If Yvette Cooper tried deporting those 1.2 million illegal immigrants at a rate of 14,000 every six months, it would take her nearly 83 years to finish the job.
If I could say one thing to Yvette Cooper, the new Labour Government’s Home Secretary, then it would be this. Somebody needs to start being honest with the British people about the immigration crisis that’s now engulfing this country. That’s exactly what I said a few days ago, on national television, in a clip that’s since gone viral. Because, let’s be honest with ourselves, our politicians are lying. They’ve been lying for the last twenty-five years. And they’re still lying today.
Over the last week, Yvette Cooper set out her plans for tackling the spiralling levels of illegal immigration into Britain. And we were told, once again, that this time things will be different. This time, the plan will work. This time, people will see results. But, to be completely honest with you —because apparently nobody else is going to be straight with the British people— the “plan” is a total mess.
Yvette Cooper has promised to deport more people in the next six months than have been deported at any time since 2018. Only, that turned out not to be true. She said 290 additional places will be created at two detention centres. But they still have around 1,000 fewer spaces than they used to.
She said 100 National Crime Agency staff will be recruited to stop the gangs. But the former head of Border Force has just said this won’t be anywhere enough.
She said she’s planning to deport illegal immigrants and foreign criminals back to their home countries. But only if they’re safe countries, like Vietnam and Brazil.
While this has led to some people being deported, if Yvette Cooper was actually being real with the British people then she would admit that migrants coming from safe countries are only a minority of those who are entering Britain illegally.
You don’t have to be a maths genius to do the sums. Just look at the very latest data on the disaster that’s now unfolding all around us, on the border and on the streets.
Over 97,000 people claimed asylum in this country last year 2023. That includes 31,000 people who came on the rising number of small boats across the Channel. A massive 58% of the asylum seekers, shockingly, were granted asylum, which is a reduction from the year before last, when some 71% were successful.
So, Yvette Cooper’s plan to now deport over 14,000 people in the next six months means that, even if that rate was kept up for a year, she still wouldn’t be able to deport all those whose people whose asylum claims failed last year.
Her plan would still mean a backlog of failed asylum seekers building up, a backlog of ongoing chaos and ongoing costs that the British taxpayer will have to pay. And that doesn’t even include the illegal immigrants who arrived in earlier years, or the foreign prisoners in Britain’s jails who are eligible for deportation.
Nor does it include the many failed asylum seekers who weren’t deported in previous years, or the estimated 1.2 million illegal migrants already living in Britain. If Yvette Cooper tried deporting those 1.2 million illegal immigrants at a rate of 14,000 every six months, it would take her nearly 83 years to finish the job.
Clearly, this is totally insufficient. But you know what? It gets worse. It gets a lot worse.
Let’s also not forget that, after cancelling the Rwanda scheme immediately on entering office, Labour are also allowing some 90,000 illegal immigrants to enter the asylum system. Around 60,000 of those will probably be granted asylum.
So, whatever deportations do or don’t happen, most illegal immigrants will get to stay in Britain, providing an enormous incentive for others to make the journey. When your chance of asylum —which means gaining access to the welfare state, subsidised housing, and the job market —is over 50% then why wouldn’t you try?
Of course, it’s usually at this point that Labour do-gooders pop up and say that the high rate of asylum grants shows those claiming asylum are genuine refugees. But we all know our human rights laws are broken. Many of those who are granted asylum get it because they come from countries we simply don’t consider safe enough to return them to —like Afghanistan, Syria, Iran.
That means we have to let them stay. Astonishingly, we grant asylum to 96% of Afghans, 99% of Syrians, and 82% of Iranians. As long as you get to Britain, illegally or otherwise, in other words, there’s an extremely good chance you’ll be allowed to stay.
Nothing Yvette Cooper is saying right now will change that. Nothing the Labour government is doing right now will change that. This crisis, this invasion, will just continue to intensify, and get a lot worse.So, she and the Labour government should just be honest about it.They should be straight with the British people because, to be frank, the British people deserve so much better than this continual lying and obfuscation.
And there’s no way Keir Starmer, who vowed to never leave the European Convention on Human Rights, will challenge the broken human rights laws which lead to this.
So, we will just continue to go round and round and round, with Britain steadily deteriorating and more and more British people feeling utterly frustrated and fed-up.
This is why, unfortunately, you can now look forward to more deeply worrying cases like “DH”, an Afghan whose identity was concealed by the courts. He was jailed for 12 weeks for sexual harassment. Doctors said he continued to behave inappropriately towards women even afterwards. He was still granted asylum. Why? Because lawyers argued that his risky behaviour would get him in trouble in Afghanistan and in Afghanistan they might do more than put him in jail for a year.
Either way, he’ll be out of jail soon, maybe even sooner now that Starmer is freeing criminals to make space for teenage brickies carrying England flags, or elderly women carers who made the mistake of writing offensive remarks on Facebook.
Rehabilitation and second chances only apply for foreign sex offenders, apparently.
Or what about Abdul Ezedi, the Clapham acid attacker?He was refused asylum twice but never deported, even though he committed serious sex crimes. On the third try, he got asylum because he claimed to have converted to Christianity, which would put his life in danger if he was sent back to Afghanistan. Even though he lied repeatedly in interviews. Even though he couldn’t answer basic questions about his new faith. Even though people who knew him said he continued to live as a Muslim. Even though he was considered so dangerous to women that a special deal had to be made to facilitate him going to church.
Nothing Yvette Cooper is saying will do anything to change that. So, again, she should be honest with the British people. She should come out and say she is willing to accept tens of thousands of people will enter Britain illegally every year, that they will abuse our legal system, that they will be paid for by the British taxpayer, and that some of them will attack, rape and kill British people.
And Keir Starmer should be honest too. He may say that tackling violence against women and girls is his personal mission but in reality he and his Labour government are clearly happy to accept tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from countries where women cannot read out loud in public or look at a man if they are not related to them.
I mean, seriously, who is even speaking up for British women here? It’s certainly not the Labour government. Human rights lawyers would rather these criminals were a danger to British people than be in danger in their home countries.
While the British people, apparently, don’t have the human right to live in their own country, safely, without foreign criminals being settled there to prey on them. Somebody has to be real about this and say what it will take to fix it.
- We could change human rights law. But Labour won’t.
- We could have a deterrent. But Labour got rid of the Rwanda scheme.
- We could refuse to grant asylum to illegal migrants. But Labour won’t.
That only leaves one option —to stop the boats before they leave France. But we don’t run France. The French do. And if you talk to people in the Home Office, as I do, they will tell you that the French will co-operate only so far. Why should France militarise their entire border to stop the boats? Isn’t the problem that our laws encourage illegal immigrants to come here anyway? Frankly, the French know they have enough migrants of their own. Better to let them try to go to England, so they aren’t their problem anymore. So, let’s be honest about this issue.
Because if Labour continue to lie and mislead their way through this crisis then, without doubt, we will soon see more protests, more riots, more unrest, more division, and more British people feeling profoundly unsafe in their own country.
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Goodwin was a research fellow at the Institute for Political and Economic Governance at the University of Manchester from 2008 to 2010 and then an associate professor of politics at the University of Nottingham from 2010 to 2015. From 2015 to 2024, he was professor of politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent. He took voluntary severance and left the University of Kent on 31 July 2024
