Priti Patel Won’t Jail Anyone

Her unscripted ramblings may make no more sense than the average Costa Blanca resort rep, but Priti Patel, inexplicably elevated to the role of Home Secretary, can always be assured that there is one part of our free and fearless press ready to publish her press releases, and that is the part ruled over by the Murdoch mafiosi.

So it is that the Cosa Rupra has splashed Ms Patel’s latest blast of empty hot air across the front page of the no longer upmarket Times, which has proclaimed “People smugglers will be jailed for life, vows Patel … Alarm grows over surge in Channel crossings”. Readers are then told, as if they missed it the first time, “People smugglers will face life sentences under Priti Patel’s plans to crack down on Channel crossings, the Times has learnt”.

Has learnt because the Murdoch goons were briefed by someone not unadjacent to Ms Patel, they mean. And although the Times article is behind a paywall, the Sun’s lifting of it is not (see how that works, Rupe?). The Currant Bun’s version tells “Ms Patel is expected to announce the move in a bid to increase the average length of sentences for gangsters convicted of assisting illegal immigration”. And who would the source of that be?

“A Home Office spokesman said: ‘Whilst criminal gangs continue to put lives at risk it is right we consider every option to stop their exploitation of people’”. “It is right”, so almost certainly, Ms Patel dictated it. As for life terms, “A Home Office source said: ‘Hopefully we’ll see [life sentences] used in the worst cases, and then in other cases we will start seeing the 12, 15, 20-year sentences that these people aren’t getting at the moment’”.

Might be. Hopefully. But, as Jon Stewart might have put it, two things here. One, this outburst from Priti Patel has not come out of the blue: once again, rather than bothering to do her job, she is scared that the low moaning sound emanating from Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, who is now resembling a stuck record as he whines about asylum seekers coming ashore on the Channel coast, may gain traction and out-hatred her.

After all, Nige is spewing disinformation at some rate right now: “Dunkirk has one of the highest Covid rates in France, yet 33 more people illegally came to the UK by dinghy today [from where?] Some were even escorted by the French Navy [no citation] Even more will come tomorrow, yet we are still locked down and told not to leave our homes [wrong] … Covid crisis in Dover this morning. One migrant boat with 12 on board and they all tested positive for the virus [lying again]. Get a grip [Priti Patel]”. Hatred Ms Patel can’t ignore.

And Two, she isn’t going to jail anyone if those doing the people smuggling aren’t here in the UK. Which, if they are arranging boats and taking bookings in northern France, they won’t be. Worse for Ms Patel, her chance of having anyone identified as a people trafficker extradited at any speed other than Very Slowly Indeed just vanished after the UK was pulled out of the European Arrest Warrant scheme on leaving the EU.

Indeed, the Sun article concedes the point: “However, a government source said smugglers are often difficult to track down and prosecute as many operate overseas”.

When trying to out-hatred Nigel Farage over anything factual, Priti Patel needs to heed the old adage that You Should Never Get Into A Pissing Competition With A Skunk.

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