A Dedicated Border Police Force
The Conservative Party, which for some reason The Telegraph now refers to as ‘David Cameron’s Conservatives’, have announced possible plans for a new dedicated Border Police Force.
The new unit will apparently help combat illegal immigration, people and drugs trafficking along with a whole host of other niceties that cross our borders on a day to day basis. However, as is unfortunately the case with so many new Conservative proposals, this mooted Border Force will avoid the true issue and instead tackle an irrelevant one.
The immigration problems that we now face as a country have little to do with the illegal variety which constitutes only a very minor part of our total immigration burden. In fact our real problems (and they are many) lie with what is entirely legal immigration over which we no longer have any say or control.
When we became members of the European Economic Community and later the European Union we accepted the text of the Treaty of Rome which grants the ‘fundamental right’ of free movement to Citizens of the Union across member state borders.
This supposed ‘right’ to free movement was later strengthened by our old friend Directive 2004/38/EC and more recently the Lisbon Treaty (aka. The Constitution) which has now completed its rubberstamping journey through our increasingly irrelevant provincial council (aka. The Houses of Parliament) and will soon come into force once the will of the Irish people has been circumnavigated (aka. basically told to shove it).
Still, one would have thought that while we may not be able to control immigration coming from within the EU we might still be able to control it with countries from outside the Union. Not so. As I explained previously, we really have little control over that either because once someone obtains citizenship within another EU member state (easily done) they have as much ‘right’ to enter Britain as you or I do.
So you see, we really do not have any control over immigration at all, whether illegal or not – and a new Border Police Force will not in any way change that.
Another key activity the proposed Border Force apparently intends to target is drugs smuggling. However, since drug-taking in this country seems to be practically legal you have to wonder why a border force is needed to prevent those supposedly banned substances entering the country.
A Border Police Force tackling drugs smuggling is therefore a token gesture to keep the gullible public happy because it gives the outwards appearance that the Government (or rather would-be Government) are actually doing something to fight drugs smuggling and banned substances when really they are condoning their use by not enforcing the current laws.
So, at face value the Border Police Force sounds vaguely reassuring to the general public, but unfortunately in reality it is not. Much like our national politicians, any such Border Force would be irrelevant and incapable of tackling the real issues.
Yet, despite its obvious failings, other similar party policy groups will keep on churning out useless proposals like this because it is what they think their political masters want to hear. At the same time such policies allow the politicians of all parties to entrench themselves further in the Westminster bubble and again put off the day when they will have to confront the reality that they control nothing and must take the blame for everything.
