Johnson and Patel have turned Border Force into Parcel Force for migrants

What is going to happen when voters realise that Tory promises to tackle migration contain more hot air than a migrant dinghy?

Cartoon by Crid.

At the last election, the Tory Party campaigned using the language of populist cultural conservatism. But they did not really believe it. In fact, it was a cynical ploy to defeat a Labour Party increasingly in thrall to the widely disliked woke strand of progressivism.

Since entering office, the Tories have continued in campaign mode, talking a big game, but doing very little to address the rightful concerns they drew upon to secure their fat majority. For example, their free-trade policies leave British workers evermore naked before the bitter and capricious winds of globalism.

But nobody really understands the complicated economics of free trade. What they do understand is the endless stream of dinghies filled with economic migrants turning up on the south coast. The Government has made exactly zero progress in stopping these people reaching Great Britain by the Channel. In fact, The Daily Mail yesterday reported that a Border Force craft even asked permission to enter French waters to shepherd such a vessel to Great Britain.

The Conservative Government have turned Border Force into Parcel Force for migrants – although, to give Priti Patel’s management its fair due, it seems rather more efficient than the real Parcel Force in making sure its packages get promptly to their intended destination. What is going to happen when the British voters- their worries ginned up to serve the ends of covetous small-l liberals dressed in blue- realise that Tory promises to tackle migration contain more hot air than a migrant dinghy?

The Labour Party might imagine Workington Man will have a Damascene Conversion and return to the cause of open borders and fashionably metropolitan social justice. That seems rather less likely than the alternative: they will find somebody else to vote for. Is this how a nation of decent people falls under the spell of demagoguery and fascism? We appear to be well on the way to finding out.