‘Britannia no longer rules the waves’ and the nation must face its post-imperial responsibilities

KEIR STARMER’S meeting with Giorgia Meloni is truly a meeting of the minds. The British Prime Minister wants to learn from the former fascist/near-fascist/post-fascist Prime Minister of the Italian Republic how best to deal with the problem of small boats arriving in Britain.

Meloni’s coalition of the Fratelli d’Italia, the direct descendant of Benito Mussolini’s fascist party, with the xenophobic Lega and the remnants of Silvio Belosconi’s mafia-driven political vehicle Forza Italia, has managed to achieve a more than 50 percent reduction in the arrival of small boats on Italian soil.

This has been achieved through a combination of measures, including an interception by the Italian coastguard, which is notoriously lax in the loss of life. Criminal sanctions have also been imposed on volunteer organisations, including those run by Catholic Christian Charities, which help migrants.

But most effectively, it has outsourced the task of policing the waters between the former Italian empire in North Africa and the Italian mainland to the notoriously corrupt and jihadist-infested Libyan coast guard.

It will be interesting to see how many measures Starmer will take. His record as an instrument in the service of the coercive capitalist state has already been refined by a stint as an adviser to the police in Northern Ireland.

As Director of Public Prosecutions, he was the main intermediary in the conspiracy with the US security state to keep Julian Assange in custody pending extradition. How much does he think he can steal from Meloni’s arsenal?

It seems unlikely that he will be able to persuade the French border police and coast guard to behave in the same greedy manner as the EU’s Libyan contractors.

The French must be annoyed by the British authorities. France is of course a haven for many migrant workers and refugees, especially because of climate change in Africa and post-colonial poverty.

Those who remain in France do so because they speak French, come from former French colonies and can count on a certain degree of protection and solidarity, at least from their compatriots.

The poor souls who end up on our shores – and who, according to this week’s deadly statistics, have a one in a hundred chance of drowning – do so because they come from countries that were once under British colonial rule, because they speak English as a second language and often as a first language, or because they are fleeing the effects of decades of war inflicted on their countries by NATO and its constituent states.

There are aspects of the current approach to the migrant controversy that require further explanation.

Firstly, it is only a problem of small boat arrivals in the most minor sense. The vast majority of migrants who arrive in Britain do so because they are drawn here by the labour market mechanisms of 21st century capitalism and facilitated by the British state acting as the labour recruitment arm of British domestic capital. They have been given permission to migrate by successive governments.

Secondly, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s nonsense about criminal gangs being “responsible” for cross-Channel traffic is a dangerous frivolity. This cross-Channel trade is an inevitable manifestation of the very market mechanisms that are driving the larger flow of migrants.

The gangs are responding to a market demand created by the policy of successive British governments not to allow safer routes for people arriving here with a genuine claim to refugee status or as migrant workers.

The reason why today’s Britain has become the destination for a small proportion of the world’s migrants lies precisely in our historical role.

As the song sung at the Last Night at the Proms last week goes:

“Even wider and wider
Will your boundaries be established?
God who has made you mighty
Make yourself even more powerful.”

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, right, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer shake hands after a joint press conference at Villa Doria Pamphilj in Rome, September 16, 2024