Davey: Join the EU Migration Pact and 'Return Every Single Person' on Small Boats
The Liberal Democrat leader used his conference Sunday to plant a flag no other party will touch: Britain should join the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact — the “only practical solution”, letting the country “return every single person coming over on small boats” — alongside a temporary 10p fuel-duty cut. Crossings stand 44% below last year; the Home Secretary has called the pact no “silver bullet”.
Strip the conference staging and the proposal is the most concrete small-boats policy in current circulation: the pact’s returns-and-solidarity machinery is exactly what British governments have tried to replicate bilaterally for a decade — and its price, participation in burden-sharing quotas, is exactly why no governing party can say the words, since “returns deal” polls as strength and “EU quota” as surrender, though they are one instrument. Mr Davey can speak it because third parties monetise honesty they will never have to implement; the 10p fuel cut beside it shows the same conference selling European integration and pump populism in one speech. The 44% crossings fall is the quiet context making all positions cheaper. Watch whether Labour’s post-conference language edges toward pact-adjacent “cooperation” — policy often follows what opposition parties de-toxify.