Kelly’s Eye

THERE’S no need for satirists any more as our political leaders lampoon themselves so effectively. Never more so than when it comes to blaming Brexit for the current migration crisis.

First up was Lord Cameron, the genius whose 2011 military intervention in Libya to topple Colonel Gaddafi, made him the face that has since launched a lot more than a thousand boats heading in this direction.

He burbled last week about how during his time as PM “we had a totally different situation where you could return people directly to France” – the unavoidable implication being that Brexit scuppered such a route.

Except pesky things like actual statistics give the lie to that. Under the EU’s Dublin Agreement which allowed the UK to return asylum seekers to fellow states in the bloc, returns were derisory.The net figure of migrants transferred out of this country between 2015 and 2017 came to 36, for instance.

Cameron’s evasion was then surpassed by the extraordinary contortions performed by Ireland’s leaders.As I know from a recent visit, that country too is struggling to keep a lid on growing tensions caused by its unprecedented levels of incomers in the past few years.

Yet according to the Irish deputy PM Michael Martin, those woes are down to the UK’s Rwanda deportation scheme – the threat of which is causing migrants to cross the border from Northern Ireland to the Republic.

That would be the same open border that the Irish demanded (egged on by the EU) during the interminable Brexit negotiations. Now, and although we’re always told it’s impossible for us to return asylum seekers to safe France, the Irish are investigating whether they can change their laws to allow incoming migrants from the UK to be returned here.

However a stumbling block presents itself: only last month Ireland’s High Court ruled that the UK was “not a safe country” to return migrants.And why? Because of our proposed Rwanda scheme. Like I say, satire becomes superfluous.