Who Do They Work For?

He went to Dover and announced nothing

On Sunday the Prime Minister visited the command centre at Dover. He met Border Force officers, watched the drones that track boats in the Channel, and told the cameras he would be relentless.

He announced no new policy. The extra officers he was inspecting were put there by the last Prime Minister. The Bill going through Parliament belongs to the Home Secretary. He was visiting someone else's work.

It was his first real comment on the subject since taking office more than a fortnight earlier.

The scoreboard he chose

He came with good news. Crossings are down by about half on the year, he said, and last month was the quietest for six years. Both things are true, and we should say so.

But there is another way to count. Since the day he walked into Downing Street, more people have crossed than crossed in the same stretch of days a year ago. On the only period he is personally answerable for, the numbers went up.

He gave the figure that flattered him. Every politician does. It is worth noticing every time.

Nobody asked for a safer journey

Then he explained his thinking. He said he had heard the anger on the doorsteps of his own constituency — and that the answer was to build a system offering safe and legal routes, because that would take away the smugglers' selling point.

Read that again. He admits hearing the anger. His answer is to bring people here by other means.

The theory is that if you can come legally, you won't pay a gang to put you in a dinghy. It isn't a mad idea, and for some cases — a child trying to reach a parent already here — it may be the humane one.

But it answers a question nobody asked.

The man on the doorstep is not worried about the mode of transport. He is not lying awake hoping the crossing was comfortable. He wants his town to be safe, and he wants the state to know who is walking around in it. Offering a plane ticket instead of a dinghy does not touch either concern. It answers a different question, asked by different people, that a Prime Minister finds easier to answer.

There is also a hole in the theory ministers never address. A legal route only helps the people who qualify for it. Everyone who doesn't still gets the boat, and the gangs still get paid. Unless the route is unlimited — and no government will ever offer that — it runs alongside the crossings rather than replacing them.

You haven't closed the illegal door. You've opened a second one beside it.

Heywood

Last week a court in Manchester sentenced a 21-year-old man to two years in prison. He had walked onto the grounds of Edgar Wood Academy in Heywood carrying a hatchet, a hammer, a seven-inch kitchen knife and a can of petrol. Workmen spotted him and called the police, who wrestled him to the ground.

Two things must be said honestly, because the point does not need exaggerating.

The school was closed for the summer. No children were there. And he is one man, not a nation — nobody should read a single case as a verdict on everyone who has ever arrived here.

But hold on to the fact that made it possible. He had claimed asylum three times. He had been refused