When can we expect Labour to stop illegal immigration as they promised?
Migrant mess
WHEN can we expect Labour to stop illegal immigration as they promised?
In fairness they have had plenty to handle in the six weeks since election day, including riots and the continuing crises in Gaza and Ukraine.
Even so, we still don’t see any “clear plan for getting a grip on immigration, legal or illegal” which we highlighted as a worry even as we backed the party to bring change to Britain.
Since Keir Starmer’s landslide victory almost 5,000 more people have snuck into Britain illegally via the Channel.
Unlike under the Tories, all will now be processed as genuine asylum seekers — providing a golden new incentive for thousands more.
Labour’s only other tangible action has been to scrap the Tories’ Rwanda deterrent which, whatever the new Government says, WAS a genuine chance to stem the flow. Indeed some migrants at Calais waited for Labour to bin it before they would risk setting off.
READ MORE ON SIR KEIR STARMER
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper maintains her mantra about “smashing” the trafficking gangs — somehow imagining she will be the first to try it. But her new Border Security Command essentially rebrands an existing unit.
The Government is relying too on chummy talks with France and other EU allies. What will it offer up in the bargain?
In opposition Labour opposed all moves to stop the boats and gave no impression of recognising illegal migration as a crisis, let alone having fresh ideas to end it.
In Government, that won’t do. Britain voted for change on this issue too.
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Cry freedom
SOCIAL media can be a swamp of bile and lies. But the new Online Safety Act must be crystal clear on what is legal and illegal and the tech firms’ duties regarding each.
Stoking terrorism or riots, or racism, are not legal. Ignorance, inaccuracy and hyperbole is. And a mooted ban on this “legal but harmful” material is both sinister and unworkable.
Who defines harm? Anyone could claim a political opponent’s posts are harmful — and social media moderators might then censor them to avoid fines.
That is how online free speech dies. The new law must uphold it.
Sum threat
IMAGINE, if you dare, the crippling nationwide impact of an overtime ban at the Office for National Statistics.
You can’t, can you? Nor us.
Yet this is the empty ultimatum cosseted bean-counters have given bosses for demanding that they return to the office at least 40 per cent of their time.
Covid gave public sector snowflakes their work-from-home dream and they and their unions will never give it up.
Labour must change this entitled mindset, or our growth figures will never add up.