The whole thing is a stunt. And I am certain that Sunak (who looked like the voice of reason but actually turned out to be an extreme right winger) Jenrick and Braverman are delighted that the "migrants" are revolting, thus 'proving' what undeserving spongers they are.
There are 130,000 unprocessed asylum seekers (the correct term for them). Putting 500 on the barge is neither here nor there, it's not a solution because there isn't a material proportion of another 250 such barges to be had and if there were, there would be nowhere to put them. Although mooring a couple on the Thames by the Houses of Parliament would be a good place to start.
In other words, the government is NOT trying to solve the 'migrant' problem here - there is absolutely no possibility that it will make a dent in the 130,000 backed up asylum seekers unless and until there is some sort of amnesty for the majority and they can get jobs and have lives here (they could just process them of course, but there are currently 1200 case workers clearing an average of 4 cases each PER MONTH). That HMG could feasibly offload more than a hundred or two to Rwanda or Ascension Island is pure fantasy. It's a con. As for deterrence, even the dimmest aspiring boat person can work this out.
Meanwhile the government's focus and effort is actually going into trying to fix its own popularity deficit and to blaming Labour, incredibly, for the record-breaking mess it has made of practically everything over the last 13 years.
The main impact of the barge is to provide (another) focal point for a divisive populist campaign in which they hope sufficient thick voters will set all rational thought aside and get behind all their hate-based campaigns around 'the boats', 'migrants', ULEZ, LTN's, progress on the environment, decent pay and conditions for public services employees, benefit claimants, 'socialism', 'woke', and so on.
Lee Anderson told us 6 months ago what their election strategy would be, and it didn't involve fixing anything.
www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tories-should-fight-next-election-29211636
Last edited by: Manatee on Tue 8 Aug 23 at 12:09
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