Kelly’s Eye

I DON’T suppose I was alone in feeling a twinge of unease when I first heard of the Government’s plan to send some of the illegal cross-Channel migrants to Rwanda.

A few minutes’ research suggests a less than pristine human rights record – though until little more than a week ago, I’d have been accused of racism in many quarters for expressing such misgivings about the place.

Yet what is most striking is not just the absence of any alternative to the proposed scheme from opponents, but the dishonesty that lies behind that void.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the rest of the usual suspects’ chorus rarely seem as exercised as they would surely be in other circumstances by the naked survival of the fittest that sees fit and healthy young men, who make up the overwhelming majority of those coming by boat, jump the queue over women and children abiding by the legal routes. And perhaps I’ve just missed the regular sermons on the extreme perversion of the capitalism (which the Church and the same critics are not comfortable with at the best of times), involved in the lucrative and cold-eyed business of daily trading in human misery that the repulsive people traffickers represent?

In 2018, 299 migrants crossed the Channel.Two years later that figure had reached 8,466. Last year it was 28,527.This year so far the new arrivals are already more than double 2021’s month-bymonth numbers.

To offer no remedy to – or, more accurately, to have little problem with – those statistics, is effectively to favour open borders. That at least would be an honourable debating position.

But because they know what the majority of voters think, and distrust them accordingly, it’s one you’ll never hear the Rwanda scheme’s opponents make.