Risk and reward, Trump's Mini-Me and planting trees for the planet
To answer one point, migrants do claim asylum in safe countries in Europe, but if they are rejected they try again in the UK as we are no longer subject to the EU Dublin III agreement to automatically reject them.
Others come as they speak English so have a better chance here. Single young men come – as they have throughout history – as they are most likely to survive dangerous travel, intending to settle and then send for their family.
Allowing applications in France and a more thorough removal of failed claimants would discourage crossing attempts. Lewis Gibson, Birmingham
I totally agree with Guy Wilkins (MetroTalk, Thu). Nigel Farage is Donald Trump's Mini-Me from the Austin Powers film and follows him without question, even wearing his 'Morons And Gormless of America' hats.
Farage, like Trump, will make ridiculous promises with no possible way of achieving them.
Facts and the truth are totally irrelevant to him, he incites fear and loathing of various groups and fails to condemn violence by the far right.
They both live for publicity and adoration from the media. Farage would go to the opening of an envelope if a camera was present and without constant unjustified newspaper articles he would crumble as Dracula in sunlight. A Lloyd, Liverpool
In response to my point that Jeremy Corbyn's new party will score an 'own-goal' by splitting the far-left vote and benefiting Reform, James Freeman (MetroTalk, Tue) and Brian Dooley (Wed) insist Labour could have avoided this by catering more for the leftist voter.
However, neither mention that when Labour did this previously, they quickly became unelectable.
As party leader, Corbyn's aspirations reduced Labour to its worst General Election defeat since 1935, giving Boris Johnson a landslide victory in 2019.
Labour's previous experiment with socialism under Michael Foot resulted in Labour's 1983 pre-election manifesto being described as 'the longest suicide note in history' and gifted a huge majority to Margaret Thatcher.
Labour has little to fear by losing the niche hard Left and should let Corbyn and his disciples get on with it.
Labour must stop terrifying the wealth creators in this country with counterproductive policies and focus on gaining centrist support while masses of the electorate feel uneasy about the rise of Reform and exasperated by the deficiencies of Conservative and the Lib Dems. Robert Hughes, London
We hear much about the catastrophic effects of carbon on our climate but few people talks of the effect of expanding deserts. More Trending
Expanding deserts are a threat to many countries – but there are signs of a fightback. The Great Green Wall is a project by the African Union to restore degraded land across 22 countries in the Sahel region. But its great success in planting trees – which will also act as a carbon sponge – will not help us as much as benefit the southern Sahara.
Italy has recently suffered temperatures as high as 45C, which can be fatal. This heat comes from northern Africa. The way to reverse climate change in Europe is to emulate the Great Green Wall scheme by planting trees in northern Africa. Such a project would be more beneficial to us than the futile net zero programme, which is destroying whole industries and thousands of good jobs. Mark Hardinge, Worcester
There can be no excuses for the levels of violence carried out by Mohammed Fahir Amaaz at Manchester Airport against the police and a member of the public (Metro, Thu). The guilty verdicts were correct and I look forward to robust sentencing shortly.
You cannot attack any emergency worker just because you don't like them doing their duty. I look forward to the retrial Amaaz and his brother face after the jury could not reach a verdict on the charge they assaulted a male PC causing ABH. Robert Boston, Kent
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The Independent
22 minutes ago
- The Independent
‘One in, one out' is a realistic plan to deal with migration – let's give it a chance
The biggest problem with home secretary Yvette Cooper's plan to stop the boats is that it sounds unconvincing. One in, one out… how does that help? Especially when it is more like 17 in, one out? What kind of deterrent is that? But it is the start of a plan to tackle Britain's migration crisis – Home Office figures indicate that last Wednesday, almost 900 people arrived in boats in one day, bringing the total for 2025 to more than 25,000 – and one that could possibly work. It is, genuinely, the only policy that any government, Labour or Conservative, has devised so far that has a chance of doing so. The key to it is that the French government has accepted that Britain can send back some of the people crossing the Channel. The deal that has been published today is only a pilot scheme. It does not even say how many people will be returned, although the target is understood to be 50 a week, which is a small fraction of the average 850 arriving each week. But the point of a pilot scheme is that it allows the mechanics of a return scheme to be tested. It has already passed one test that the naysayers said it would fail: it has been approved by the European Commission. Now comes the hard part: showing that it is possible to detain and process arrivals, defeat the legal challenges and then put them on a plane and deliver them to France. Of those, the legal challenges are likely to be the bottleneck: hence Cooper's announcement of a fast-track asylum appeals procedure to try to ensure that migrants can be turned round within a few weeks. If that works, then the aim is to 'build', as Cooper put it on the Today programme this morning. If Britain can send back 50 a week, then there is no reason why we couldn't return all or nearly all arrivals. The Home Office estimates, and this seems about right, that if it can send back 80 per cent of arrivals, that will have a big deterrent effect, and few crossings will be attempted. Of course, there are reasons for doubting that this can be achieved. Will the French allow us to increase the numbers? Will the French even extend the scheme beyond the initial 11 months to which they have signed up? It is bound to take longer than that to start to get the numbers up. Maybe it will not work, but the point about a pilot scheme is that it allows Cooper the chance to try out, at a small scale, the elements of a scheme that plainly could work. No one else has even proposed a plausible and humane alternative. That said, the voters' frustration at the slow pace at which the government is moving is understandable. Labour has been in power for more than a year; the number of crossings is higher than last year; Cooper is only now announcing the plan; and the plan itself looks underwhelming. No wonder Nigel Farage carries all before him. But let us avoid the trap set by social-media bores of assuming that there are easy or quick solutions that two governments, desperate to escape the fury of the electorate, have wilfully refused to adopt. It took time for Keir Starmer to persuade Emmanuel Macron to accept the key that could unlock the solution: that France will take some migrants back. I didn't think it was possible, because the losses are more obvious than the gains for the French president. Yes, there is the distant prospect of clearing the tent cities in the Pas de Calais, but in the meantime what is France to do with the migrants who are sent back? I don't know what Macron got in return, but that was a negotiating triumph on the part of our prime minister. And it will take more time still to crank the British bureaucracy into action so that it is capable of taking the next, decisive step towards an effective deterrent. Meanwhile, Farage will score points by pretending the problem is simple and the solution is easy. His 'solution' is to destroy our relationship with France by trying to return migrants without French permission; to tear up not just the European Convention on Human Rights but the Refugee Convention and the Convention on the Law of the Sea; and to detain all arrivals indefinitely in huge prison camps at undisclosed locations. And still he wouldn't be able to deport migrants if other countries will not take them. If there is a better way, would it not be worth trying that first, even if it might take some time?
Daily Mail
23 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Migrants will be allowed into Britain from France for up to three months while claims are processed under Labour's new deal
Migrants in France will be handed a visa to live in Britain for up to three months if they apply through Labour's new 'one in, one out' deal. Details of the new Anglo-French scheme published by the Home Office today revealed applicants will be able to come to this country while their final application is considered. Documents said each successful applicant who meets a number of criteria would be 'granted entry clearance to come to the UK for a period of up to three months' after completing an online application. They will not be allowed access to public funds and will also be barred from working or studying during the initial three month period, while the Home Office considers whether it will grant a longer visa. It is unclear where the migrants will be housed, however, opening the prospect of them being placed in taxpayer-funded hotels. Furthermore, it is not known what would happen to migrants allowed into Britain under the scheme if their applications were later refused. The Home Office also confirmed applicants could be penalised of they fail to 'present for travel to the UK, without reasonable excuse, when directed by the Home Office'. The number of people accepted from France will have a 'cap' equal to the number of small boat migrants who are sent back under the deal, the documents showed. But the Home Office was unable to confirm the level of the cap. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: 'There are scant details as yet but this risks turning into yet another wide open door into the UK. 'It is not clear what will happen if the Home Office accepts people whose applications are rejected later on, and whether they can be removed. 'And what if the Home Office accepts people without being able to remove the same number to France due to legal challenges? Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has refused to say how many migrants will be involved in the new scheme 'There are a lot of unanswered questions and this risks descending into yet another Labour borders farce.' It came after Home Secretary Yvette Cooper refused to say how many migrants will be returned under the deal because it 'could help the smuggling gangs'. Migrants who arrive by small boat from tomorrow could face being selected for the scheme and placed in detention. Ms Cooper told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We will provide regular updates, people will be able to see how many people are being detained, how many people are being returned, and it is right that we should be transparent around that. 'But we're not setting the numbers in advance, firstly because there is no fixed number in terms of the overall number of people to come through this system, and secondly because we're not going to provide (gangs) with that operational information.' The agreement with Emmanuel Macron's government will lapse at the end of June next year – just 47 weeks away – unless it is renewed. Last month it was suggested the scheme would see 50 migrants a week sent back to France. At that rate, just 2,350 would be returned before the agreement expires. By comparison, a record 25,436 migrants have reached Britain by small boat since the start of the year, up 49 per cent on the same period last year. Meanwhile, pro-migrant groups have already indicated they are poised to bring legal challenges – just as they did against the previous Conservative government's Rwanda asylum deal. Steve Valdez-Symonds of Amnesty International UK said: 'We anticipate that this deal is likely to face legal challenges from people who quite reasonably will resist being swapped around like mere fodder rather than addressing the claim for asylum they have made. 'Once again, refugees are treated like parcels, not people, while the public is left to pay the price for yet another cruel, costly failure dressed up as policy. 'If and when there is some real detail on how this deal is intended to work, Amnesty will of course consider what further steps we ought to take.' Natasha Tsangarides, of the charity Freedom from Torture, said: 'While this pilot offers a pathway to sanctuary for a small number of refugees, it will rely on the mass detention of survivors of torture and persecution. 'We know from our therapy rooms how profoundly harmful any time in detention is for people who've been through the unimaginable horrors of torture. 'Many survivors were tortured in detention, so locking them up again reopens deep psychological scars and can set them back significantly on their road to recovery. 'A more secure world for everyone depends on international cooperation not only to ensure safety for survivors but also to stop repression.' From tomorrow, any new Channel arrivals will be taken to the Home Office's processing centre at Manston, near Ramsgate, Kent, and assessed by Border Force officials. Any selected for the returns scheme will be transferred to short-term immigration holding facilities operated by the Home Office, such as those at Heathrow and Gatwick airports. After further assessment, they could be sent to an immigration removal centre to await return to France. The first migrants will be returned by the end of August and detention space has already been set aside for the launch of the scheme. The deal was agreed by PM Sir Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron last month after a summit at Downing Street.
Western Telegraph
25 minutes ago
- Western Telegraph
Small boats crisis risking community cohesion, Kemi Badenoch claims
The Conservative leader also hit out at the deal the Government has struck with France to return migrants across the English Channel and insisted the Tories could not be held accountable for continued backlogs in the asylum system. The 'one-in, one out' agreement, which will begin operating on Wednesday, will see migrants ineligible to stay in the UK sent back to France, in exchange for taking those who have links to Britain. As she visited a farm in her Saffron Walden constituency on Tuesday, Mrs Badenoch was asked whether she believed descriptions of the small boats crisis as a 'tinderbox' were an appropriate part of the public debate around migration. The Conservative leader told the PA news agency: 'If you were to speak to the mothers who were protesting outside the hotel in Epping, they will tell you that a crime had been committed and that's what they're protesting.' Ministers should not be clamping down on those 'expressing legitimate concerns', she suggested, adding: 'We need to make sure that we address those concerns and what we're not seeing from the Government is any kind of addressing of those concerns. 'We need to stop the boats. It is not affordable, it is not good for community cohesion, it is not good for crime, it is costing us a lot of money. We need to get a grip on this issue as quickly as possible.' Asked whether the Conservatives were partly to blame for the immigration and asylum situation, Mrs Badenoch told reporters: 'No I don't accept that at all, because what Labour are doing is just rubber-stamping all of the applications and saying they're processing.' Labour scrapped 'the only deterrent that this country had, which was the Rwanda plan', she added. The agreement with France is 'not going to make any difference whatsoever', Mrs Badenoch said, adding: '50, at best, migrants being swapped with France is not going to stop the boats.' Earlier, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the deal with France will not stop the crossings on their own, but marked an important change of principle as migrants will be sent back across the Channel for the first time. Kemi Badenoch speaks with farmers during her visit to Hall Farm in Little Walden (Stefan Rousseau/PA) Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Ms Cooper said: 'We never claimed that there is a single silver bullet on this. So, this goes alongside the 28% increase in returns of failed asylum seekers that we have brought in. 'It goes alongside the change to those French maritime rules that I referred to which means France taking action in French waters to prevent boat crossings in the first place, and the much stronger law enforcement that we announced earlier this week with the additional National Crime Agency investigators and police to be able to go after the criminal gangs. We have to do all of these things.' Ms Cooper said the Government does not want to put a number on the amount of Channel migrants that will be returned to France as she believed it could aid criminal gangs. It has been reported that about 50 a week could be sent to France. This would be a stark contrast to the more than 800 people every week who on average have arrived in the UK via small boat this year. She added: 'We will provide regular updates, people will be able to see how many people are being detained, how many people are being returned, and it is right that we should be transparent around that.' Bruno Retailleau, France's interior minister, said the agreement 'establishes an experimental mechanism whose goal is clear: to smash the gangs'. The initial agreement will be in place until June 2026. Mr Retailleau added it marked the 'first stage' of efforts by the whole of the European Union, sparked by the UK-EU summit in London in May.
