Listen to the woke BBC and you’d think voters WANT our borders flung open

IF you have listened to the BBC this week, then you might be under the impression that much of the country want to see our borders flung open. On its flagship Today programme on Radio 4 yesterday, listeners heard an interview with a migrant who had been housed at Manston processing centre in Kent in which the living conditions were described by the reporter as akin to a ‘prison camp’.

‘We can’t go to the toilet, we can’t take a shower... we don’t have any clothes,’ the man claimed, talking about the suffering he has endured.

There is no doubt that Manston is failing as it faces an overwhelming surge in arrivals. But what was lacking in that Today item was any sense of perspective. No discussion of the impact that the 40,000-odd asylum seekers who have crossed the Channel this year have on our already overstretched resources.

Another BBC politics show this week described the intensifying migrant crisis as a ‘culture war’, as if wanting controlled borders is a confected issue not worthy of serious attention.

Yet the BBC’s virtue signallers have actually got it all wrong. New polling by my firm People Polling shows that 60 per cent of people think the Government has lost control of Britain’s borders. And that the vast majority of Brits also reject the idea that those arriving on small boats should be allowed to stay.

All of this speaks to a deeper point. In 2016, the British people voted resoundingly to Take Back Control of a broken immigration system.

Six years on – and with the daily hotel bill for housing immigrants now topping £6.8million

– many will be asking: what, if anything, has changed?

The Establishment has, of course, never forgiven Brexiteers for the result of the referendum, and continues to do its best to thwart an independent Britain. But it is also true that our political class has consistently over- promised and under-delivered.

And the problem is that people won’t put up with it for much longer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when my firm asked voters which leader they think would best manage the crisis on our beaches, the most popular answer was ‘ none of them’ followed by Nigel Farage, the former Brexit Party leader who was among the first to highlight the problem many years ago.

ThISshould ring alarm bells in No10. For unless the Prime Minister and his Conservative government get a grip of this crisis, unless they ignore the shrieking media – propped up by the hard-Left on Twitter and the Establishment Blob – and listen to what voters up and down this country really want, the Tories will suffer a wipeout at the next election. So what is the solution? Well, if Rishi Sunak is serious about this then I would tell him to prioritise the following four things immediately.

Firstly, he should strive to strike a new deal with the French to help them smash the

Albanian gangs in northern France who are responsible for much of the illicit boat trade.

So far this year, the French have broken more than 50 people smuggling rings. We need to help them to break more but we also need to hold them to account when they fail to deliver value on the tens of millions of pounds we have been giving them in recent years.

Secondly, Sunak should turn up the volume on the current deterrent by striking more Rwanda-style deals, making it clear if people travel through other safe countries to come to Britain they will be sent elsewhere to be processed.

Many readers will recall the Rwanda plan – the brainchild of former home secretary Priti Patel – has already been stifled. In June an anonymous judge from the European Court of human Rights signed off an 11th-hour injunction grounding a jet that had been due to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda, despite UK courts ruling that the flight could go ahead.

That is why, thirdly, the PM must be pushing back much harder against this dead hand of Europe that continues to loom large. In our poll, we found that only 14 per cent of the country think judges in Strasbourg should be able to override decisions over borders made in British courts. If necessary, Mr Sunak must be prepared to leave the EChR altogether. FOURThLY, he must create a bespoke route for the immediate deportation of the rapidly rising number of Albanians entering Britain illegally. Reports immigration minister Robert Jenrick plans to ‘fast-track’ the removal of migrants who have no right to stay are promising.

For Albania, remember, is not a war-torn country. It is a peaceful state that is even in talks to join the European Union and abides by the same modern slavery laws as Britain.

Over the last two years the number of Albanians arriving in Britain by small boats has rocketed from just 50 to 12,000, with 10,000 of them being single, working-age men. Many of these people are not fleeing war or persecution; they are making bogus asylum claims.

One home Office official told parliament this week, while a staggering 2 per cent of Albania’s adult male population has come to the UK in small boats, many are put in touch with Albanian gangs in the UK who are involved in organised crime, drug smuggling, prostitution and violence.

The British people are not stupid. They see this scam for what it is. In our poll, more than 60 per cent said they want Albanians who arrive across the Channel to be put on a plane and returned home directly.

The conversation on the BBC and elsewhere will tell you nothing of the sort. But as they ruthlessly march on in their biased pursuit of the ‘progressive’ and the woke, the PM and his home Secretary must hold firm.

A tough line on this crisis will be well received by the majority of the British public who are good-hearted, tolerant and welcoming but simply now feel that they are being taken for a ride.

Following Liz Truss’s disastrous spell in office, Sunak will have his work cut out to fend off Labour at the next election. Retaining Boris Johnson’s 2019 majority seems nearly unimaginable. But he has to try.

Sir Keir Starmer has shown time and again he has no plan to deal with immigration. The PM must prove he is different.

he must find the strength to stare down the mob and deliver to the British people the strong and controlled national borders they are crying out for. If he doesn’t, they’ll show him at the ballot box what they think of such weakness.

Professor Matt Goodwin is the author of National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy. A nationally representative poll of 1,212 adults was conducted by People Polling.