FLASH
Shkruar nga Nicholas Farrell
Sir Keir, the author of an 883-page legal treatise on human rights from his time as a senior human rights lawyer, has renounced Rwanda's conservative agenda. But he is interested in Meloni's scheme with Albania, and his government has been in talks with Iraq about setting up a similar scheme there.
What can you do but laugh? Former human rights supremo Sir Keir Starmer has made a deal to deal with illegal migrants with Giorgia Meloni, who is otherwise known as 'Mussolini's heir'.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was in Rome at the weekend with a team of civil servants and police chiefs to finalize the deal with Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi.
The deal will create what the Home Office grandly describes as "a new taskforce with mafia-style bust-up tactics to seize the ill-gotten gains of criminal people-trafficking gangs".
Cooper also took part in a half-hour conversation with Piantedosi on stage at the youth festival of Meloni's right-wing "Brothers of Italy" party, which many on the left imply is similar to the fascist rallies of yesteryear. Mischievously asked by the moderator who was left or right on stage, the Secretary of the Interior avoided the right answer.
The joint people-smuggling force is the first tangible result of Sir Keir's meeting in Rome in September with Meloni: the woman the media usually calls 'strong' or 'extreme right' and who has just been named 'the most influential in Europe' from the American media platform Politico.
Sir Keir had come to seek Mellon's advice on how to stop illegal migrants, as her strategy is 'very interesting'.
This strategy is simple: the only way to stop illegal migrants is to stop them from leaving across the Mediterranean. Once they get to Europe – thanks to all those human rights laws that Sir Keir knows in the palm of his hand – it's virtually impossible to deport them.
Meloni has been the driving force behind various EU deals with North African countries to pay them with a mix of investments and loans to stop migrant departures - most notably with Tunisia, which has become the focal point of departure in the Central Mediterranean. It has meanwhile continued Italy's payments to Libya to do the same. As a result, this year the arrivals of immigrants from the sea in Italy have decreased by 60 percent compared to last year from 153,621 to 64,846.
Ms Meloni is no role model for Labour". However, it is Meloni's solutions that appeal to Sir Keir and his Home Secretary.
Another key part of Melon's strategy is to send migrants from safe countries to identification and detention centers in Albania. The aim is to speed up their asylum claims and deportations. In recent years, the country of origin that has topped the table for immigrant arrivals in Italy is Bangladesh, followed not far behind by Egypt, neither of which is at war.
Albania's scheme aims to process up to 3,000 safe country migrants per month, but perhaps more importantly act as a deterrent. The scheme has yet to come to light because two courts in Rome have refused to uphold the detention of the first migrants sent there on the grounds that Bangladesh and Egypt are not safe countries. As a result, the migrants were sent from Albania to Italy, where they are at liberty while their asylum claims are processed. The process can take years. Then they pretty much just disappear and move to places where it's easier to work and get welfare.
Rome judges based their rulings on a European Court of Justice ruling in October that the Czech government could not deport a Moldovan because part of Moldova is unsafe.
The Meloni government has appealed to the Supreme Court of Italy - the Court of Cassation - which is expected to decide by the end of the year. Meanwhile, no emigrants are being sent to Albania.
Yes, Sir Keir, author of an 883-page legal treatise on human rights from his time as a senior human rights lawyer, has given up on Rwanda's conservative agenda. But he is interested in Meloni's scheme for Albania, and his government has been in talks with Iraq about setting up a similar scheme there. In November, the UK signed a deal to pay Iraq to crack down on people smugglers and return failed Iraqi asylum seekers from Britain more quickly.
Labour's deal with the Meloni government is aimed above all at disrupting the flow of money to people smugglers. This means dealing with informal banking systems – such as Hawala – used in Arab countries and South Asia, whereby a person in one country who wants to transfer money pays it to an agent, who then contacts a partner in a other place to pay the final recipient.
Such money transfers bypass banks and are much more difficult to track and intercept./ Adapted "Pamphlet" from "The Spectator"
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