Starmer has blown another negotiation

Telegraph

5 days ago

It is difficult to think of a better summary of the travails of Sir Keir Starmer's government than the farcical circumstances of his press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron.
While Sir Keir and Mr Macron were announcing a pilot scheme that would see some migrants arriving on Britain's shores sent back to France – with an equivalent number in turn coming the other way – up to 600 migrants made the journey across the Channel.
With the number of migrants returned to France on a weekly basis speculated to be as few as 50, it could take three months to undo yesterday's crossings alone. For his part, meanwhile, Mr Macron used his time in front of the press to pin the blame on Brexit, rather than the curious inability of the French authorities to crack down on people smuggling within their territory.
It was a poor attempt at deflecting blame, particularly when the declaration issued by the British and French governments noted that the implementation of any deal would be subject to 'prior legal scrutiny' from the bloc, illustrating once again the way in which Brussels has tied its members hands in the fight against illegal migration. But if the French President's accusation was astray there was, at least, a grain of truth in the insinuation that the Channel crisis is at least in part of Britain's making.
As it stands, the deal struck with Macron will be woefully inadequate to the task of combating the trade across the Channel. The idea is to dissuade illegal crossings by threatening those who arrive with deportation.
But between the efforts of the open borders legal lobby and their friends in the judiciary, it is hard not to suspect that attempts to actually remove people from our shores will rapidly be bogged down in the courts, weakening the disincentive.
Sir Keir, having made much of the Conservative Party's struggle to implement its Rwanda plan, may well find that his alternative, too, founders on the judiciary.
Moreover, with the numbers arriving quite possibly exceeding departures, the idea that the scheme will function as a disincentive may also prove woefully misguided.
Deals such as that struck between the EU and Turkey which proved successful did so because they removed vast numbers of arrivals rather than a tiny fraction. Without this guarantee, the crossings will continue, deal or no deal.