Welcome to the jungle

Downing Street is warning that migrant encampments like the Calais Jungle could spring up in Kent and other parts of the south-east if the UK votes to leave the European Union.

Brighton and Hove migrant camp. Set up in 2021 after the huge numbers of people fleeing the EU caused severe problems for the UK.

Imagine that. Thousands of refugees camping out on the south coast. Huddling in tents. Hoping for some fuel to heat themselves during the harsh bitter British winter. The migrants, who chose to flee from the war-torn, dangerous, faction ridden France now have to live in tents on ..

Hold on? Why would they be living in tents ? Would leaving the EU require the UK to set up brand new form of outdoor detention centre? A special Glastonbury for recent arrivals where they must wait before they are..? Are ..? What? 

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The government made a ridiculous statement today, the opening shots of Project Fear.
Gangs of young ethnic men will be hanging around Herne Bay in crappy sports branded tracksuits looking quite menacing. That was the image HMG wanted people to have in their head.

The idea comes from the UK's arrangements with France and Belgium in which the UK border force carry out checks in those countries. This arrangement came out of the Sangatte camp that was plaguing France and Britain in the millennium years. there is a possibility, Mr Cameron suggested, that the French won't honour this arrangement and those camps will move to Kent instead, if the UK doesn't remain in the EU.

Which is a lie.
And a provable one. 

Firstly: As was widely and almost immediately reported, this arrangement is nothing to do with the EU. Britain pays some of the border costs. The idea was to stop Sangatte style camps appearing IF immigrants realised that they could not get across. Pro EU voices say that because the system isn't working the French may not carry on with it.

That's as maybe. but that has nothing to do with Britain's membership of the EU. Its a british/fench border issue that will need to be addressed whatever happens.

Secondly: If Britain was not an EU member then stronger, rather than weaker border controls would be in place. 

Thirdly: And most importantly, there would be NO camps.
The UK does not have a policy of sticking people in a field whilst it processes their asylum applications. If the French just let everyone through, and the UK accepted them all, it still would not put them in a camp in Deal or Lyme Regis. They would either be placed in detention centres or given accommodation as is the current system. 

The reason the camps exist at all, is that asylum seekers and migrants wish to come to the UK to claim asylum. They are not permitted under the current EU laws and must claim asylum in the first country they enter.  
That they don't is simply because they wish to get to the UK. So exist in a limbo status until they can clamber onto a truck or car or walk through the tunnel. Once they arrive in the UK the would have no need to camp out unless they were waiting to secretly clamber aboard a truck for France. Which, seeing as they have  just come from there , is unlikely. 

The idea that the Home Office would abandon its use of government funded housing or detention centres, and stick men and women and children in tents in fields is fantasy that only the most die hard Corbynista class warrior could invent.

We all know this. Especially the government who announced it. 

In many ways I do hope the government goes early on the referendum. As its only going to get ever more silly and ever more desperate the longer it goes on.