Priti Patel has asked Australia for help with the refugee crisis – she might not find what she’s looking for

Editorial: Alexander Downer should be blunt and honest enough to advise the home secretary that what was done in the vast expanse of international waters around Australia cannot be applied to the busy English Channel

Ms Patel’s once healthy popularity ratings among Tory members have plummeted (AFP/Getty)

When in trouble, often as not the government reaches for an Australian answer. We have an Australian-style points system for immigration; the political strategist Lynton Crosby is given much credit for Boris Johnson’s electoral successes (though seems less attracted to Operation Save Big Dog); while former federal prime minister Tony Abbott has been a general purpose adviser for some time, latterly on international trade deals.

Now it is the turn of a former foreign minister and high commissioner, Alexander Downer, to lend a hand to the home secretary, Priti Patel, who seems unable to get a grip on the refugee crisis.

Quite apart from anything else, Ms Patel’s once healthy popularity ratings among Tory members have plummeted, and she must be viewing a change of the party leadership with some disquiet. Mr Johnson’s replacement might not be so supportive of “The Pritster”.

In principle, it is probably a good idea to ask another pair of eyes to review the situation in the English Channel, and to do so before the weather improves and the little boats start to make their way over again from the French coast. In fairness to Mr Downer, he has experience of such matters in Australia, and he may well discover operational weaknesses in the way Border Force works.

He may add his own wisdom and advice on policy and practicalities to whatever the royal navy has suggested by way of coordination, as they have also answered the distress call from Westminster. But if reorganisation of departments were all that was needed to solve the refugee crisis, it would have been over long ago.

No doubt Ms Patel would like Mr Downer to provide cover for a more robust policy of “pushback” of refugee vessels who manage to make it into British waters, roughly on the model that has been operated by Australia on and off for two decades. Perhaps the royal navy has already expressed misgivings about conducting such operations, which would be hazardous at the best of times, and not exactly the navy’s core purpose.

While wishing to be helpful and tell Ms Patel what she wants to hear, Mr Downer should be blunt and honest enough to advise her that, even if it were morally or politically advisable, what was done in the vast expanse of international waters around Australia cannot be directly applied to the busy English Channel, and hope the French don’t notice or mind.

Mr Downer seems inclined to indulge Ms Patel’s fantasies about violating French territorial waters with an Australian-style pushback of leaky dinghies out of fuel and with the occupants threatening to drown themselves. Writing in the British press last year Mr Downer said: “My advice to Miss Patel would be to introduce the ‘pushback’ policy without fanfare, and to keep the French informed on a need-to-know basis only.” Sneaky.

The obvious immediate flaw there is that the French embassy in London employs people who can understand English, and may thus be already alert to the change in UK government policy, thanks to Mr Downer’s article. Solving the refugee crisis by creating a fresh crisis with Paris doesn’t seem much of a trade-off.

As Mr Downer implicitly concedes, and Home Office and royal navy officials must have already informed Ms Patel, there are no nearby international waters that refugees can be taken to and left to their own devices. There are only French territorial waters, and, post-Brexit, President Macron has made his attitude to such “returns” perfectly clear.

Aside from that, Mr Downer cannot make such movements of people lawful under UK Human Rights legislation and international commitments under the European Human Rights Convention (nothing to do with the EU), and UN maritime conventions that demand vessels assist those in distress at sea.

Mr Downer’s colleagues in the Australian government had to rewrite domestic law to override Australia’s international commitments. Mr Downer might advise Ms Patel to do the same, if she means business. Will the British government, a signatory to the postwar conventions on refugees, be willing to follow suit? And if so, where will these people be taken? Back to France in defiance of French sovereignty? Albania? Ghana? Rwanda? Or just towed out and left in the Atlantic?

Ms Patel also seems to think that the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), the civil service trade union representing Border Force staff, is also responsible for the failure of her policy, because it has joined with a humanitarian charity to challenge her. Unless she wishes forcibly to derecognise the PCS she will need fresh legislation, as she would to restrict its freedom to support charitable or political purposes.

There’s not much to be said for such a move, except that it might cheer Tory MPs who enjoy any union-bashing. Kicking the PCS out of Border Force will not stop a single Afghan abandoned by the British getting into a dinghy at Calais and risking their life to gain asylum.

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Mr Downer, surely a man of the world, must tell the home secretary the unwelcome truths about migration to the UK: it stems from wars and poverty in broken countries such as Syria and Afghanistan where traditionally there was little economic migration to the west. If the flow of refugees to Britain by boat is restricted, then they will return to attempting to smuggle themselves in vehicles bound for ferries or the Channel Tunnel. Or they will fly in perfectly legally and outstay their visas – which is in fact the principal informal route into Australia. That may be the next route into the UK.

Ms Patel seems to be scouring the earth to find someone who will tell her that the impossible is possible and the unlawful is legal. She wants to operate a deterrent system that worked – after an inhumane fashion – in the Indian Ocean and Timor Sea, in the entirely different environs of the English Channel.

She wishes, reluctantly, to remain within the European Convention on Refugees and the legal framework of human rights, but also to deny these protections to people, even before their pleas for refuge are assessed. She wants to be able to unilaterally amend and cap the UK’s absolute and unlimited obligation to welcome asylum seekers.

And, of course, she wants to be able to send migrants back to the EU as used to happen under the EU Dublin Convention, even though the UK has now left the EU. Mr Downer, in the kindest way he can find, should tell Ms Patel that she cannot have her cake and eat it.