Reform's naval-gazing

It’s usually about this time of year when my brain starts to capsize with boredom and this year is no different. Silly season is upon us. I am not so bored, however, that I need to dive in to mark Reform’s homework on stopping the small boats. It’s more of the same rehashed nonsense about deploying the Royal Navy in the Channel, violating French territorial sovereignty and UNCLOS. It was drivel two years ago and it’s drivel now.

Article 19, UNCLOS has it that: "Passage of a foreign ship shall be considered to be prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State if in the territorial sea it engages in any of the following activities: (g) the loading or unloading of any commodity, currency or person contrary to the customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations of the coastal State".

Under such circumstances, our ships returning people to France would breach the law, as there would be no right of innocent passage. Permission would have to be negotiated. See also Art 25. The coastal State may take the necessary steps in its territorial sea to prevent passage which is not innocent.

How anybody finds the mental energy to rehash these arguments time and again, I simply do not know. Probably the biggest liability for the British right at the moment is how boring it is. It has nothing new or interesting to say about anything and I think that goes some way to explaining why their polling numbers are receding.

I do think, however, that deploying our armed forces might eventually be on the cards to combat the flow of migrants. Just not in the English Channel. Images from Ceuta last week were disturbing - and even if the response was overblown histrionics, what should concern us is the rapid unravelling of Africa that could make such scenes a regular occurrence. We may see unprecedented displacement of people necessitating a more robust international response.

I'm of the view that an international force may be required to tackle the migrant flows across the Sahara, necessitating a drone detection grid and air deployable MRAP patrol vehicles. To prevent a mass exodus to Europe, it will require safe and functioning refugee camps funded from our foreign aid budget. Joint operations with France may resume in Mali, occupying our Chinook force once again.

In my view, this could end up being a greater emergency than any threat Russia poses, yet this possibility is being completely overlooked by defence punditry who want to equip the British army to fight a conventional peer conflict in Europe. All the money is going into advanced toys when we need to invest in air mobility and logistics.

I have also seen it said that Iran will back militias in Sudan with a view to weaponising migration agianst Europe. I don't know how much stock we should put in those reports, but it does seem plausible. The situation is already looking precarious. If there is a realistic threat of this (Iran shipping drone parts to Sudan) then it necessitates a Royal Navy deployment. All the more reason we can't waste ships on ill-thought-out Channel deployments. This is is actually where HMS Ocean, depicted on the cover of Reform’s policy document, might have come in handy had we not sold it to Brazil some years ago.

While the Slop Right would abolish all aid spending and refuse to commit to any overseas interventions, there are very real threats emerging that we cannot afford to ignore, and if we allow them to spiral out of control then we will have an even bigger problem at our borders, especially if Spain is intent on regularising invaders. It is therefore necessary to have a far-sighted foreign policy, and not let our defence procurement programme be entirely consumed by preparations for a hypothetical war with Russia.

For me this yet again underscores how aid, trade, immigration, defence and foreign policy are intimately entangled, requiring a full manifesto of measures rather than cheap gimmicks and slogans. Any party on top of its game could have had a field day today.