DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Criminal gangs are taking this country for a ride

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Criminal Albanian drug gangs are taking this country for a ride

The Mail would like to congratulate the BBC on an excellent investigation into Albanian drug syndicates which are using the migrant camps of northern France as recruiting grounds.

Its journalists found gangs offering to fund the cross-Channel passage of fellow countrymen prepared to help expand their criminal operations in the UK and pay them well once here.

The organisations are also recruiting energetically in Albania itself. The BBC visited one town where 70 per cent of the male population had left for Britain.

This paper has carried out similar investigations. But the fact the penny has finally dropped with the achingly liberal BBC that these people are not genuine refugees is hugely significant.

(Could this strange new realism have anything to do with Deborah Turness, the new BBC News chief brought in from ITV with a brief to tackle institutional Left-wing bias? Let’s hope so.)

Migrants packed tightly onto a small inflatable (file image)

The simple truth is that vast numbers of those crossing the Channel are either economic migrants or have been enlisted directly to work in the black economy. Yet they are a large part of the reason our asylum system is on the brink of collapse.

Around a third of the 40,000 crossing from France this year were from Albania, a free democratic country hoping to join the EU. That is up from just 50 in 2020.

Labour accused Home Secretary Suella Braverman of inflammatory language when she described the influx as an ‘invasion’. But everyone knows what she meant.

This country has a proud record of giving sanctuary. New figures showing one in six people living in Britain was born abroad emphasise our kindness to outsiders.

But if the asylum system is to survive, a swifter mechanism must be found for distinguishing those genuinely fleeing persecution from those who are not.

We are spending £6million a day on housing asylum seekers and accommodation is running dry – hence the overcrowding at assessment centres like Manston.

Councils, including some Labour ones, are objecting to having large numbers of migrants placed in local hotels because it risks unbalancing their communities.

New Labour’s open door policy and Human Rights Act have made it nigh-on impossible to deport even obviously bogus claimants. That has to change.

Whether it is sending asylum seekers to third countries for processing, or a law change which drastically cuts the time for appeals, the process must be shortened.

There’s no sign of the influx abating, and pressure on the NHS, schools and other creaking public services will get even worse.

Rishi Sunak must back his Home Secretary in defying the migration lobby – however much they shriek about alleged cruelty and racism. We’ve been taken for a ride quite long enough.

Boris’s self-sacrifice

Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, confounded the cynics yesterday by confirming that Boris Johnson did indeed have the support of more than 100 MPs in the recent leadership campaign.

This was enough to have challenged Rishi Sunak in the final members’ vote, a contest he would almost certainly have won, propelling him back into Downing Street.

That he chose to sacrifice this for the good of his party and his country was a remarkable act of statesmanship – particularly for a man his enemies say is driven by blind ambition.

This paper deeply regrets that Mr Johnson was never given the chance to realise his one-nation vision. His energy, wit and sheer force of personality are sorely missed in the sea of grey that is today’s political class. Let’s hope it really is hasta la vista – and not goodbye.

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