Think the ‘bloody border’ issue is a pain? It’s going to get a lot worse
MOST people have never heard of Paul Lincoln, the outgoing head of the UK Border Force.
But we should remember his name. As boatloads of illegal migrants were streaming into the UK last week, Lincoln gave his departure speech to colleagues.
“People are talking about immigration, emigration and the rest of the bloody thing,” he said. “It’s all bloody crap. We’re all human beings, we’re all mammals.
“Bloody borders are just such a pain in the bloody arse.” How can someone with such a stupid, childish view have ever held such an important position in our nation?
Who thinks we need reminding that we are all human beings? You think we don’t know that? The problem isn’t that the British public don’t know that we are all human beings. The problem is that millions of human beings want to come to our country.
And our country cannot cope with them. We couldn’t cope with all the people who want to come here if they all arrived legally. We certainly can’t cope with them if they all arrive illegally.
Which is what is happening now, with more than 1,000 people a day pouring across the Channel. Borders may very well be “a pain in the arse”. But they are vital. If you don’t have borders you don’t have a country.
Those people tasked with maintaining our borders may very well think it would be easier if we just relaxed about it. Or the public were just persuaded to suck it up. But they would also have abandoned their posts.
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Sadly, it is becoming increasingly clear that our Prime Minister is among those to have done so on this issue.
Indeed, he appears to share the idiotic views of Mr Lincoln. Boris Johnson’s hope seems to be that the constant flow of migrants illegally coming into the UK will remain beneath the public’s radar. Just as they seem to go under the radar of our border force.
Johnson hopes we won’t notice the numbers, won’t notice the consequences and won’t find it infuriating that migrants are now even using jet skis to break into our country. Most of all, he hopes his own failure to get to grips with this issue will pass us by.
Well, his calculation is wrong. We do notice. We notice those jet skis and the boats washing up on the beach at Dover. We notice the gap between what the Government promises and what it does. Most of all, we notice that this Government, which promised to take back control of our borders, is completely failing to do so.
The problem for the Government is that there is now nowhere else for the blame to go. When this country voted to leave the European Union it was in large part because politicians from Labour and the Conservatives had spent a generation pointing out that membership of the EU made border integrity impossible.
They were right. But now that we have left the EU there are no bureaucrats in Brussels to blame. If our borders are porous then that is our fault now.
Johnson hopes we won’t notice the numbers, won’t notice the consequences and won’t find it infuriating that migrants are now even using jet skis to break into our country. Most of all, he hopes his own failure to get to grips with this issue will pass us by.
Douglas Murray
Of course, there is some blame to put elsewhere.
France has failed badly in its promise to stop migrants massing on their side of the Channel and failed in its promise to stop boats setting off from the French beaches.
But of course we cannot rely on President Emmanuel Macron in this matter. He is as cynical as he always is, promising one thing but doing another. The French don’t want camps of illegal migrants in their country any more than we want that.
And from their point of view every boatload of illegals who head to us is one less boatload they have to cope with in France. The UK has already found itself in the bizarre position of paying the French authorities to police their own beaches.
But the French can’t simply be paid into making the problem go away. If this country continues to allow boatloads of people to come, then of course French authorities will continue to see people massing on their side of the Channel.
The pull effect is very strong and destabilises France as much as it can destabilise Britain.
Smuggling networks
We are currently seeing on the Belarus-Poland border how migrants can be used as a weapon against a country.
The threat of thousands of illegals pouring into Poland is rightly exercising the EU. But the same thing is happening in our own country. Except that in our case our Government doesn’t seem to care.
They listen endlessly to people such as Mr Lincoln who find borders “problematic”. But they know very well how they could change the situation.
They could stop the boats landing. They could stop using the Border Force as a ferrying service — the official wing of the smuggling networks. They could turn the boats around, turn the arrivals around, or detain them all in a third country.
Make it clear, in other words, that you cannot just sail into our country. If we did this, then the boats would stop.
Those people who think borders are a pain in the arse haven’t seen anything yet. Unless Johnson gets to grips with this issue, the pain is just beginning.
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