London must show it still has a moral dimension to its asylum policies

Afghans who fled their homeland arriving at the UK's RAF Brize Norton in 2021. Reuters

Temperatures over Britain’s small boat crisis have risen to boiling point. A new craze of painting makeshift English flag crosses on street crossings tells the migrants that born and raised in the country is more important than in need and threatened.

As I write, demonstrators are assembled outside hotels housing the migrants – who cannot work until their asylum claim is processed – in their hundreds at a dozen or more locations.

The belief among the angry, that too many people have irregularly arrived in the UK in conditions of crisis, has pushed the situation to a confrontation.

Yet, the latest annualised figures state that "small boat" arrivals represent two in five of those coming into the country.

The truth is there is a blizzard of schemes and pathways that have seen something like six million people arrive in the UK to live over the past decade.

The demonstrations tell us that the situation has become untenable. We have reached a point of good and bad migration that frontline politicians must confront as the overriding issue.

Foreign policy has been a contributor to the crisis as much as domestic drivers and maladministration. If there is a way forward that restores a sense of purpose to the migration system, it is in foreign policy that a recovery of respectability can be found.

Take the Afghan data breach scandal that was revealed earlier in the summer.

A fierce focus on the moral rights of those affected by UK policies remains important and necessary

It is an example of how the UK government has been messing up on the asylum front. It is also an area where London can show it still has a moral dimension to its asylum policies, even as it brings in tough approaches to cut the numbers.

Twenty years of involvement in Afghanistan after the Nato-led intervention in 2001 did not end well for the UK. The restoration of Taliban rule put relations with the central Asian country in the deep freeze.

People from all walks of life on both sides are continuing victims of the failures in the relationship. One particular cohort is the Afghans who served as fellow fighters, translators and local advisers within the UK military and diplomatic deployment.

Since the Taliban takeover more than 36,000 Afghans have been resettled in the UK. Thousands have spent years living an almost underground existence in Pakistan waiting for clearance and visas to come to the country.

Billions have been spent and the government was forced into a cover-up over a data leak that exposed more than 18,000 Afghans who had applied. The government finally withdrew attempts to censor news of the leak in July and said it would honour a commitment to take in any outstanding applicants for resettlement in the UK.

Speaking in July, John Healey, the Defence Secretary, confirmed there were applications in the UK’s system remaining to be processed and promised officials would “complete that job”.

That moral undertaking must be carried through. If there is to be a world of good and bad migration, the plight of the Afghans must be resolved. As recently as last week there were headlines on the security threats tied to the leaked list as it was handed over by the Taliban to a potentially hostile Iranian system.

There is no bed of roses when the Afghans reach the UK. One survey of the riots targeting asylum hotels last summer said 15 of the 20 worst-hit areas topped the list for highest numbers of Afghan resettlement arrivals.

But Britain offered a safe haven, not only to the Afghans but hundreds of thousands from Hong Kong and Ukraine as well. They have all had different resettlement experiences but share a common predicament, that remaining in their homeland became untenable. In time, many of those brought to the UK by these schemes will have the positive immigrant history to tell, one that statistics show is common to the story of migration.

Their situation must not be threatened by the current bottleneck of numbers overwhelming the system at one level and stirring a populist backlash at another.

At this stage it should be in their interest that the government addresses a root and branch review of how it has handled the asylum system.

A poll out on Monday found that 71 per cent believed the government is handling the asylum hotel situation badly. Only nine per cent of voters thought the Labour government was best equipped to handle the issue.

Labour is the party that, courtesy of Tony Blair as prime minister in 1999, proposed the global principle of Responsibility to Protect. That humanitarian principle of intervention in the face of atrocity became known as the Blair Doctrine after a landmark speech in Chicago.

Defusing the current tensions over migration necessitates a marked changed in the Labour party’s orthodox thinking to address brutal everyday realities.

As Monday’s poll shows, UK voters are in an unforgiving mood over the issue and are ranking it highly in the list of priorities. Invidious choices about stopping arrivals by boat, stays in hotels and relocation schemes are set to dominate the political landscape for years ahead.

It is still possible to honour the undertakings adopted after Mr Blair’s landmark Chicago address. A fierce focus on the moral rights of those affected by UK policies remains important and necessary.