The betrayal of Britain’s vital borders

BRITISH families who struggled back from their holidays through stern-faced security checks and severe passport controls may have comforted themselves by thinking that these procedures at least made them safer.

And yet Bashar Habib, a Syrian citizen, was recently able to travel to Stansted airport from Athens on Ryanair, using someone else’s passport.

Mr Habib should have attracted attention. He had little luggage. He paid for a one-way ticket in cash. And he did not look like the person whose passport he was using (he was younger, his hair was shorter and his eyes were the wrong colour).

And yet he made it without difficulty on to a London-bound plane. Electronic facial scanners at Stansted finally noticed what no humans had done – that he was, beyond doubt, using someone else’s travel document.

It is what took place next that will astonish most people.

Mr Habib was questioned sympathetically, then asked specifically if he wished to claim asylum as a refugee. Why? Stansted does not host flights from war zones, and he had, demonstrably, arrived on a flight from Athens, a safe EU capital. He himself was amazed by how generously he was welcomed – transported, housed and fed at the taxpayers’ expense.

The anarchists who allegedly helped him were simply following their mistaken principles. It is up to the authorities to frustrate such people.

But were Greek passport controllers, Ryanair staff and UK Border Force officers doing what they are supposed to do? Such people endlessly lecture us about security. They repeatedly promise to restore control of our frontiers. But they might as well have been anarchists themselves for all the use they were.

Rather than advising other nations on how to boost their security, and how to scan travellers’ toothpaste and shampoo more diligently, the Prime Minister should study this case in detail, and act upon it.

Just plane mean...

ONCE there was a special delight in eating on the move. Evelyn Waugh wrote lyrically about the jingle of knives and forks in the railway dining car, and the dry martini lapping in the glass with the sway of the carriage.

Imperial Airways used to serve its passengers with stately meals as its seaplanes soared around the globe.

But nowadays, the best most of us can expect is an unappetising choice of ‘beef or chicken?’, and plastic cutlery to eat it with. No wonder the airlines have found it so easy first to fob us off on shorter journeys with sandwiches and then – in the case of budget airlines – to make us pay extra for them. British Airways are threatening to take this route, and even though the sandwiches may be from M&S, or some other lonely defender of older British standards, it will be a sad, mean end to something that was once good.

Nothing to smile about

THIS country has long been famous for its terrible teeth. In the US, the phrase ‘British teeth’ is not a compliment. But can it really be true that one in five of us does not clean his yellowing fangs at weekends, and that people rinse out their mouths with whisky after feebly employing an ancient brush?

In the bracing era of Brexit, we will have to do better than this if we wish to look the world in the face.