Another 'Brexit win'? People smuggler convicted in France found by BBC living in UK and seeking asylum

Indeed Sleepyhead and this situation wouldn't be quite so bad if he'd served his full sentence.

Galaxy

That is probably another good reason Maizie as to why it would be a terrible idea to repeat the referendum, I can't think of anything more divisive. Surely people don't actually want another referendum. I could see people could want the government to forge closer links with the EU, but surely they don't want the division that would inevitably result from another referendum.

Where have I said that we should repeat the referendum?

I'm not complaining about the Leave vote, either.

I was just pointing out to those who are fixated on 'illegal immigrants' that the Brexit vote has made it more difficult to deal with the people smugglers and to check asylum seekers records.

Smileless2012

Indeed Sleepyhead and this situation wouldn't be quite so bad if he'd served his full sentence.

I think you're on the wrong thread...

I wasn't saying you personally had said repeat the referendum rather that there seemed to be a feeling on the thread that the referendum could be revisited.

didn't Jacob Rees-Mogg once say that the real benefits of Brexit would take as much as 50 years to be fully realised?

... and seemed surprised that wasn't common knowledge.

Perhaps he should've been challenged to be more specific - or questioned about the situation re asylum seekers?

Leave voters do often complain that Brexit wasn't 'done properly'. But since the choice was either REMAIN or LEAVE with no further qualification - and the Brexit politicos were not all of one mind either - what 'properly' actually means will be a continuing debateable point.

I think the REMAIN campaign was poor. IMO, what should've been acknowledged is that in an unequal society the benefits of being in the EU might not have been equally appreciated; also the drawbacks could've been acknowledged too - like the grinding bureaucracy, but highlighting the fact that, economically, we were better off in than out.

As for another Referendum - perish the thought. But I do personally want a closer and more civilised relationship with the EU, in spite of one tabloid insisting that means "they want to take away our hard-won Brexit freedoms" - or words to that effect. 'They' being Starmer.

Because of, basically, Cameron's incompetence, we had no choice but to abide by the vote, regardless of the narrow margin.

People-smuggling and the whole asylum debate will rage on. It is not an easy problem to solve. Farage encapsulates his solutions in neat soundbites, the reality would be a bit less neat.

Without running the Brexit referendum all over again on these pages, what I see is that we have a pretty useless immigration service and a less than great police service as well.
If this guy can be tracked down by a BBC team to a village in Leicestershire ( or an area) and owns two candy vape shops there for money laundering as well as driving around in a big car without a licence or insurance and has many aliases, and it transpires he’s a criminal Iraqi Kurd who’s made millions from people smuggling….then why aren’t immigration on his case?
Blaming Brexit just doesn’t cut it.

Btw Iraqi Kurds run most of the candy vape shops and so called Turkish barbers in the UK, they have been allowed to establish them everywhere even in villages while our authorities look on apparently helpless!

Dickens, my strong recollection is that Jacob R-M talked of ‘about five bumpy years’ before the benefits of Brexit were realised. I don’t know what else he may have said on other occasions but Fifty years wait wouldn’t have encouraged anybody.

winterwhite

*Dickens*, my strong recollection is that Jacob R-M talked of ‘about five bumpy years’ before the benefits of Brexit were realised. I don’t know what else he may have said on other occasions but Fifty years wait wouldn’t have encouraged anybody.

I recall that he did say 50 years. After the referendum.

winterwhite

*Dickens*, my strong recollection is that Jacob R-M talked of ‘about five bumpy years’ before the benefits of Brexit were realised. I don’t know what else he may have said on other occasions but Fifty years wait wouldn’t have encouraged anybody.

... but Fifty years wait wouldn’t have encouraged anybody.

Which I suspect is probably why he said it post Referendum.

To be precise - he said "the overwhelming opportunity for Brexit is over the next 50 years". This was during a Channel 4 News interview, July 2018.

Oreo

Without running the Brexit referendum all over again on these pages, what I see is that we have a pretty useless immigration service and a less than great police service as well.
If this guy can be tracked down by a BBC team to a village in Leicestershire ( or an area) and owns two candy vape shops there for money laundering as well as driving around in a big car without a licence or insurance and has many aliases, and it transpires he’s a criminal Iraqi Kurd who’s made millions from people smuggling….then why aren’t immigration on his case?
Blaming Brexit just doesn’t cut it.

I don't think anyone's blaming Brexit for our own domestic failures, rather, pointing out that it hasn't helped in general.

winterwhite

*Dickens*, my strong recollection is that Jacob R-M talked of ‘about five bumpy years’ before the benefits of Brexit were realised. I don’t know what else he may have said on other occasions but Fifty years wait wouldn’t have encouraged anybody.

Jacob Rees Mogg has said and made many daft predictions things about Brexit. The Daily Britain media posted today:

“We cross now to Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Minister for Brexit Opportunities, a job title that aged about as well as a lettuce in direct sunlight”. Rees-Mogg, who served in that role in Boris Johnson’s government from February to September 2022, decided to offer one of those grand Brexit prophecies that sounds less like analysis and more like something written on parchment with a quill.

Responding to a story about the EU budget, he wrote: “In a generation there will be no EU to rejoin.” Right then. The problem with the prediction. This is the same European Union that still has 27 member states, nine candidate countries as of early 2026, and a queue of countries trying to get in rather than out. It is also, awkwardly for Rees-Mogg, not where British public opinion appears to be heading. Survation’s mega poll found 63% would now vote to rejoin the EU against 37% who would stay out, a 26-point margin representing a 30-point swing from 2016. A separate YouGov poll found two-thirds of Britons believe Brexit has made every issue they care about worse . YouGov’s May polling specifically found 55% support for rejoining, against 34% opposed, while its June tenth-anniversary polling found 57% of Britons now believe the UK was wrong to vote Leave.

So yes, apart from the EU still existing, more countries wanting to join it, and more Britons wanting to rejoin it, a flawless prediction. The economics haven’t helped his case either
The intervention comes after years of increasingly grim Brexit economics. The Office for Budget Responsibility has repeatedly worked on the assumption that Brexit will reduce long-run UK productivity by around 4% relative to remaining in the EU. The Centre for European Reform has separately found Brexit has cut trade across almost every sector of the UK economy, with agrifood exports down 29% and travel exports down 39%.

Rees-Mogg has never been a man to let events get between him and a forecast. This is the former Commons leader whose government’s prorogation of Parliament was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court in 2019, after Boris Johnson’s administration attempted to suspend Parliament during the Brexit crisis, a legal defeat that has resurfaced repeatedly in recent commentary on the Conservative Party’s record on constitutional stability, including in response to Kemi Badenoch’s recent warning of a Burnham “summer of chaos.”

If Rees-Mogg was trying to reassure himself, the internet was not in the mood to join in. Chris Bryant wrote: “Utter tosh. I remember people making all sorts of false claims about Brexit (including that we would remain in the single market) and arguing that others would follow us. But what actually happened? More want to join.” Mike Galsworthy said: “It almost as if he is in deep wishful thinking that the UK won’t have the choice…” John O’Brennan added: “Yep, these idiots are STILL doing this cabaret act. Even after losing up to 8% of GDP and 12% of inward investment.”

Higgins Cartoons went full letter-to-the-manor-house: “Dear Jacob Rees-Mogg, How nice to hear from you, still making pronouncements I see. I fear I thought you had passed to a better place after you were made ‘Minister for Brexit Opportunities’. I heard nothing from you in that post? Tell me of the unicorn infested sunlit uplands.” Stephen Colvin wrote: “Oh god. Sometimes I’m embarrassed by some brexiteers. They’ve been saying this for ages.” Chris Portis kept it simple: “Nanny, he’s on the internet again.” Evert te Winkel said: “There have been a lot of stupid British politicians, but this one takes the cake.” Clive Wismayer wrote: “Does Jacob want to see a return to 27 currencies, competitive devaluation, internal customs barriers and, er, war? Continental Europeans don’t hate each other. It’s only the English who do that. The funny thing is, Rees-Mogg’s forecast is not even original".

Eurosceptics have been declaring the EU days from collapse since roughly the invention of colour television. Every eurozone crisis, migration crisis, budget row or French farmer with a tractor gets treated as the final death rattle of Brussels. And yet somehow the thing keeps existing. Lord Matthew Elliott, the Vote Leave chief executive, faced similar difficulty defending the Brexit legacy on its tenth anniversary, struggling to reconcile his own book’s account of NHS funding with the £350m bus claim when directly challenged. Rees-Mogg’s intervention fits a broader pattern of senior Brexit-era figures continuing to insist the project has succeeded, or is about to be vindicated, even as the polling and economic data move further in the opposite direction".

Oreo

Without running the Brexit referendum all over again on these pages, what I see is that we have a pretty useless immigration service and a less than great police service as well.
If this guy can be tracked down by a BBC team to a village in Leicestershire ( or an area) and owns two candy vape shops there for money laundering as well as driving around in a big car without a licence or insurance and has many aliases, and it transpires he’s a criminal Iraqi Kurd who’s made millions from people smuggling….then why aren’t immigration on his case?
Blaming Brexit just doesn’t cut it.

Apparently, he doesn’t ‘own’ the shops.

Yeah, right.

As for the driving, he just laughed in the reporter’s face when challenged about it.

I agree with FGT, we need to beef up and not be so pathetic in our dealings with these criminals, the police, border control, the government…..all need to stand up to them.

I thought things like that were why we left the EU, so we could deal with issues without so much outside interference.

‘Take Back Control’.

If the BBC could track this criminal down, why couldn’t the border force and/or U.K. police?

Or have the BBC got access to information that our official government departments have not.

If it’s the later than something needs to be done PDQ 🤦‍♀️

GrannyGravy13

If the BBC could track this criminal down, why couldn’t the border force and/or U.K. police?

Or have the BBC got access to information that our official government departments have not.

If it’s the later than something needs to be done PDQ 🤦‍♀️

I’ve been listening to Sue Michell & Rob Laurie for years on their To Catch a Scorpian series.
How many times have I asked that same question 😡
Where were the NCA in all these investigations.
These 2 people put their lives on the line.
If memory serves me correctly ( tgat could be suspect 😂) they interviewed this man in the camp at Calais.

GrannyGravy13

If the BBC could track this criminal down, why couldn’t the border force and/or U.K. police?

Or have the BBC got access to information that our official government departments have not.

If it’s the later than something needs to be done PDQ 🤦‍♀️

I think that the BBC have the resources to focus on investigating one individual, a resource not available to the border forces who will have a far greater case load.

I am enjoying the attempts to completely dismiss the fact that had the border forces had access to the EU databases this individual (and many others) would probably not have gained entry to the UK. Of course, Brexit played no part in this whatsoever 🙄

MaizieD

GrannyGravy13

If the BBC could track this criminal down, why couldn’t the border force and/or U.K. police?

Or have the BBC got access to information that our official government departments have not.

If it’s the later than something needs to be done PDQ 🤦‍♀️

I think that the BBC have the resources to focus on investigating one individual, a resource not available to the border forces who will have a far greater case load.

I am enjoying the attempts to completely dismiss the fact that had the border forces had access to the EU databases this individual (and many others) would probably not have gained entry to the UK. Of course, Brexit played no part in this whatsoever 🙄

The U.K. government (all sides) have had 10 years to sort out this.

They exchange information and have close co-operation on all matters regarding defence (share offices and bases here in the U.K. and abroad)

It is not impossible, just lazy, as is the constant Brexit blaming

Mind you blaming others is what all U.K. politicians are experts in…

GrannyGravy13

MaizieD

GrannyGravy13

If the BBC could track this criminal down, why couldn’t the border force and/or U.K. police?

Or have the BBC got access to information that our official government departments have not.

If it’s the later than something needs to be done PDQ 🤦‍♀️

I think that the BBC have the resources to focus on investigating one individual, a resource not available to the border forces who will have a far greater case load.

I am enjoying the attempts to completely dismiss the fact that had the border forces had access to the EU databases this individual (and many others) would probably not have gained entry to the UK. Of course, Brexit played no part in this whatsoever 🙄

The U.K. government (all sides) have had 10 years to sort out this.

They exchange information and have close co-operation on all matters regarding defence (share offices and bases here in the U.K. and abroad)

It is not impossible, just lazy, as is the constant Brexit blaming

Mind you blaming others is what all U.K. politicians are experts in…

Eight years of that government was the ‘Brexit’ government which determinedly disassociated itself from anything which had anything to do with the EU or Europe. There was absolutely no way whatsoever that it would have sought access to those very useful databases. Have you forgotten that the Home Office appeared to go to sleep for that period as small boat crossings and people smuggling multiplied, leaving Labour with a massive backlog of applications to deal with?

Instead of making excuses perhaps Leave voters could stop shutting their eyes to the consequences of their vote and lay off the excuses at the very least if they can’t bring themselves to acknowledge them.

MaizieD during the eight years of the Brexit government they (the government) still worked side by side in all military operations and activities.

10 years have passed since they gave the country the chance to have its say on the EU.

10 years to sort things out, not an excuse a fact.

GrannyGravy13

MaizieD during the eight years of the Brexit government they (the government) still worked side by side in all military operations and activities.

10 years have passed since they gave the country the chance to have its say on the EU.

10 years to sort things out, not an excuse a fact.

THE Conservative government under Cameron called the referendum.

As a result of the referendum outcome and Brexit the UK lost its EU benefits- after all it decided to leave the EU so got what it wanted- at the time.

Boris told the nation he had an "oven ready" deal ready and his government negotiated, agreed and signed the Brexit deal sorted

Are you suggesting the deal should be renegotiated. Are you suggesting we should pay the EU and try and negotiate back some of the benefits we lost? How much should the UK be prepared to pay for any lost EU benefits? Are you suggesting the EU gives us back/some/all EU benefits for £nothing? If so why should they? Are you suggesting were rejoin the EU. What still needs to be done*sorted out* in your view?

On the other hand at least you are accepting the UK has lost out by leaving the EU and would still like some of the lost benefits to be sorted.

If the U.K. and EU’s military and defence operations continued with little to no difference post Brexit, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that criminal intelligence agencies couldn’t have continued sharing as before.

We were also told on the side of a bus that we’d be £350million a week better off ‘for the NHS’ (or wherever it went).

Fact is, we apparently got over and above that according to financial experts! 👍

I think the EU played hardball GG13 to dissuade other countries from leaving. Fair enough. I’m just glad WE left!

FriedGreenTomatoes2

I think the EU played hardball GG13 to dissuade other countries from leaving. Fair enough. I’m just glad WE left!

I didn’t have a problem with the original concept of the EEC.

Didn’t like how the EU had become omnipotent and all encompassing.

The Mediterranean countries picked and chose which laws to follow, our successive governments followed the lot…

The House if Commons library suggest that the UK is £90 billion worse off per year equating to £2700 - £3700 per capita.
That's apart from losing other benefits which would have stopped criminals arriving here.