Migrant magnet
WHO would have predicted that within a few short years of Brexit finally happening Britain would be the soft-touch of Europe on illegal immigration?
We didn’t just fail dismally to take back control of our borders.
We flung them open, allowing hundreds of migrants a day to stroll in from our beaches just as the EU — still bizarrely the fantasy land of liberal Remainers — radically hardens its own regime.
Our Labour Government clutched its pearls over Rwanda and axed it just as it began to deter.
But Brussels is planning no-nonsense deportation camps built outside the EU for asylum rejects.
It used to call Britain racist for voting to end free movement and control migration.
It branded as “inhumane” our deal to send illegal migrants to Rwanda to seek asylum there.
Now Germany and others have ended free movement and thrown up border controls.
Poland has banned asylum altogether.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen wants deportation “return hubs”.
They are likely to be full, too, since the EU rejects a substantially greater percentage of applications than the UK.
We have an open door at Dover, no deterrent, are more credulous towards applicants, provide lavish benefits to the vast majority who stay and appear powerless to deport the rest in any great number.
We’re the magnet of Europe.
In easy opposition, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper denounced migration failures without ever offering a credible alternative.
She aimed to “smash the gangs” sailing people across the Channel.
How impotent that now sounds, especially as Brussels toughens up.
Fuel folly
A GOVERNMENT which vowed not to raise tax on working people cannot credibly then hike fuel duty.
It is worrying that Labour would even consider doing so in the looming Budget.
Who do they think those drivers filling up cars and vans on the forecourts are?
Idle millionaires? The unemployed? Pensioners ripe for another plucking?
Those are working people, who can ill afford to lose yet another few quid to the Treasury on every visit to the pumps.
Raising fuel duty hurts families’ budgets, crushes growth and could destroy thousands of jobs.
It has been frozen and even cut for 14 years, thanks to The Sun’s campaigning, with good reason.
Labour must rule it out.
At gong last
HERO is an overused word. But John Haddock is one.
In 1944 the RAF flyer sank Nazi boats to clear the Channel for the D-Day landings.
Now the grateful French he helped liberate have finally awarded him their Legion d’Honneur medal.
What a gift on his 102nd birthday.
Many happy returns, John, from The Sun.
