Labour aren’t going to stop the Boriswave settling. That’s the truth. As someone who, last November, praised the Home Secretary when she announced plans to undo the harm of what she called ‘this extraordinary open border experiment’, it gives me no pleasure to write this. But I’m afraid that’s the reality. The warning signs have been flashing for months now. After the promising announcement in November, we had a swift consultation, concluding in mid-February.
I understand from sources within the Home Office that government lawyers have been raising concerns since the spring about the likelihood of legal challenge to the ‘retrospective’ element of the changes
But now we’re nine months down the line and we have no policy announced, while the Home Secretary has been happy to commit to opening new routes for Palestinians and Afghans to come here, against our national interest.
Meanwhile there’s been a concerted effort amongst the Labour party, unions and open borders organisations to prevent these changes happening. Many of their arguments are about ‘fairness’, by which they seem to mean ‘always doing what guests in our country want, even if it’s utterly against the interests of the British people’. These campaigners, including former Home Office minister Mike Tapp, are particularly concerned about the care worker cohort of the Boriswave, despite the fact that they are among the most fiscally negative, and so the very people we do not want to settle.
This week, the Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh appeared to have publicly challenged the ILR policy, with a speech summary on her own website saying, ‘if we continually prolong the time people have to wait for settlement, we can also prolong the process of building cohesion.’ It has been reported that her staff ‘said the remarks had been paraphrased’.
But on Wednesday morning, when being interviewed by Sophy Ridge on Sky News, Fahnbulleh was asked seven times if she supports the plans to increase the waiting time for ILR from five to 15 years. The Energy Secretary talked about ‘small boat crossings’, ‘compassion’, ‘a system that when people do come to this country, they are able to integrate’, and repeatedly told her interviewer that the Home Secretary and government are ‘consulting’.
To compound matters, on Wednesday night, it emerged that talks between Mahmood and Unison broke down after the Home Secretary apparently refused to allow the union to bring a migrant care worker to the meeting.
I also understand from sources within the Home Office that government lawyers have been raising concerns since the spring about the likelihood of legal challenge to the ‘retrospective’ element of the changes – which of course are not retrospective at all, because it is perfectly normal for the conditions of visas and indeed a country’s settlement policy to be changed while a foreigner is working here.
What all of this shows is that even if the Home Secretary wanted to, she would be unable to bring in the proposed reforms. To satisfy government lawyers she’s likely to need primary legislation, and it’s very hard to imagine the Parliamentary Labour party voting for what Angela Rayner has called unfair and ‘un-British’ changes. Remember, these are the MPs who refused to vote through some relatively minor benefit reforms.
What then is likely to happen? My sources within the Home Office fear that we’ll get changes which only apply to new arrivals, defeating the entire purpose of the reforms. The whole of the ruinous Boriswave will be allowed to settle, with very many of them being allowed to vote at the next election. It will be a betrayal of the country as serious as letting them in the first place.
As Rob Bates of the Centre for Migration control said to me, ‘the Home Secretary has allowed this issue to drift. Now we are at crisis point, with the Boriswave on the cusp of settlement, and she looks set to dilute her reforms further for reasons of party management. The plans were presented as hardline when announced, but nearly a year later it looks like the country will be saddled with two million economically unproductive migrants and the opening up of new migration routes from some of the most dangerous parts of the world. There is no democratic legitimacy for any of this, and come the next general election, centre-right parties must be prepared to revoke settlement and citizenship grants. The country cannot afford anything else’.
Bates is right. All of this is going to have to be overturned. It may not seem ‘fair’ to the Boriswavers, but it is absolutely fair to the British people. The Boriswave will have to go home.
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