How do we calculate the price of momentous decisions? History and literature tells us it’s often with great difficulty, and a considerable lack of foresight.
At the beginning of the Victorian detective novel, The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins quotes from Robinson Crusoe, “now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost”.
This is so often the case with the decisions our political leaders make. Over two decades on, our country is still suffering the aftershocks of the disastrous wars Tony Blair entangled us in. I don’t remember Blair warning that his liberal interventionist misadventures would lead to hotels being taken over by migrants decades later. He simply didn’t think through the consequences of his actions.
In The Moonstone, bemused Victorians find marauding men searching to recover an Indian gem that had been stolen decades earlier and brought to the UK in a colonial escapade. The separateness of the Empire is momentarily shattered, its derring-do suddenly rendered altogether darker, and threatening to life back home.
There’s a warning in this to our leaders, who fail to understand the implications of their decisions abroad on the country back home. Indeed, as the Government rushes to announce an unprecedented scheme to fly hundreds of children from Gaza to the UK for treatment, it seems we are heading again to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Like all of us, but particularly as a father of three daughters, I am horrified by the suffering of the children in Gaza. They are pawns of Hamas’s human shield strategy, the victims of an extremist ideology, trapped in a living hell of endless death, destruction and hunger. Our instincts urges us to help – and we should.
But should that help take the form of a new immigration scheme for hundreds of Gazans to come to the UK? Absolutely not. Actions have consequences, even if not always immediately apparent. But as in The Moonstone, they catch up with you in the end. Keir Starmer is grandstanding, writing a blank cheque that other people will have to pay.
Experience tells us the Gazan children and their families will claim asylum when they arrive and almost certainly stay for the rest of their lives.
Do you really think Yvette Cooper will send them back to Gaza? Once they have official status, they will then bring more family members under schemes which are, naturally, underpinned by rights derived from the ECHR. And it won’t be one or two family members: a court just accepted that an Afghan could bring 22 relatives with them to the UK, twisting the definition of family beyond recognition.
It means we’re almost certainly looking at several thousand Gazans arriving permanently – far beyond 300 staying temporarily as the Government has advertised.
Would that be sensible? The position of Gaza’s Arab neighbours tells us everything we need to know. On a ministerial trip just weeks before October 7, the Egyptian Defence Minister explained to me their herculean efforts to root out radical Islamists from the Sinai.
His message was that under no circumstances would Egypt risk taking in people from Gaza, because “they are the most radicalised population on earth.” Privately, the same would be said by many in the Jordanian government, also from bitter experience dating to Black September and before.
Likewise with the Saudis, who notably have refused to put their own boots on the ground in Gaza. The truth is that Gaza’s Arab neighbours are prepared to offer humanitarian support, but consider the idea of inviting Gazans into the country at any scale a risk only a fool would take.
And what of the experience of other well-meaning European countries? In 1992 Denmark gave refuge to a group of 321 stateless Palestinians from Lebanon. By 2019, 64 per cent of those who had obtained citizenship had also obtained criminal records. 71 had been in jail. 34 per cent of their children, though still very young, had obtained criminal records. A large proportion were on benefits.
Layered on top of this is the bigger risk of Islamist extremism, after decades of Hamas and UNRWA-funded schools pouring hatred into the minds of younger Gazans. It’s hard to know the true feelings of Gazans towards this barbaric death cult, but surveys of the broader Palestinian population suggest that a majority support Hamas’s activities. Our government is already failing abysmally in its response to Islamist extremism, anti-Semitism and the flagrantly anti-British sentiment we’ve seen on our streets – it would be reckless to risk making it worse.
So, when the first proposal to bring Gazans to this country was put to then Home Secretary Suella Braverman and I in the autumn of 2023, we rejected it flat out. And when MPs asked us to waive biometric security checks to expedite the flight of some Gazans with a pre-existing right to enter the UK, we refused.
Those demands are now back. To cave to the naive demands of backbench Labour MPs shows that Starmer is willing to put the electoral fortunes of the Labour Party over the safety of the British people.
Of course we should help Gazan children – demanding more aid and medical supplies reach them immediately. But there are countless people in dire positions around the world. What of the Christians being persecuted in Syria, that we don’t hear a peep from Lammy about?
The answer is not to bring them all here. The interests of our own people must come first, second and last.
How do we calculate the price of momentous decisions? History and literature tells us it’s often with great difficulty, and a considerable lack of foresight.
At the beginning of the Victorian detective novel, The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins quotes from Robinson Crusoe, “now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost”.
This is so often the case with the decisions our political leaders make. Over two decades on, our country is still suffering the aftershocks of the disastrous wars Tony Blair entangled us in. I don’t remember Blair warning that his liberal interventionist misadventures would lead to hotels being taken over by migrants decades later. He simply didn’t think through the consequences of his actions.
In The Moonstone, bemused Victorians find marauding men searching to recover an Indian gem that had been stolen decades earlier and brought to the UK in a colonial escapade. The separateness of the Empire is momentarily shattered, its derring-do suddenly rendered altogether darker, and threatening to life back home.
There’s a warning in this to our leaders, who fail to understand the implications of their decisions abroad on the country back home. Indeed, as the Government rushes to announce an unprecedented scheme to fly hundreds of children from Gaza to the UK for treatment, it seems we are heading again to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Like all of us, but particularly as a father of three daughters, I am horrified by the suffering of the children in Gaza. They are pawns of Hamas’s human shield strategy, the victims of an extremist ideology, trapped in a living hell of endless death, destruction and hunger. Our instincts urges us to help – and we should.
But should that help take the form of a new immigration scheme for hundreds of Gazans to come to the UK? Absolutely not. Actions have consequences, even if not always immediately apparent. But as in The Moonstone, they catch up with you in the end. Keir Starmer is grandstanding, writing a blank cheque that other people will have to pay.
Experience tells us the Gazan children and their families will claim asylum when they arrive and almost certainly stay for the rest of their lives.
Do you really think Yvette Cooper will send them back to Gaza? Once they have official status, they will then bring more family members under schemes which are, naturally, underpinned by rights derived from the ECHR. And it won’t be one or two family members: a court just accepted that an Afghan could bring 22 relatives with them to the UK, twisting the definition of family beyond recognition.
It means we’re almost certainly looking at several thousand Gazans arriving permanently – far beyond 300 staying temporarily as the Government has advertised.
Would that be sensible? The position of Gaza’s Arab neighbours tells us everything we need to know. On a ministerial trip just weeks before October 7, the Egyptian Defence Minister explained to me their herculean efforts to root out radical Islamists from the Sinai.
His message was that under no circumstances would Egypt risk taking in people from Gaza, because “they are the most radicalised population on earth.” Privately, the same would be said by many in the Jordanian government, also from bitter experience dating to Black September and before.
Likewise with the Saudis, who notably have refused to put their own boots on the ground in Gaza. The truth is that Gaza’s Arab neighbours are prepared to offer humanitarian support, but consider the idea of inviting Gazans into the country at any scale a risk only a fool would take.
And what of the experience of other well-meaning European countries? In 1992 Denmark gave refuge to a group of 321 stateless Palestinians from Lebanon. By 2019, 64 per cent of those who had obtained citizenship had also obtained criminal records. 71 had been in jail. 34 per cent of their children, though still very young, had obtained criminal records. A large proportion were on benefits.
Layered on top of this is the bigger risk of Islamist extremism, after decades of Hamas and UNRWA-funded schools pouring hatred into the minds of younger Gazans. It’s hard to know the true feelings of Gazans towards this barbaric death cult, but surveys of the broader Palestinian population suggest that a majority support Hamas’s activities. Our government is already failing abysmally in its response to Islamist extremism, anti-Semitism and the flagrantly anti-British sentiment we’ve seen on our streets – it would be reckless to risk making it worse.
So, when the first proposal to bring Gazans to this country was put to then Home Secretary Suella Braverman and I in the autumn of 2023, we rejected it flat out. And when MPs asked us to waive biometric security checks to expedite the flight of some Gazans with a pre-existing right to enter the UK, we refused.
Those demands are now back. To cave to the naive demands of backbench Labour MPs shows that Starmer is willing to put the electoral fortunes of the Labour Party over the safety of the British people.
Of course we should help Gazan children – demanding more aid and medical supplies reach them immediately. But there are countless people in dire positions around the world. What of the Christians being persecuted in Syria, that we don’t hear a peep from Lammy about?
The answer is not to bring them all here. The interests of our own people must come first, second and last.