Nigel Farage during last year’s general election campaign. Photo Gareth Fuller/PA Wire

Martin Shipton

You wouldn’t know it from the way he is weaponising the issue for his own political ends, but if there’s one person more responsible for the “small boats” migration crisis than anyone else, it’s Nigel Farage.

Yet far from being blamed, as he should be, for a situation where migrants – both legal and illegal – are risking their lives to reach Britain’s shores, many misguidedly see him as the one blameless politician prepared to call out the incompetence of successive governments.

How has such an absurd position arisen?

The answer lies in the reticence of other political parties, especially Labour, to be upfront about the truth, the failure of most news outlets to hold Farage to account and the dishonest narratives that are awash on social media.

The Dublin Regulation

The fact is that Brexit has made the English Channel more vulnerable to small boat crossings because it has removed the UK from an agreed mechanism that ensured asylum seekers arriving from another EU country could be returned to it to have their applications for asylum processed.

This provision was initially negotiated between EU members back in 1990 and is known as the Dublin Regulation. It remains in force, but because of Brexit we are no longer a party to it.

What does that mean in practice? Before Brexit, when the UK was in the EU, the UK could send asylum seekers back to the EU country that they entered first after escaping persecution in their homeland.

Naturally, the UK could also receive asylum seekers if it was the first country of entry. All this happened automatically under the Dublin Regulation, linked to a shared EU database called Eurodac.

Eurodac is a fingerprint database that helps manage asylum applications and facilitates the implementation of the Dublin Regulation. It stores and compares fingerprints of asylum seekers and irregular migrants to determine which EU member state is responsible for examining an asylum claim. Eurodac also supports law enforcement efforts in investigating, detecting, and preventing terrorism and serious crime.

When someone applies for asylum or is apprehended while crossing an external border illegally, their fingerprints are taken and entered into Eurodac. The database is used by all 27 EU member states and four associated countries: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

Since Brexit the Dublin Regulation has no longer applied to the UK, with the consequence that the UK cannot automatically return asylum seekers to EU countries based on where they first entered.

There is no legal mechanism to send people back unless the UK has a bilateral agreement with that specific EU country – and it doesn’t with most – or the person voluntarily returns.

Channel crossings

Inevitably, there has been an increase in Channel crossings. Since there’s no easy legal way to return people to France or elsewhere, more asylum seekers attempt dangerous boat journeys.

Much media – and social media – attention has been devoted to the workings of a bilateral agreement between the UK and France under which France is being paid to apprehend and take responsibility for migrants seeking to cross to the UK. Under the terms of a new bilateral agreement, for every small boat migrant returned to France, the UK is supposed to process and admit one lawful migrant.

As could easily have been predicted, right-wing tabloids and social media “influencers” have wheeled out anti-French rhetoric to blame France for not doing enough for the millions of pounds it is being paid. But hardly anyone is mentioning that the UK has been put at a considerable disadvantage because of Brexit. And Farage, who did more than anyone to bring Brexit about, is given a free pass whenever he takes to the airwaves to rant about small boats, blaming anyone but himself.

With the help of cowardly politicians from other parties, especially Labour, and cynical news outlets that know his name pulls in viewers and readers, he has created the myth that he is the one politician prepared to stick his neck out and tell the truth about small boat illegal immigrants.

Shamefully, there are plenty of right wing journalists happy to inflame public anger by repeating that a significant proportion of the small boat migrants are rapists, terrorists and other kinds of criminals. Some go as far as to endorse comments made by a woman who encouraged people to burn down hotels providing accommodation for asylum seekers.

But why on earth are politicians from other parties, whose supporters are being lured by Farage’s phoney charisma and lies to the extent that Reform UK is now leading the polls, afraid of calling him out?

‘Lexit’

The Labour Party at Westminster was pathetic in its handling of Brexit, both before and after the referendum. Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership it wasn’t prepared to articulate robustly the economic and geopolitical arguments that made Britain’s membership of the EU a no-brainer. Some in the party clung to a “Lexit” fantasy that imagined a UK outside the EU could create socialism in one country, while others were content to throw in their political lot with racists who whinged about EU citizens being allowed to work in the UK (while ignoring the right of UK citizens to work in other EU countries).

After the Brexit referendum, and Boris Johnson’s “Get Brexit Done” general election victory, the new Labour leader Keir Starmer ordered his MPs to vote for a Brexit he knew would be damaging, thus compromising the party’s credibility if it sought to argue later against its negative impacts as they inevitably emerged. True to expectations, Starmer and his ministers now never mention Brexit at all, despite the fact that there is a wealth of evidence to show it is harming the economy.

Exploitation

So we now have a mad situation where despite most people recognising that Brexit has been bad for Britain – with just 29% in the latest poll saying they would vote to stay out of the EU if there was another referendum – the government of the day will have none of it, and Reform UK, which also doesn’t want to talk about Brexit for obvious reasons, is leading in the polls.

Farage’s successful exploitation of the small boats issue, leading millions to believe he is the hero rather than the villain of the piece, demonstrates what a dangerous demagogue he is. Given the chance, he will follow a Trumpian agenda in Wales and the UK as a whole, slashing public services and pushing policies that favour his party’s wealthy donors.

It’s time for his free pass to end. He must not be allowed to subvert our democracy with his lies. It’s the responsibility of politicians and journalists to call him out.

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