Priti’s problem: refugees, Europe and the deep blue sea

What to do with refugees and asylum seekers crossing the Straits of Dover? We have all been moved by the plight of Afghans scrambling to get out of their country as the terror of the Taliban descends. Mothers have handed over their babies across the security fences of Kabul Airport, so at least the child would have a future.

Churches, local government leaders, voluntary groups across the political divide have offered to welcome the asylum seekers from Afghanistan. It is a very British response. I took some warm clothes and family sleeping bags no longer needed to my local church, where the parish priest is coordinating a welcome for any refugees from Afghanistan.

We have been here before. This week I met a young woman, Nadia, who has just graduated with a good degree from Queen Mary University, London, and who wanted advice on getting involved in political activity. She arrived as a three-year-old from Afghanistan, escaping the after effects of the Western invasion which threw out the Taliban, but launched the twenty years’ war that has just ended.

Nadia has thrived in Britain. I suggested to her that she should offer to work with London MPs helping Afghan refugees. It would be a public service and begin making contacts with the world of politics.

But then the Home Secretary swung into action. Priti Patel woke up this week to read headlines about a proposed Cabinet reshuffle with her, the Foreign and Education secretaries the most likely to be sacked.

The Afghan refugees waiting in Calais hoping to join friends or members of their community in Britain were depicted by the Home Secretary as an unwelcome invading horde. They are supposedly working with evil criminals who provided the fragile Zodiac motor boats to allow Afghan refugees to cross and demand asylum in Britain, just as young Nadia had as a toddler.

The politics of regime change that first Tony Blair, with the support of 412 MPs (including at the time Boris Johnson), launched in Iraq, and then the regime change interventions supported by David Cameron and William Hague in Libya and Syria, have led to an unending flow of refugees from broken states.

Sometimes there is an attempt to separate this flow into good refugees and bad economic migrants. Tribunals can sort this out, but any MP will report that Home Office asylum bureaucracy is so slow that the claim that wheat and chaff in the refugee world can be easily separated is just false.

But refugee bashing and French bashing are combined in Priti Patel. There are many politicians like her. The Social Democratic Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, has suggested transporting refugees who arrive in Denmark to processing centres in Africa. Donald Trump proposed building a wall between Mexico and America. Nicolas Sarkozy paid 300 Euros to Romanian illegal immigrants to go home. The savvy Romanians took the money, went home to Bucharest and bought a bus ticket back to France.

That is why all politicians in Europe who have to deal with refugee movement have agreed they should pool their resources and work on a common policy. The one shining exception is Britain and its Home Secretary, who started political life as press officer of the late Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party. Ms Patel does not have cooperation with Europe in her political lexicon.

So, in the middle of a French election year, she told MPs she would break her word to the French Interior Minister, himself very tough on illegal immigrants and very close to President Macron, that the UK would help finance more police patrols along the French coast-line.

In August the Home Affairs committee rebuked Ms Patel after she said she was engaged in discussions with the French, Dutch and Belgian governments about sending back asylum seekers to those countries. Officials in Paris, Brussels and The Hague flatly denied her claim. The Home Affairs committee chair, Yvette Cooper MP, also rebuked Ms Patel, saying ministers should give “accurate” evidence to her committee.

This week she came up with the whacky idea of British armed vessels somehow capturing the refugees’ Zodiacs and forcing them to return to Franc. This is illegal under the international law of the sea treaties. It is also hugely risky as boats may capsize and people may die, as Admiral Lord West told the BBC yesterday.

One dead body washed up on a Turkish shore forced Angela Merkel to let a million refugees into Europe. A dead body under the white cliffs of Dover would do Britain immense global damage for cruelty. The French government has roundly rejected Ms Patel ’ s suggestion. They are not worried by headlines in London tabloids.

Ms Patel can keep up with her bluster, or she can start talking with France and with the European Commission, which has been charged by 27 sovereign governments with managing refugee flows. And can someone explain why an Afghan refugee on a plane from Kabul is welcome, but an Afghan refugee on a fragile boat from Calais is a menace who must be repelled?

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