{"id":248469,"date":"2022-01-17T15:31:42","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T15:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=248469"},"modified":"2022-01-18T08:29:48","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T08:29:48","slug":"military-to-be-used-to-stem-channel-crossings-as-johnson-seeks-to-stay-pm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=248469","title":{"rendered":"Military to be used to stem Channel crossings as Johnson seeks to stay PM"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rajeev Syal \u2013 The Guardian Jan 17, 2022<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The UK armed forces are to be put in charge of stopping people from travelling across the Channel in small boats as Boris Johnson<\/a> seeks to sidestep the \u201cpartygate\u201d scandal and remain prime minister.<\/p>\n

Priti Patel, the home secretary, has been in talks for weekes about the involvement of the military, Whitehall sources said, as the numbers travelling from France<\/a> have continued through the winter.<\/p>\n

Reports have claimed plans are also being drawn up to send people to countries such as Ghana and Rwanda for processing and resettlement.<\/p>\n

It follows reports over the weekend that No 10 has launched \u201cOperation Red Meat<\/a>\u201d amid growing public anger over Downing Street parties.<\/p>\n

The prime minister will give the Royal Navy \u201cprimacy\u201d over all government vessels in the Channel this month in one of a series of populist policies as calls grow for him to step down over No 10 lockdown parties.<\/a><\/p>\n

It comes as Johnson awaits the senior civil servant Sue Gray\u2019s report<\/a> on the parties, which is expected to focus on the faults of senior civil servants in Downing Street. The report is not expected to call for a criminal inquiry into Johnson, but Gray could still suggest that the PM\u2019s ethics adviser Christopher Geidt could investigate whether he had breached the ministerial code.<\/p>\n

The army and the navy would in theory be able to deploy naval ships, boats and sophisticated surveillance technology to bolster Border Force. Plans include asking the navy to intervene if Border Force officers go on strike or refuse to deploy \u201cpushback\u201d tactics<\/a>, where boats or jet skis block and redirect vessels back towards France.<\/p>\n

Record numbers of people are crossing the Channel in small boats, but the controversial tactic has so far not been used. The Guardian disclosed in November that government lawyers had advised that the odds of successfully defending a challenge in the courts against the lawfulness of plans to send vessels carrying people back to France was \u201cless than 30%\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This could have been done long ago and will be widely supported. Boris Johnson is only doing this now because his position as prime minister is under threat following disclosures about parties at Downing Street. In essence it\u2019s a very cynical ploy to shore-up his position<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":245513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-european-migrant-crisis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=248469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248470,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248469\/revisions\/248470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/245513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=248469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=248469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=248469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}