Sajid Javid’s border anxiety

The memorable but unloved year of 2018 ends as it began: with a Government in disarray. A year ago, it was a chaotic reshuffle, in which Jeremy Hunt refused to be moved from the Health Department to Business. Six months later he found himself promoted to Foreign Secretary after Boris Johnson resigned over Chequers. Justine Greening refused to move from Education to Work and Pensions; instead she returned to the back benches to become a leading advocate of a second referendum.

Just four months later, there was another reshuffle, when the Home Secretary Amber Rudd resigned over the so-called Windrush affair. This time the main beneficiary was Sajid Javid, who replaced her to become the first British Asian to hold one of the great offices of state. Having run four Cabinet ministries in four years, Javid’s rise has been the most spectacular of Theresa May’s government and he is clearly one of her most likely successors.

Now, though, he is experiencing the perennial curse of the Home Office: border anxiety. With more asylum-seekers crossing the Channel every day, Javid has been forced to cut short his ill-advised safari holiday and return to deal with a crisis. His French counterpart, evidently unsympathetic, has offered little help in preventing migrants from leaving Calais. Tory MPs are calling for the return of patrol boats from the Mediterranean to protect the British coastline. Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary (and a rival leadership contender) has unhelpfully offered to send in the Royal Navy, which would make the Home Office look weak as well as incompetent.

Since Christmas Sajid Javid has had his worst week since taking over his notoriously recalcitrant department. Amber Rudd was badly let down by her officials, who failed to brief her about whether or not there were in fact immigration targets and thus embarrassed her in public. Javid stamped his authority on his civil servants by a series of decisions that even won praise from Norman Tebbit. He has in effect abolished Mrs May’s “hostile environment” policy, increasing the number of skilled visas while reducing those granted to low-skilled workers. In an important case that set a new precedent, he granted a Tier-2 visa to an Indian child chess prodigy, Shreyas Royal, and his family under “exceptional talent” rules, symbolising the new post-Brexit immigration policy set out in a White Paper, under which a level playing field for skills and talent will be decisive, rather than country of origin.

But Javid too has struggled to contain the tide of border anxiety that is sweeping the West, from California to Greece. We should remember that the migrants who are now arriving below the cliffs of Dover are a minute fraction of the illegal immigration that Britain has been obliged to absorb for many years. In 2017, it emerged that the Home Office works on the assumption that “at least” 150,000 illegal immigrants arrive per annum. This figure was immediately denied, but its source is impeccable: a Civitas pamphlet, “The Politics of Fantasy”, by David Wood, ex-director general of immigration enforcement at the Home Office, and Alasdair Palmer, former speechwriter for Theresa May.

So we should keep the numbers arriving in little boats in proportion. What should concern us is that many of these migrants are coming from Iran, via Serbia. The British, along with the French and Germans, are sticking to the Iran deal, which lifts sanctions in return for promises by Teheran to halt its programme to build nuclear weapons, even after President Trump abandoned it. Yet the internal repression of the Iranian regime is driving thousands of its citizens to seek asylum in Europe. This is clearly unacceptable, quite apart from Iran’s aggression in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, which threatens to destabilise the Middle East. And questions remain about Iranian support for terrorism and the credibility of its nuclear guarantees.

It is high time that the Home Secretary convened a meeting about Iran with his opposite numbers at Defence and the Foreign Office. After Brexit, Britain will no longer be tied to EU policy towards Iran. We should be preparing to align ourselves with the United States instead, because the security risk of mass migration from Iran is too great. After the UK leaves the EU in March, we will no longer be permitted to return migrants who cross the Channel to France. For strategic as well as domestic reasons, the right response to the present crisis is to reimpose sanctions on the evil empire of Iran.