DAILY MAIL COMMENT: When will the Tories beef up our borders?
For a Government that has staked its reputation on restoring coherence to Britain’s asylum and immigration shambles, the latest Home Office statistics are nothing short of disastrous.
Far from taking this problem by the scruff of the neck, ministers seem to have been reduced to quivering incompetence by its sheer scale.
The number of asylum applications is now at a 20-year high of 78,768, while the backlog has reached a record 175,000 – including large numbers who made it illegally across the Channel in small boats.
All are being housed (often in expensive hotels), given medical care and provided with schooling if they have children. The cost to the taxpayer has almost doubled in a year to a scarcely believable £4 billion.
With the Left-wing Home Office ‘blob’ telling staff they can’t disqualify applicants even for lying, the department acts more like a cheerleader for open borders than one tasked with rooting out ineligible claims.
With a year to an election, if Rishi Sunak cannot bring down sky-high immigration, there is a risk it may bring down him
With such a soft policy in operation, is it any wonder thousands risk their lives at the hands of people-smuggling gangs?
But while tackling the cross-Channel route is important, it represents a tiny proportion of total migration. A staggering one million work, student and family visas were granted last year alone, placing intolerable strain on services, from hospitals to housing.
Millions who voted for Brexit will rightly ask what became of the solemn promise to curb out-of-control immigration.
Labour’s solution to all these things is simply to throw our doors wide open and let everyone in. But that is absolutely not what the public has repeatedly voted for.
With a year to an election, if Rishi Sunak cannot bring down sky-high immigration, there is a risk it may bring down him.
Come clean on strikes
The decision by hospital consultants to stage another debilitating strike shows they are prepared to risk harming the NHS and their patients to achieve their goals.
The number of appointments cancelled this year due to industrial action is nearing the grim one-million milestone. The waiting list is at 7.6 million and rising. And that’s even before a challenging winter.
So the senior doctors’ refusal to accept the Government’s generous six per cent pay rise offer is as reckless as it is irresponsible.
The hard-Left British Medical Association moans that consultants have been ‘persistently devalued’. But a new study reveals that’s palpable nonsense.
The decision by hospital consultants to stage another debilitating strike shows they are prepared to risk harming the NHS and their patients to achieve their goals (Pictured: BMA consultants strike outside
In fact, they are the sixth best paid in the world – and that’s before adding their lucrative private work and lavish pensions.
Rather than claiming they’re acting to ‘protect the NHS’, shouldn’t these agitators admit what the strikes are really all about? Hard cash and toppling the Government.
Perilous power plays
The only surprise about the assumed assassination of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose private jet was blown up over Russia, is that it took so long.
This warlord – whose mercenary army is a byword for barbarity – effectively signed his own death warrant in June when his coup against Vladimir Putin failed.
While impossible to say for certain who downed the plane, the tyrant has a track record of taking cold-blooded revenge.
Putin will hope Prigozhin’s apparent death strengthens his position by sending a warning to potential insurrectionists.
The only surprise about the assumed assassination of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose private jet was blown up over Russia, is that it took so long
In fact the opposite could be true. The warlord’s loyal fighters have pledged vengeance, there is increasing concern at Putin’s disastrous handling of the war and factions are again vying for influence.
This is a dangerous moment, but two things are clear. The West must exploit the chaos to redouble efforts to support Ukraine. And our government must be alert to any political power plays in Moscow.
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