatic agreement to rent planes to send people off.

Even if we ban people using that route it will still be expensive and a public spectacle and politically messy. Why would people still come? Because they know that some people will slip away from the authorities to work illegally as they already are doing. We could go after the employers but apparently don't want to.

I support going after employers I don’t really understand why we don’t - vested interests I imagine.

Ultimately an asylum court should be simple to operate if the only question the court needs to consider is “how did this person arrive in the country”. You could even make it the default assumption in absence of evidence of coming through a port or an airport.

I agree on the deportation logistics but short of machine gunning boats there isn’t really an alternative.

I'm disappointed in your last comment - of course there is an alternative. Its supply and demand.

Supply is plentiful. Despite our whining we take fewer asylum seekers than France does. Its not a British issue its an international issue. We need to work with our partners to find a solution for everyone. Post Brexit we seem to think we just tell the forrin what to do and wonder why they refuse.

Demand is also plentiful. We have endless employment opportunities because we don't enforce the law. So even if asylum was automatically to be refused people would still come on the assumption that there would be opportunities to disappear.

What is it about asylum that stops rational thought?

“Working with our partners” has achieved absolutely nothing. We have been doing that for decades. The only way forward on that particular front is (at the very least) a new European wide agreement on how to handle the issue. If that’s not happening then you’re left with going after employers (which I support wholeheartedly) and making it not worth the risk to try to cross the channel in a small boat.

Asylum claims have shot up since we stopped working with our partners. Demonstrably. Hence the crisis we now have.

So far the proposals we have on here in the last few minutes have included
Murder them
Scrap the rule of law
Just deport them to *somewhere* because we can do that

None of this is remotely workable. What is the point in proposing unworkable solutions?

At least you have a less murderous idea to ban asylum claims. But that still means catching them and warehousing them and processing them and legally disavowing them and having other countries prepared to accept them. And all the way through that people are slipping through the cracks because we don't want to go after the black economy which is the pull for so many.

The numbers returned to 'the first safe country' under the Dublin agreement were minuscule.

You are doing an excellent job of complaining how ignorant everyone else is on this issue whilst demonstrating how ignorant you are on it.

18 boats carrying 1,194 illegal migrants crossed yesterday.

That’s the highest daily figure this year.

Where are all the women and children?

https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1929131768008827188?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

Over 1000 in a day is absolutely toxic for starmer. He has so clearly NOT “smashed the gangs”. And he cancelled the one idea anyone had for stopping them humanely, even if it was absurd and expensive and extreme - it might still have worked

And, besides, what have Labour tried since? Offshore processing hubs - like Rwanda. Except unlike the Tories starmer couldn’t even get the agreement of the host country - in his case Albania, which humiliatingly turned him down live, on air

Can Starmer’s and Labour’s polling go lower?

Yes

It surprised me that people criticised details of the Rwanda scheme as impractical etc, when I thought it was a deterrent rather than a practical solution. So we’d only have to send a few dozen there and potential illegal immigrants would think better of crossing the channel. A system we’d barely have to use, but knowing it was there would do the job

Yes of course. It was a deterrent. And it might well have worked AS A DETERRENT

Which is why Labour - having criticised Rwanda for being heartless and useless for years - are now desperately seeking to do versions of their own. Like Albania

Nah Rwanda was shite. It was more tinkering. A holding prison on the Falklands is a more plausible option provided that people have an option to voluntarily return home, in my view. Not sure whether the Falklands will want such a prison on their island though.

The Falklanders will have no choice. They entirely rely on the uk to stop them being Argentinian. Mainland Brits died to defend that right of theirs

So they owe the mother country, big time

Also

1. Falklanders are now seriously rich (fishing licenses). They will cope

2. No one lives on west Falkland - as @Sean_F notes. We wouldn’t be dispossessing anyone (and if we end up doing that, it will be a few bleak sheep farms, so whatever - compensate them)

Yes it will be expensive and difficult initially. But right now we are spending FIVE BILLION A YEAR hosting these people and the bill is only rising, fast

And again the point is: we wouldn’t have to do it for long. Because the deterrent effect would be immediate and massive and the boats would stop very quick

You may have to work on the ‘huge concentration camp’ branding.

No. That’s PART of the branding. This is meant to be a deterrent

We have to toughen up. These people are taking the piss, coming in at the rate of a thousand a day, costing us BILLIONS and threatening to destabilise the entire country and kick off civil disorder

So we will have to be mean and nasty for a few months. So be it. It’s better than actually shooting people dead in the Channel which is actually where we will end up if we don’t sort the problem soon, because voters will eventually elect a government cruel and desperate enough to do that

It’s already happening in Greece and Poland. Live rounds have been used. People have drowned or died

18 boats carrying 1,194 illegal migrants crossed yesterday.

That’s the highest daily figure this year.

Where are all the women and children?

https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1929131768008827188?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

Over 1000 in a day is absolutely toxic for starmer. He has so clearly NOT “smashed the gangs”. And he cancelled the one idea anyone had for stopping them humanely, even if it was absurd and expensive and extreme - it might still have worked

And, besides, what have Labour tried since? Offshore processing hubs - like Rwanda. Except unlike the Tories starmer couldn’t even get the agreement of the host country - in his case Albania, which humiliatingly turned him down live, on air

Can Starmer’s and Labour’s polling go lower?

Yes

It surprised me that people criticised details of the Rwanda scheme as impractical etc, when I thought it was a deterrent rather than a practical solution. So we’d only have to send a few dozen there and potential illegal immigrants would think better of crossing the channel. A system we’d barely have to use, but knowing it was there would do the job

Yes of course. It was a deterrent. And it might well have worked AS A DETERRENT

Which is why Labour - having criticised Rwanda for being heartless and useless for years - are now desperately seeking to do versions of their own. Like Albania

Nah Rwanda was shite. It was more tinkering. A holding prison on the Falklands is a more plausible option provided that people have an option to voluntarily return home, in my view. Not sure whether the Falklands will want such a prison on their island though.

Labour simply must stop the boats. Whatever it costs.

How?

Exactly.

If "STOP THE BOATS" was easily achievable it would already have been done. I know that its just "common sense" what to do when you know nothing and people are getting angry because "common sense" hasn't just been done.

But in the real world? The magic wand isn't available, and every simplistic solution is impossible.

You stop the boats by sinking them.

It wouldn't take many and it wouldn't take long.

And after than there would be no boats.

It could even become a nice money earner by selling licences to sink them.

That would mean murdering or at the very least acquiescing in the manslaughter of unarmed civilians.

We aren't that sort of country. And I could never support it.

I agree it would stop them, of course, and - even worse - there's a real risk that's where we one day end up with a far-right/crypto-fascist government if the Open Border zealots and their legions of lawyers don't learn to compromise with the electorate.

18 boats carrying 1,194 illegal migrants crossed yesterday.

That’s the highest daily figure this year.

Where are all the women and children?

https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1929131768008827188?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

Over 1000 in a day is absolutely toxic for starmer. He has so clearly NOT “smashed the gangs”. And he cancelled the one idea anyone had for stopping them humanely, even if it was absurd and expensive and extreme - it might still have worked

And, besides, what have Labour tried since? Offshore processing hubs - like Rwanda. Except unlike the Tories starmer couldn’t even get the agreement of the host country - in his case Albania, which humiliatingly turned him down live, on air

Can Starmer’s and Labour’s polling go lower?

Yes

It surprised me that people criticised details of the Rwanda scheme as impractical etc, when I thought it was a deterrent rather than a practical solution. So we’d only have to send a few dozen there and potential illegal immigrants would think better of crossing the channel. A system we’d barely have to use, but knowing it was there would do the job

That it might work as a deterrent is what upset some.

Exactly right. The left was desperate to stop it in case it worked, thus destroying a mini industry of charities and hand wringing

In the end, the person who stopped the scheme was Rishi Sunak. He had a window of legal opportunity, which he chose not to use. He could have got a flight off before the election. Or, at the very least, cynically electrified the election by raising the issue and challenging the forces of woke to defy him.

I can't get beyond my preconceived notion that the entire "plan" was 99.9% MacGuffin- had it ever happened, flight one would have flown, Hotel Rwanda would have filled up and then what? And, for all the words, I think the top table of government kind of knew that would happen. It worked in words, but couldn't work in reality- certainly not in the form constructed. So it had to stay as a promise/threat, never to be delivered.

I may be wrong, but I don't see how.