Forget ‘stop the boats’, Starmer wants to ‘smash the gangs’ – but will it work?

22 comments

1. > A surge in crossings is expected when the weather calms this week, and is likely to turn the political spotlight quickly on to the new government’s plans to tackle the phenomenon, now in its fifth year.

   Nothing is going to change is it.

2. You know Labour with a government is a lot like a mule with a spinning wheel
   Damned if it knows how it got it and damned if it knows what to do with it

3. >Under current UK law, asylum can only be claimed in person on British soil.

   How about changing the law and letting people claim, and have their claim assessed, in an embassy or consulate ?

4. If the BBC can find gang leaders as quickly as they do then the gvt should be able to as well

5. For anybody really concerned about immigration, migrants crossing the Channel is not the major issue as it about 50k per year. So for example if the conservatives, I’m looking at you Jeremy hunt, had trained enough staff that would have had a big impact. Or if university funding did not make them rely on international students this woul also have a big impact. And both of these causes where predictable. So can we stop focusing on the boats and look at real issues… you know just for a change. As doing the other bollocks, as we know from experience, is a complete waste of time.

6. The trouble is you smash one gang and another pops up in its place. It might reduce the volume for awhile but it won’t stop them forever. Before we left the eu they came across on the back of Lorries. Leaving made that route less profitable, that’s why we now have boats. We need to look at why they come here, rather than staying in other countries, then remove that carrot.

7. Get me in Starmer I can sort out the problem in 5mins and have the numbers down to 2010 levels.

   Reopen the legal asylum routes that were closed.

8. Like nobody in the UK and thoughout the EU has been trying to do this for decades…

   More gesture politics

9. Starmer is incredibly delusional if he thinks he can smash the smuggler gangs.

10. If they were serious about stopping boats they’d have a dedicated naval unit turning them back by force.

11. In the same way that locking up one drug dealer stops drugs

12. I’d like to know more about these ‘gangs’. Is it an organised criminal network also involved in guns, drugs, and prostitution or groups do-gooders risking all to help their fellow countrymen? If the former, what do they get from a successful landing, surely they’ve been paid upfront so why not just desert the migrants and not bother sourcing a boat? They must get through a lot of boats, which must be …inefficient business.

13. It wouldn’t work for the basic reason that the majority are not asylum seekers and pass through a number of safe countries and are hell bent on getting here.

14. I was thinking about this the other day

    The Tories wanted to wait until people arrive in the UK and then undertake some elaborate scheme to fly them all the way to another continent.

    But to cross the channel a boat is required, there are only so many places that boats can launch from on the French coast, due the them needing to minimise the crossing distance.

    And it is pretty obvious when a group of people is gathering on the shore and a boat is about to launch

    So seems much easier to intercept the boats before they embark, and arrest the boats pilot and other organisers, and destroy the vessel.

    Plus where are the boats purchased from? It must be local, and there is not many places that sell those type of boats. Should be straightforward to investigate the sell of boats as well

    Also there is only a limited amount of gangs who organise all this, and guaranteed they are not the sharpest tools in the box, with adequate intelligence and investigation it should be relatively straightforward to identify and arrest them

15. No, supply and demand, as long as their is demand you will never stop the supply. Drugs, prostitution, gambling, how often do we need to try the same impotent policies.

    Stopping the demand is really simple.

16. Forget ‘stop the boats’. How about we get the home office working as it did pre austerity when applications were processed in a timely manner, or just processed at all would be a start.

17. We can’t stop the boats, but we can smash the gangs. Go for it!

18. Pay the French to let us set up a processing centre in somewhere like Marseille. The minute a boat lands in the UK, off on a coach Marseille you go….boat crossings will cease overnight.

19. The country is in conplete shambles due to mismanagement, and people still think it’s the small boats causing all their issues in life. Jesus wept, wake up people.

20. Look it’s a better plan than sending them to Rwanda for £1m per head

21. Its like the drug trade.

    To stop the problem do you arrest the users, local dealers or break the organised crime behind it.

22. You need to create an offshore holding centre like Australia has. It should be comfortable but far enough away that they can’t just get back on boats. Put it somewhere like Shetland. Police should be able to sweep areas and ask any suspected illegal migrants of identification, and if they’re found to be illegal immigrants, they should be sent straight to the holding centre and processed there.