the times | Thursday November 25 2021 2GM 37
Leading articles
allow British police officers to help patrol the
French beaches. Other solutions, relying on
processing centres for would-be migrants abroad
or detention centres as far away as Rwanda or
Albania, have been swiftly dismissed as impracti-
cal, politically and legally unworkable and ruin-
ously expensive. Hot pursuit of the smuggling
gangs has too often led to the arrest of only small
fry, while the cross-boundary networks, stretching
all the way back to the Mediterranean, Libya and
into sub-Saharan Africa, remain undisturbed.
Corruption all along the line, with officials paid to
turn a blind eye, has allowed people-trafficking to
flourish. It is now reckoned to be the most
lucrative form of international crime, yielding
profits even greater than drug-smuggling.
The increase in migrants arriving on British
beaches is partly because other routes have been
closed and partly because both the push and the
pull factors have increased. The area around the
Channel tunnel rail terminal is fenced off with
razor wire and heavily patrolled. It is virtually
impossible for migrants to slip undetected into
lorries and be carried to Britain. And who can for-
get the 39 Vietnamese migrants who were found
dead in a refrigerator lorry two years ago in Essex.
At the same time, the numbers arriving inFrance from farther south, usually from Spain and
Italy after a hazardous Mediterranean crossing, is
increasing because the miseries of civil war, star-
vation and repression, especially in Afghanistan
and now in the Horn of Africa, are driving more
refugees abroad. They attempt to make it to
Britain either because they have relatives here, or
because they know some English, or because they
know that once they reach Britain they can find
work and disappear from view, and will probably
never be sent home.
The issue is not new and is not going to go away.
All Europe is struggling to find a way to stem the
flow. Promises of harsh regimes and swift deporta-
tions have been no more of a deterrent than the
inhuman orders forbidding ships from picking up
survivors in the Mediterranean or allowing survi-
vors to be put ashore. It is a transnational issue
which needs cross-border co-operation. Britain is
no longer part of the councils of the EU, but it
needs to intensify and detoxify its talks with
France. Good intelligence, quiet co-operation,
more resources and above all political will are
bound to lead to better results than denunciations
of French insouciance or futile arguments over
the fallout from Brexit. This latest horror shows
that tragedy is always just round the corner.Spending will be the first challenge for the coali-
tion. The recent Merkel years have seen a woeful
lack of investment in new technologies and ageing
infrastructure to keep Germany competitive. But
providing Europe’s industrial powerhouse with
enough energy will be an even greater priority.
With Christian Lindner, the FDP leader, holding
the purse strings as finance minister, it will be up
to the Greens, who will hold the climate portfolio
as well as the foreign ministry, to work out how
Germany will generate power if, as the Greens
promise, it is to phase out coal and can no longer
call on nuclear power. The alternative is greater
reliance on gas, increasing pressure for the open-
ing of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia.
Despite years of dithering by Mrs Merkel, it
looks as though the pipeline will not open any time
soon. This is partly due to growing western pres-
sure to stop Russia reinforcing Europe’s depend-
ence and partly because the Greens are taking a
surprisingly robust line towards Russia and China
as part of their campaign for human rights. The
Greens have held the foreign ministry before,
when Joschka Fischer proved a shrewd and prag-matic foreign minister in the Schröder coalition.
Germany is the de facto political and economic
leader of the European Union, and its partners can
expect few surprises. Consensus and continuity
have been the watchwords of all German postwar
politics. There will be no lack of strains and
challenges, however. The coalition will be imme-
diately preoccupied with the rapid rise in Covid in-
fections and the rumbling discontent in many
urban centres. It must also give a lead in the EU’s
attempt to co-ordinate moves to protect EU
citizens while keeping open the borders.
Beyond that, Germany will set the tone in how
the EU responds to Russia’s increasing provoca-
tions and may also show more caution in dealings
with China, for so long a key export market. But
Mr Scholz will not be a soft touch for Britain. The
coalition agreement specifically includes a clause
upholding the Northern Ireland protocol. Boris
Johnson may find a tougher response in Berlin
than Mrs Merkel’s weary indulgence. Mr Scholz
comes to office with experience, a liberal agenda
and high popularity ratings. Germany and its
neighbours can expect a lively four years.on twigs and rocks before natural sediments glue
them together. Other wipes fail to make it out of
the sewers at all, forming fatbergs that clog drains
and flood homes. Water UK, the trade body for big
water companies, calculates that removing them
costs £100 million a year.
A cross-party coalition of MPs is demanding a
ban on the sale of all wet wipes containing plastic.
The government, which launched a consultation
this week, should back them. Banning products
that harm the environment is an effective way of
reducing human impact on the natural world.
Research shows that the average amount of litterdropped per 100 metres of British beaches is
falling year on year. The number of plastic cotton
bud sticks recorded was the lowest in 28 years after
they were banned in England and Scotland with
plastic straws and stirrers.
But regulation must be coupled with recogni-
tion from consumers that flushing wipes contrib-
utes to about 300,000 blockages in sewers every
year. London’s new “super sewer” will help to tack-
le some of the sewage overflows that pollute the
Thames. More must be done across the country to
stop similar spills given that the number of
incidents tripled in Britain this summer alone.Predictable Tragedy
Without intensive cross-border co-operation to tackle people-smuggling gangs, little
can stem the flow of dangerous Channel crossings and prevent further deaths
At least 27 migrants have drowned off the coast of
Dunkirk after a dinghy carrying about 50 refugees
from the Calais region deflated and was found
drifting empty yesterday. Many were in the water
unconscious and others were missing. The drown-
ings make up the highest death toll from such an
incident in the Channel. They have appalled
rescuers, shaken the French authorities and will
inevitably lead to calls on this side of the Channel
for more patrols and more robust action to catch
the people-smugglers and break up the networks
trading in human hope and misery.
As refugee agencies, the police and this news-
paper have been warning for months, this kind of
tragedy was bound to happen. The shipping lanes
between Britain and France are among the busiest
in the world. The surge of migrants trying to make
the crossing shows no sign of abating, with thou-
sands arriving each week recently, despite wor-
sening weather, cold seas and the onset of winter.
The smugglers have becoming increasingly cal-
lous in packing the weary migrants into dinghies
or boats that are not even remotely seaworthy.
As The Times said in a leading article on Satur-
day, there is no single or easy solution to the crisis.
The French have promised to step up patrols,
although on Monday they rejected a proposal toNew Faces in Berlin
Tough talks have led to a disparate German coalition that has much to do
It has taken two months of tough argument for
Olaf Scholz to form a new German coalition
government that sees him step into Angela
Merkel’s shoes as chancellor, and thrusts the
defeated Christian Democratic Union into oppo-
sition for the first time in 16 years and only the
third in the federal republic’s history.
The so-called “traffic light” coalition, an-
nounced yesterday, is led by the “red” Social
Democratic Party and comprises also the smaller
Green and Free Democratic (FDP) parties. It
seems an alliance of unlikely bedfellows. The
Greens have campaigned strongly for higher tax-
es, massive investment to fight climate change and
high government spending to upgrade Germany’s
shabby infrastructure. The FDP, closer ideologi-
cally to the Christian Democrats, have ruled out
tax rises, and support Germany’s business inter-
ests. Mr Scholz, however, is well placed to hold the
ring. He was minister of finance, and vice-
chancellor in the previous coalition so has under-
stood how to trim fiscal policies to a conservative
agenda while proving flexible enough to offer
huge financial support to businesses hit by Covid.Wipe Out
Wet wipes should be banned to protect Britain’s riverbeds and sewers
Britain’s riverbeds and sewerage system are suffer-
ing a plague of wet wipes. Of the 11 billion of these
disposable wipes sold each year in Britain, an
estimated 2.5 billion are wrongly flushed down
lavatories. Recent sonar and laser scans of the
Thames riverbed revealed a “reef” of wet wipes
that has grown to the size of two tennis courts in
Hammersmith, west London, changing the con-
tours of the river and threatening its wildlife.
The principle problem is that 90 per cent of wet
wipes, even some labelled “flushable”, are made
with plastics that do not break up like tissue paper
when flushed. Instead they enter rivers, snaggingUK: Sajid Javid is among speakers at the
National Children and Adult Services
Conference; Plaid Cymru conference begins.
US: Thanksgiving Day national holiday.
One or two
bilberries still cling
to their low bushes.
Wizened and
cracked, they are
way past their best,
but offer a
nutritious snack to a passing vole. Back in
June, the bushes were covered in small pink
flowers, shaped like mini lampshades. By
July the small, blue berries were ready. A
shrub of the moors, heathland, bogs and
open woodland, many people consider
bilberries to be superior in taste to
blueberries, their cultivated cousin. Within
living memory, the fruit was collected
extensively for pies and jams. A superfood
with many health benefits, bilberries have
their own dedicated pollinator, the beautiful,
though sadly declining, orange-tailed
bilberry bumblebee. jonathan tulloch
In 1981 Lord Scarman’s report into the riots
in Brixton, south London, in April that year
was published. He called for action to
prevent racial disadvantage becoming an
“endemic, ineradicable disease threatening
the very survival of our society”.
Dominic Cummings,
pictured, political
strategist, chief adviser
to Boris Johnson
(2019-20), 50; Stuart
Andrew, Conservative
MP for Pudsey, deputy
chief whip, 50; Harriet
Crabtree, director, Inter Faith Network for
the UK, 63; Blythe Duff, actress, Taggart
(1990-2010), 59; Michael Feast, actor, Velvet
Goldmine (1998), 75; Rt Rev Clive Gregory,
area bishop of Wolverhampton, 60; Brent
Hoberman, entrepreneur, co-founder of
Lastminute.com (1998), 53; Squadron Leader
George “Johnny” Johnson, DFM, the last
surviving British Dambuster, 100; Yvonne
Kenny, opera singer, 71; Terry Kilburn,
actor, Goodbye, Mr Chips (1939), 95;
Alessandro Michele, fashion designer,
creative director at Gucci, 49; Steve Morgan,
founder (1974) and chairman (2009-19),
Redrow, and chairman, Wolverhampton
Wanderers FC (2007-15), 69; Lord (Paul)
Murphy of Torfaen, Labour MP (1987-2015),
secretary of state for Northern Ireland
(2002-05) and Wales (1999-2002, 2008-09),
73; Lord Naseby (Michael Morris),
Conservative MP (1974-97), chairman of
Ways and Means and deputy speaker
(1992-97), 85; Alan Parker, chairman,
Mothercare (2011-18), chief executive,
Whitbread (2004-10), 75; Donald Sassoon,
emeritus professor of comparative European
history at Queen Mary University of
London, The Anxious Triumph: A Global
History of Capitalism (1860-1914) (2019), 75;
Dougray Scott, actor, Mission: Impossible II
(2000), 56; Gerald Seymour, thriller writer,
Harry’s Game (1975), 80; John Taylor,
inventor who developed thermostats for use
in electric kettles, 85; Bruno Tonioli,
choreographer, judge, Strictly Come Dancing
(2004-20), 66; Sir Peter Wright, director
laureate, Birmingham Royal Ballet, 95; Rev
Prof Frances Young, theologian, The Myth
of God Incarnate (1977), 82.
“For all the happiness mankind can gain
Is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain.”
John Dryden, English poet, critic and
dramatist, The Indian Emperor (1665)
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