There has been a long break this year with the MPs taking a few weeks off to do their Christmas shopping in a determined effort to boost sagging high street sales. And they spend even more in the real “Sales” when all the leftovers are sold off at a loss. No doubt Mrs Maybe will hail the results as a great vicTORY she comes back to work. Meanwhile the papers are full of news that she is ringing round Europe asking them if they would like to “improve” the Brexit deal so that it is acceptable to the DUPes and the DUPed. Good luck with that.
More entertaining has been the news that Fayling Grayling put out a little notice late on Christmas Eve. It was not a list for Santa but an announcement that he was giving £14m to a startup up company with £62 of assets, no office, no boats and no people to run a ferry service in a couple of months time to shift anticipated queues of lorries across the channel. He must have mistaken 24 December for 1 April, an error anyone could make. Call me cynical, but I think this was a tactic designed to impress the EU leaders that we really were planning, and organised for the consequences of a “no deal”.
It didn’t work as all that happened is that it seemed to encourage another firm known to the tabloids as “People Smugglers” to ramp up their services overnight in an impressive demonstration of the capability of private enterprise. Within a couple of days, the south coast was being “swamped” by boats landing people seeking asylum (or to live in it). You could not make this up, but the Home Secretary (who comes from “a proud immigrant family”) was on his hols on safari in South Africa (make of that what you will!). From afar, he declared a “Major Incident”. This is not a rank in the army but a tag used to describe an event which needs a “Gold Commander” in charge. He promptly appoints himself to that role, and makes a dramatic flight home to take control. As soon as he gets back, he has a committee meeting called “Cobra”. No not a beer to have with his curry, but a collection of ministers and others who had forgotten to take their holidays and were still hanging around the tea rooms of Whitehall. Cobra decides to pull back a couple of “cutters” which are currently working in the Med, and asks the Navy, very nicely, if they also could help out. Naturally, Private Pike (the Defence Secretary) agreed provided the Home Office forks out for their travel and subsistence. You really could not make it up, and I haven’t.
So what do we conclude from all of this, apart from it is a clear demonstration that Captain Mainwearing would have done a better job running things. Well I see a cunning plan which I am more than happy to let Mrs Maybe have for nothing. I do this “in the national interest” which is a phrase I keep hearing, and I would like to think that it is “the will of the people” as well.
Just in case there is “no deal”, it seems that the Gov thinks all of a sudden there will be loads more lorries on the road and hence a need for more ferries. So we need to boost up the capacity and encourage private enterprise at the same time. Clearly the firm “People Smugglers” are very resourceful in meeting the needs to get things moving and very good at navigating the “buriest shipping lane in the world”. They seem to have plenty of boats, and don’t seem to need the overhead of proper ports and customs paperwork. Could they not be retained, not at HM Pleasure as is currently the plan, but to run a rapid transfer service for crucial items like insulin, isotopes, avocados and hummus which are likely to be held up in the current system after 29 March. They could use their fast boats to do crossing and maybe it would create work experience opportunities for the immigrants, which in due course, would bolster up their case for asylum and a potential to work in Britain in the much needed roles that are rapidly becoming unfilled as the EU citizens take the normal ferries in the reverse direction to go home. So at a stroke, we keep the goods flowing, we reduce the prison population, we avoid overcrowded and disgusting “immigrant processing centres”, we help to mitigate the labour shortage caused by departing EU citizens, the Navy can go back to practising to be a Navy, the Border Force cutters can go back to the Med where it is warmer and where they are needed to help with a real problem, and Pike, Failing Grayling, and Gold Commander can go back on holiday where they are less of a threat to our sanity. If only dogs ran the country.