Homeland's new remigration policy
You would think the arrival of Restore Britain would remove the requirement for small parties like Homeland and the SDP, but they do have a role as quasi-thinktanks, especially when the slop parties of the right have nothing to offer but bullet points and tweets. It’s good to see that the Homeland Party has stepped up to the plate. Their new paper today is most certainly a credible effort (and for the record, I had no hand in it).
Predictably, the paper calls for eventual withdrawal from the ECHR (albeit in a more measured and nuanced way), which is not a position I support. They says “We will legislate around the ECHR ahead of withdrawing from it”, which is a more coherent approach than immediate withdrawal as the populist parties propose. Still, though, the mechanics of leaving it are more trouble than its worth in my view, especially if a party needs to win a second term.
I won’t bang on about that though. It’s an article of faith for the right and I’ve lost that argument. Mercifully, the paper doesn’t dwell on that too much, so the paper is more substance than filler, unlike that of Restore Britain.
The rest of the paper touches on a lot of established themes in this debate, not least reversing the Boriswave, closing the asylum system and creating push factors to encourage self-repatriation. Much of it will be familiar to those who’ve read the manifestoproject.org and Homeland’s previous policy.
Disappointingly, the party joins most of the right in calling for a ban on halal without thinking through the enforcement implications, and believes that such a ban will cause Muslims to leave Britain. Wishful thinking, methinks.
Where their policy has the edge over the competition is that it links to a few of their flanking policies, recognising that there is an immigration dimension to just about every policy that might appear in a manifesto - especially housing. You can’t just have an immigration policy. Effective control must be built into your approach to everything.
Meanwhile, the party does touch on the kind of local enforcement I bang on about, but like Restore, doesn’t fully realise how central this is to remigration. Rebuilding the administrative state is a priority and not just for immigration reasons. What we can say about this paper is that it looks more like a policy than Restore’s effort which is just an extruded discussion piece.
At fifty six pages long, it’s detailed enough but not verbose, thereby respecting the reader’s time without being cursory. It covers most of the bases, with a couple of novel ideas, not least banning foreigners from jury service (something I hadn’t thought of), and it sets out an ambitious but achievable removals target over a two term period.
Where Homeland has it right is that this paper will serve as the basis for their party comms, and they will use this policy as a point of reference. They actually understand the utility of policy. It was actually worth their time producing it. Restore, meanwhile, will simply park their paper on their website, and policy will still be whatever Rupert Lowe tweets. In due course, we can expect to see Lowe contradicting his own policy paper.
It’s a tragedy that Restore and Reform put so little stock in policy, when yet again Homeland demonstrates what can be done in a short time with limited resources. All the same, it’s good that somebody is doing the thinking even if the populist right can’t be bothered.