Keir Starmer’s gone and proved just how inept he is – and it’s worse than anyone imagined
Starmer has given us proof that his “groundbreaking” ‘one in, one out’ deal was nothing but a gimmick.
The first Channel migrant deportation was cancelled at the last minute (Image: Getty)
I’m rarely surprised by Labour’s failures, and September has already been full of them. But Keir Starmer’s inability to return even a single migrant to France really takes the cake. Back in July, at the Anglo-French summit, our Prime Minister stood alongside French President Emmanuel Macron with his best serious face and announced his supposedly “groundbreaking” ‘one in, one out’ returns deal.
At the time, early reports suggested as few as 50 people would actually be sent back across the Channel – by plane, not dinghy – and many of us laughed at how pathetic that sounded. But even that turned out to be an overestimation of Starmer’s competence. He couldn’t quite manage to send the first one back. The first return flight, scheduled to take one migrant from Heathrow to Paris on an Air France passenger plane on Monday, September 16, was called off after charities protested and legal action was threatened.
More than 31,000 Channel migrants have reached the UK this year (Image: Getty)
And, true to form, Starmer folded at the first sign of resistance. British and French NGOs flooded the airline with calls, emails, and social media messages urging them “not to deport these people.” Lawyers have piled in as well, advising migrants on how to challenge their deportations – something the Home Office has left a “generous” amount of time for.
Legal challenges could be based on Article Eight of the ECHR, which is the ‘right to family life’, if the migrants can claim relatives in the UK – probably through a distant cousin twice removed. Apparently, cases may also be lodged on the grounds that they suffer mental ill health.
Meanwhile, more than 31,000 illegal Channel migrants have reached Britain this year alone, arriving in dinghies along an extremely perilous route. And yet, the Prime Minister can’t get a single person returned on a commercial flight.
Just two months ago, Starmer promised: “Migrants arriving via small boat will be detained and returned to France in short order”.
Reform UK’s Nigel Farage can rightly say “we told you so” after he predicted this outcome from day one, warning: “If we even try to deport people across the Channel we will run straight into the European Convention on Human Rights as written into British law, in the human rights act. The lawyers will have a field day and will find lots of reasons why people can’t be deported.”
Another flight is supposedly scheduled for the same migrant today. But given yesterday’s fiasco, I won’t hold my breath.
