Mahmood's con trick exposed

There is a lot to be said about Shabana Mahmood’s asylum reforms. Some of her proposals were trailed a couple of days in advance, giving the outward impression that some much needed basic fixes would be made - restoring asylum to a temporary basis and removing some of the pull factors. I fell for it.

As ever, though, it’s never wise to go on pre-release leaks. The full report suggests something more underhanded is in play. It looks like Mahmood is setting out a faster path to naturalisation - allowing migrants to work. The more this is probed over the coming days, the more it will fall apart. Whatever’s going on, she will get found out. She has always favoured an amnesty, and this is a version of her long stated ambition.

The short version is that while stringent new measures will apply to asylum applicants, they will soon be moved out of that category and into the work stream.

As far as the media goes, Mahmood has played a blinder. She has the far left hopping with rage while attracting pragmatic praise from the right - so much so that it might even give Labour a short term bump in the polls. To the casual observer, it looks like Mahmood is sincere.

Even if one is charitable, though, nobody thinks Mahmood’s measures will actually stop the boats. Mahmood’s measures are just designed to keep embarrassing headlines to a minimum - at least as far as her own shop is concerned. But whatever sleight of hand she employs, she cannot conceal the costs, the crime, and the sheer numbers crossing the Channel. That will be the ultimate measure of whether her reforms are successful - and she’s already blown it.

She can establish “safe and legal routes”, cut down the processing time, reclassify asylum seekers, and even eliminate some of the embarrassing ECHR based appeals, but none of this eases the anger that these immigration cheats are here at all. In fact, it will only get worse if immigration cheats are fast tracked into an integration process - especially when Labour’s latest rental market intervention is likely to make the housing situation worse, and when youth unemployment is rising. These measures do not take the fire out of the issue.

In any case, tinkering with the applications and appeals end of the problem still does little to address the pull factors. Migrants are not coming here so they can slowly rot in a grotty hotel. They come so they can send money home. To disrupt that, the Home Office is going to have to come down hard on Deliveroo, illegal subletting, illegal HMOs and organised crime in general. We must repair local authority surveillance and ramp up prosecutions of landlords and business owners who employ illegals.

That, though, is a long term project. Rebuilding the administrative state after three decades of cuts is going to take a decade or more. We’ve lost a lot of the skils base for inspections and prosecutions. Restoring state capacity is not happening soon and Tory daydreams about leaving the ECHR are not going to dent the problem.

Ultimately, only drone attacks directly on the boats, or indefinite detention will solve this problem. If they set foot on British soil they must go straight into camps with minimal provisions - bad enough to make the beg to go home. Personally, I’m no longer prepared to incur this cost even on a temporary basis. I think it’s possible to develop a relatively low cost kamikaze drone under £10,000 a pop that will quite effectively kill all individuals on a dinghy. Death is ultimately the most effective deterrent. I don’t see any moral obstacle to employing lethal force in defence of our borders - and it cuts out any possibility of lengthy appeals.

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Speaking of drones, if you fancy listening to me drone on for an hour, you can catch me on the Nick Dixon podcast…