On one thing, Suella Braverman is right. The system is broken. But about almost everything else, she is grievously wrong, especially about the reasons for it being so. The cause of the brokenness is not a surge of migrants and asylum seekers, still less an “invasion”, but the result of a policy that, both deliberately and accidentally, has turned a manageable situation into a crisis.
For all the recent hysteria, the number of asylum seekers coming to Britain is far fewer than in the relatively recent past. Unquestionably, the numbers crossing the Channel in small boats have increased dramatically – from 299 in 2018 to possibly 50,000 this year. But a rise in the visibility of asylum seekers is not the same as a rise in numbers. People cross in small boats because other routes – by the Channel tunnel, by ferries or by air – have been sealed off. We know from experience that when one route is closed, migrants and asylum seekers seek out other, often more dangerous, paths.
