The images are striking, deliberately so. They show men being taken off a bus and up the stairway of a charter jet to be deported from the UK. One has his hands shackled, escorted by numerous Border Force staff. The government, frustrated by its own polling, which shows voters don’t believe it has increased the number of people being removed, is now resorting to Trump-style TV footage of the deportation flight process.
It’s a show-not-tell strategy in response to Reform’s rise in the polls – and it has a whiff of panic about it. After rightly declaring the Rwanda plan a gimmick and immediately consigning it to the scrapheap of failed policies, the government is now getting lost in performative tactics that are destined to fail.
Forcing those whose asylum applications have been rejected or who have overstayed their visas on to planes has never been the most effective way to return people and never will be. Being punitive just scares people into hiding. They lose contact with the authorities, living a life on the margins.
Voluntary returns are far more effective, and the government should know this because it was the last Labour administration that commissioned independent agencies to run a voluntary programme that saw numbers increase. Building trust with refugee and migrant communities and treating people with dignity and humanity was far more successful than an enforcement approach.
Today, though, the entire returns operation is run by the Home Office, and officials quietly acknowledge they struggle to make it work because they can’t track people down who are facing destitution, surviving in hiding, fearful of the authorities.
Rather than working to deliver sensible system reforms with partners who have credible solutions, the government appears to be now adopting the similar misdiagnosis that the previous Conservative government was so willing to peddle – that too many people coming across the Channel are either foreign criminals or “economic migrants” we should be rid of.
But we know from our analysis of Channel crossings that the top nationalities who have been making the crossings every year since 2021 include many refugees from Afghanistan, Sudan, Eritrea, Iran and Syria.
It is, of course, vital that the public has trust in the government to run an orderly and controlled asylum and immigration system. But melodramatic footage and maligning narratives that risk punching down on the men, women and children in the boats who are victims of traffickers and smugglers will not give the public confidence that the system is working.
To gain that confidence, the most important thing is to clear the asylum backlog and actually fix the asylum accommodation system. The use of hotels in communities across the country has become the most damaging symbol of government failure and a flashpoint for community tensions. Billions are being wasted on appallingly run contracts with private companies that cream off vast profits. Yet there is no serious plan emerging from the Home Office to trigger the contract break clauses due next year and radically reform the system.
The urgency being given to removals should be focused on proposals to quickly transform asylum housing and support.
And let’s not forget, it was only in August that mobs seemingly stirred up by the social media antics of the far-right criminal Tommy Robinson sought to burn refugees alive in a hotel. Communities are still healing from that appalling violence. The government must not increase mistrust with performative tactics that play into negative and dangerous stereotypes.
Now is the time to focus on rebuilding those communities. Because neighbourhood institutions, such as schools and community and faith centres, are always the first line of defence against a toxic politics that pits “us v them”. It is also where for generations refugees and migrants from all parts of the world have been welcomed and supported to integrate into British life.
As the former editor of the Spectator, Fraser Nelson, acknowledges: “When it comes to integration, we have a strong overall story to tell. Our successes vastly outnumber the failures.”
The way to respond to politicians who paint all refugees as illegals and seek to dehumanise migrants is not to play them at their own game. It is to be proud about our integration story, celebrate our values and focus on the importance of a shared community. Choosing to use sensationalist TV footage will simply breed division and suspicion and risk violent hate returning to our streets.
Enver Solomon is chief executive of the Refugee Council
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