Speaking in Barrow this week, Andy Burnham hailed Labour’s record on immigration, despite the fact that far more small boat migrants arrived during his first week in office than Starmer’s. Guido has the stats…
Burnham is understood to be interested in doing more returns deals – to ship migrants back to their countries of origin – with third states. This path has been trodden by every recent PM to basically nil effect…
Guido examines one case in point: Algeria – one of only around 19 returns deals the UK has live currently. Earlier this year Algeria refused a French list of roughly 60 nationals marked for expulsion, and when France put a convicted criminal on a flight to Algiers, Algeria refused to let him off the plane and it flew straight back. The French interior minister later accused Algiers of “trying to humiliate France.” France and Algeria were colonial brother countries, their relationship is much deeper than Britain’s, our deal is routinely ignored by the local authorities…
In January this year, An al-Qaeda terrorist who killed a police officer was blocked from being deported to Algeria from Britain. Kamel Bourgass is serving two jail terms for stabbing a Special Branch detective to death and plotting a major ricin poison attack in the UK. He couldn’t be deported to Algeria due to human rights concerns…
And who makes these decisions locally? Step forward Boualem Boualem, President Tebboune’s chief of staff and Director of the Presidential Cabinet. He speaks in public so rarely that when he simply vanished from view for the best part of a month this spring the presidency said absolutely nothing, and the country was left to run on rumour. In many countries, this is the kind of desk Britain’s requests ultimately have to cross. Reassured?
Burnham will get nowhere with expanded returns and deportations deals. If he is going to turn the Labour ship around he needs a much bigger plan…
Andy Haldane, Burnham’s recent adviser on the economy who has not taken up a No10 job, told Andrew Marr on LBC:
“The market now suspects that this is a traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better TikTok videos…
imposing windfall taxes on oil & gas or on banks or upping capital gains tax would […] repeat the mistake that Rachel made […] The Achilles heel, the fiscal Achilles heel of this government thus far has been its unwillingness and/or inability to cut public spending.”