Boris Johnson appears to have rediscovered the concept of border control, having promised to deploy the Navy to secure the channel in a bid to boost his waning popularity.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to deploy the UK military to secure the UK’s English Channel border in order to curb the ongoing migrant crisis, in a move seemingly designed to give the embattled PM’s waning popularity a boost.
Johnson, in response to collapsing support from the public as well as within his own party, has reportedly deployed “Operation Red Meat”, involving the implementation of measures that would be hoped to appeal to his voters, such as the rapid reeling in of the channel migrant crisis.
According to a report by the BBC, the Royal Navy is to take over operations in the English Channel aiming to stem the flow of illegal migrants from Europe.
A report in The Times over the weekend meanwhile claimed that the PM was also looking at sending migrants to Ghana and Rwanda for processing, instead of dealing with them domestically.
One government spokesman told the BBC that the “necessary” changes reflect how the British public “rightly had enough of the blatant disregard of our immigration laws by criminal people smugglers”.
“The UK armed forces already work closely with Border Force in these operations, providing expertise and assets as part of our processes in the Channel,” the spokesman added. “It is right that we pursue all options to prevent illegal crossings and protect life at sea.”
Deploying the armed forces to protect Britain’s borders may become essential in time. Soldiers cannot, by law, go on strike, but Border Force officers are threatening to do just that over their objections to being asked to protect the border.
Johnson’s sudden bolstering of the British border comes appears to be an attempt at reingratiating himself with the nation’s public.
Reportedly one of a number of measures which are part of “Operation Red Meat“, the news that the UK will be significantly tightening the border comes alongside news regarding the eventual scrapping of the BBC Licence tax, as well as proposing an ex-Government Secretary for a knighthood seemingly in a bid to keep him quiet regarding information that could further harm the PM’s reputation.
Johnson’s office has already been forced to apologise to the Queen over lockdown breaking shindigs which took place under his nose, while the PM himself has issued an apology in person to the British Parliament, though to jeers when he reaffirmed his position that he believed the garden party he was pictured at was a “work event”.
Polling for the PM’s Conservative Party has since divebombed to ten points behind Labour, despite it recently emerging that the head of the leftist party, Keir Starmer, also broke COVID restrictions during a period of lockdown.
Starmer was snapped drinking a beer with other Labour members in a constituency office in Durham during a period of lockdown restrictions last year.
The party head however has denied any wrongdoing, or that any lockdown rules were breached, doubling down on his political assault on Boris Johnson during an interview with LBC on Monday.
“There’s anger at the Prime Minister, there’s actually ridicule – people are joking about it – and once the country is no longer laughing with you, but laughing at you, you really are in a bad place as Prime Minister,” Starmer said.