In two significant ways, Reform UK supporters, and that subset which knows how to hold a writing implement and thus become Reform UK voters, are like senior military officers. First, they only want to hear things that they already know to be true. Second, they assume that anything they don’t personally understand must be simple.

Immigration, and particularly informal migration via channel crossings in small boats, has been successfully weaponised to such a degree that it is now perceived as a direct assault on the national dignity of the English. The children of the Pearl River Delta sweatshops are working double shifts making flags.

So the question that haunts every waking, and possibly sleeping, hour of our vexillophilic citizens is “Why not just tow them back to France?”

This issue, and its theorised or actualised resolution, will be the defining feature of the next General Election.

To answer this question, we need to establish the legal context. The territorial sea, and hence sovereign interest, of a nation state extends 12 miles from its coast. Where territorial limits would overlap they terminate at a median point between the two coastal baselines. Thus in that part of the Channel where the boat crossings occur, there is no water that is not in either the British or French territorial sea. This is important as we will see.

All civilian and military vessels nevertheless have the right of Innocent Passage within the territorial limit. The determination of what is or is not Innocent Passage is very clearly defined in the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea. Towing a boat back to France with the intention of landing the occupants ashore would be a clear breach of Article 19 of UNCLOS because it would be an attempt to break French immigration law.

Perhaps the British government could weather the approbation and sanctions that might arise from flagrantly violating UNCLOS but the Gendarmerie Maritime would impede and perhaps seek to prevent outright such an operation. The situation would rapidly turn into a very ugly, unpredictable and dangerous conflict in a very busy shipping area.

Starting in 2014, the Royal Australian Navy commenced a highly successful tow back operation, returning asylum seekers to Indonesia. Crucially, none of the RAN operations occurred within the Indonesia territorial limit. They intercepted boats in international waters, removed the occupants, put them in an off-shore lifeboat and then towed that lifeboat to just outside the 12 mile limit. One of the refugees was then bribed into skippering the lightly fueled boat back to the Indonesian coast.

Could this approach be adopted by the British Government? Yes, if it were willing to tow the boats west to an area uncongested by maritime traffic outside both the British and French territorial limits before launching the lifeboats toward France. Would this delight the French Government? Almost certainly not, but the Australian precedent strongly suggests that it is not an UNCLOS violation.

Even though irregular maritime arrivals are a small fraction of the total immigration to the UK, they have totemic potency way beyond their actual number. As the 2029 General Election remorselessly grinds toward us the British Government may be tempted to exercise desperate measures. There are no easy or simple options. All have various unpredictable risks and consequences associated with them but at some point an Australian style tow back may be the least worse choice.

Finally, some of the arrivals may have exaggerated or even fabricated their claims. Some of them may do terrible things when they are here. However, some of them are people who have suffered horrendous situations then made themselves deliberately unemployed and homeless in a country where a significant proportion of the population hates them. Remember the human.

Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt
– Quintus Horatius Flaccus

Dura Ace

Dura Ace is pb.com regular and was a Royal Navy officer for 20 years. He did far worse.