Prime Minister Keir Starmer believes the reason small boats dangerously packed with migrants keep crossing the Channel is because not enough was done to “smash the gangs”.
The Labour leader has said repeatedly that his answer to this devastating trade in human beings can be resolved by targeting the traffickers who profit from this deadly operation more effectively.
ln the wake of the latest tragedy in which six children and a pregnant woman were among 12 people to die when their dinghy capsized in the English Channel he repeated this claim adding that his strategy in tackling the recent riots could be applied here.
“We sat round the table with law enforcement and the police to make sure that we got the desired outcome and made sure we could deliver – in that case – swift justice,” he said.
“I’m absolutely determined to take the same approach here: active government, an operational summit, making sure that we are going to retake control of our borders, take these gangs down.”
As a journalist who’s spent time investigating trafficking for years, I’m baffled by how the Prime Minister can stand up there and say this with a straight face.
I wonder too what the National Crime Agency which is apparently “on its knees” or Border Force make of it – what is he accusing them of doing up until this point?
Then you start to get into the details and it becomes even more ridiculous.
Starmer’s main claim is that he’ll take a similar approach to how he tackled terrorism while head of the Crown Prosecution Service, or as he says: “I’ve taken on criminal gangs before. I can do it again.”
He must know that trafficking functions in a completely different manner to terrorism because the aim, whilst arguably equally devastating, is not to reap fear but to earn cash.
The disregard for human life is born from the belief that the £5,000 a trafficker can get for putting a child on a raft with no lifejacket is worth it.
As it’s motivated by greed, unlike terrorism, taking down the head of one cell just plays into the hands of another and there is an almost limitless pipeline of traffickers ready to step up should one leader be removed.
Then there’s the fact that, as I’ve demonstrated in the past, the networks of people profiting from this trade extend far across the globe.
The small boat voyages from Calais provide good earnings for people who have never seen the Northern French coast, criminals who Starmer must know he will never get close to prosecuting.
These criminal organisations harness modern technology to mask their identity and keep a steady flow of customers heading for Calais and Dunkirk by the thousands.
Any attempt at ‘breaking’ them is to essentially commit to playing an endless game of whack-a-mole, which even those inside crime-fighting organisations understand is unwinnable.
Then there are the mechanics of small boat travel itself.
Unlike a lorry where a driver needs to be paid off leaving a trail that could potentially lead to some connection to the trafficker, the evil genius of the dinghy is that the organiser never needs to expose themselves.
As many migrants have explained to me the smugglers leave the passengers to assemble the vessels themselves and even in the worst-case scenario for the smuggler that they get caught they can believably pass themselves off as a customer.
Anyway, migrants have told me that they club together and buy the boats themselves which means the operation would continue even with gangs smashed.
Starmer needs to realise that currently, people are so committed to making the journey they believe it is better to “die in the waves” whilst trying to cross the Channel than to stop trying.
Starmer’s plan fails to account for that belief, it doesn’t recognise the huge and insatiable demand to travel to Britain that traffickers exploit.
He compares trafficking to terrorism when he should be using the analogy of drug dealing: a black market that continues no matter how many kingpins are put inside.
