52 Britain The EconomistOctober 26th 2019
2 says, this means that the eu, nervous of be-
ing undercut, will offer Britain only a rela-
tively thin free-trade deal. That implies a
harder Brexit with more trade barriers than
Mrs May’s deal, raising the costs to the
economy of leaving the eu.
Sajid Javid, the chancellor, refuses to
publish an economic-impact assessment
of the new Brexit deal, saying simply that it
is self-evidently good for the country. But
the ukin a Changing Europe, an academic
think-tank, has produced one of its own.
Allowing for knock-on productivity ef-
fects, it finds that, after ten years, Mr John-
son’s deal will reduce incomes by 6.4%
compared with what they would otherwise
have been, equivalent to some £2,000
($2,600) per person. That figure is £500
more than the estimated cost of Mrs May’s
deal, and only £500 less than the income
loss per person from leaving the euwith no
deal at all.
What will happen next? Mr Johnson
seems to have rowed back from his threats
to drop the withdrawal agreement bill en-
tirely. If a revised timetable can be ap-
proved, detailed scrutiny may even begin
next week. But although they cannot
change the treaty itself, mps are likely to
amend the bill before it passes. An amend-
ment to add a confirmatory referendum
seems unlikely to succeed. But one requir-
ing the government to work towards a cus-
toms union might pass despite Mr John-
son’s opposition. So could an amendment
giving mps the power to demand an exten-
sion of the transition period, which expires
in December 2020 but can be extended to- mps fear that, if Mr Johnson refuses
to invoke this extension, a no-deal Brexit
may loom again should a free-trade deal
not be struck in time—which it probably
will not be.
Mr Johnson still wants an early election,
not least because the Tories are ahead in
the polls. Some of his advisers talk of hold-
ing one as soon as December. But the Fixed-
term Parliaments Act means that the prime
minister needs the support of two-thirds of
mps to call an election. In September Je-
remy Corbyn, the Labour leader, promised
to agree to one as soon as the threat of a no-
deal Brexit was lifted. His advisers are torn.
Some fret that Labour will do badly in an
early election. Others think it might do
even worse if Mr Johnson manages to get
his Brexit deal through.
One way or another, an election is likely
in the next few months. And then Mr John-
son’s final falsehood will be exposed: that
his deal means Brexit is done and dusted.
In truth, the withdrawal agreement is but
the beginning. Hard negotiations on tran-
sition, trade, security and more will take up
most of the next few years. As Denis Mac-
Shane, a former Labour Europe minister,
entitles his new book on the subject, what
really lies ahead is “Brexiternity”. 7
I
t is unclearhow many migrants are in
Britain illegally. It could be around
650,000—give or take a couple of hundred
thousand. Nor is it known how many enter
the country without permission every year.
Maybe 40,000; maybe substantially more
or less. Undetected entries are by defini-
tion impossible to measure.
What is known is that people will take
enormous risks to enter Britain. This was
made tragically clear again on October
23rd, when Essex police announced the
discovery of 39 bodies inside a refrigerated
lorry that was registered in Bulgaria. The
driver, a 25-year-old man from Northern
Ireland, has been arrested.
It is also clear that tightening security
on one route tends to divert people to other
ones. Lorries coming into the port of Dover
from Calais may be searched by canine un-
its, x-ray machines, carbon-dioxide sniff-
ers and heartbeat monitors. In 2016 the Na-
tional Crime Agency warned that
people-smugglers were diverting opera-
tions to less busy ports, such as Purfleet,
where this lorry seems to have arrived from
Zeebrugge in Belgium. Its journey ended at
a nearby industrial estate.
As The Economistwent to press, it was
reported that the migrants discovered in
Essex were Chinese. If so, it would be the
second such tragedy. In 2000, 58 Chinese
migrants died in a lorry that was found in
Dover. In 2014, 35 Afghan Sikhs were found
in a shipping container in Tilbury, not farfrom Purfleet. Most survived.
Though reliable numbers are scarce, re-
searchers reckon that most irregular mi-
grants enter Britain on legitimate tourist
visas, then stick around. Many others use
forged documents. Those arriving on boats
across the English Channel, or hiding in
the backs of lorries, are often the sort of
people who would find it hard to obtain a
visa. “The British government has a delib-
erate policy of making it difficult to reach
the ukto claim asylum. So people from
countries that have a higher rate of asylum
will find it harder to get tourist visas,” says
Madeleine Sumption of Oxford University.
Tragedies on this scale have occurred in
other countries. In 2008 the air-condition-
ing in a seafood container lorry failed in
Thailand, killing 54 out of 121 migrants
from Myanmar. A few years later 43 of 113
migrants bound for South Africa suffocat-
ed in a lorry. In 2015 Austrian police discov-
ered an abandoned lorry with 71 refugees
who had suffocated in the refrigerated con-
tainer. All were from Iraq, Iran, Syria and
Afghanistan. Nine people died of overheat-
ing in a sweltering truck in Texas in 2017.
All of these calamities involved refrigerat-
ed containers. It is harder to detect people
in such vehicles than in soft-sided ones,
says David Wood, a former boss of immi-
gration enforcement at the Home Office.
Politicians promise to crack down on
the gangs that smuggle people; advocacy
groups argue for changes to migration
rules. There has been no serious talk of
changing the design of the lorries them-
selves. In the mid-20th century American
lawmakers started requiring fridge-mak-
ers to use magnetic strips instead of latches
after reports of children climbing into dis-
used fridges and suffocating inside. Mak-
ing it easier to get out of lorries is political-
ly simpler than making it easier to get into
countries. It would also save lives. 7Close one route, and people-smugglers
will find anotherImmigrationJourney’s end
A grim discovery in Grays