SMASHING THE GANGS? THE HOME OFFICE CAN’T EVEN STOP FLOGGING VISAS ON EBAY

1. HOOK, LINE & WIRE-TRANSFER

Picture the Government hammering out slogans like an over-caffeinated garage band: “Smash the gangs!” they cry, promising to carpet-bomb the Channel with counter-terror powers, hi-viz jackets and enough press releases to choke a blue-on-blue WhatsApp group. gov.uktheguardian.com

Now zoom in on Manchester’s asylum team, where Imran Mulla – civil-service grade EO, shiny lanyard and freshly laminated “Integrity” certificate – is renting British residency for the price of a mid-range sofa set. £3,500 slides into his Santander like grease down a kebab shop drain, the refused application is quietly flipped to “Approved,” and the Home Office’s flagship “zero-tolerance” stance looks about as watertight as a paper canoe on the Mersey. cps.gov.ukitv.com

Smash the gangs? They can’t even smash Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V without accidentally pasting sensitive data into a bribe request.

2. “TOUGH ON CRIME” – UNLESS IT’S OUR OWN

It gets richer. Six days after leaning on the Bangladeshi applicant for pocket money, Mulla rings a Turkish claimant to pitch a Buy-One-Get-Safe deal: cough up two grand or your file slides into oblivion. When the man reports it, the Home Office reacts with all the nimble urgency of a fax machine in a power cut – only arresting their rogue agent after he’s banked several instalments and treated himself, one imagines, to the full Nando’s platter. cps.gov.uk

Remember the official boast from January? “Counter-terror-style powers will strengthen our ability to smash smuggling gangs.” gov.uk Nothing screams “strengthened” quite like the same department running a fraudulent side-hustle from its own desktop.

3. JACK STRAW: THE BLACKBURN BOOMERANG

Here’s the comic twist. Our corrupt caseworker hails from Blackburn – spiritual seat of Jack Straw, Labour’s Home Secretary (1997-2001) and patron saint of Tough-But-Fair Immigration Controls™. gov.uk Back in his day you at least needed a brown envelope, a discreet wine-bar and an offshore fax line to tweak an asylum outcome. Two decades later, the same postcode coughs up a junior pencil-pusher who does it with a mobile and Monzo.

One can almost hear Straw on Today wheezing that “lessons will be learned,” while quietly reminiscing about the era when ministers only talked about smashing gangs rather than employing them.

4. TRAINING DAYS: WHEN POWERPOINT MET FARCE

Mulla, we’re told, aced every workshop going: data protection, counter-fraud, anti-bribery, Fold-Your-Own-Lanyard. cps.gov.uk Yet the entire syllabus appears to boil down to a single slide: “Don’t take bribes (unless the client uses Faster Payments).” If Whitehall’s answer to corruption is another mandatory webinar, prepare for the sequel: Cash-for-Passports II – Direct Debit Boogaloo.

5. THE RRP OF BRITISH HOSPITALITY

Three-and-a-half grand. That’s:

• two months of London Zone-1 rent (to share, mind you, with eight finance interns and a very opinionated rat);

• one used Ford Fiesta with “personality” and a cassette deck;

• or, apparently, indefinite leave to remain in the world’s sixth-largest economy.

Put differently, legal routes require oceans of paperwork and a patience level approaching sainthood, but unofficially you can PayPal your way past the queue cheaper than a Pret subscription.

6. “SMASH THE GANGS” – OPTICS OVER OUTCOMES

Ministers trumpet fresh sanctions, splashy raids and “world-first” legal hammer blows against smugglers. standard.co.uktheguardian.com Yet Channel crossings tick upward, and every arrest seems to involve junior couriers while the kingpins sip spritzes in Frankfurt. Meanwhile, inside HQ, one of their own is literally running his own micro-smuggling franchise. If irony were a fuel source, Britain’s energy crisis would be solved by lunchtime.

7. WHO’S GUARDING THE GUARDIANS?

The Home Office likes to parade its Border Security Command like a Cold War bunker. But oversight only kicked in because a would-be victim grassed. There was no algorithmic tripwire, no heroic audit – just an asylum seeker thinking, “Hang on, that doesn’t sound very official,” and dialling a solicitor.

If tomorrow’s crackdown depends on victims spotting dodgy landlines, we may as well replace Border Force with the speaking clock and a bucket of luck.

8. FROM ISOLATED INCIDENT TO NATIONAL MOTIF

Predictable chorus: “Isolated incident… robust procedures… moving swiftly on.” Alas, Britain’s recent scandal bingo includes:

• Windrush deportations, where citizens were binned like expired yoghurts;

• the Post Office’s Horizon fiasco, which made sub-postmasters into bitcoin fugitives;

• DVLA data breaches selling plate numbers like football stickers.

So forgive us for suspecting the rot is less “isolated” and more foundational – a Jenga tower of governance where every brick reads “Don’t worry, PR will fix it.”

9. THE ACCOUNTING OF TRUST – OVERDRAFT IMMINENT

Each Mulla-style escapade burns whatever public faith survives the latest ministerial TikTok. The Government implores us to rally behind new border bills that criminalise “impeding rescue vessels” (read: panicking in a dinghy), ft.com while its own employee robs applicants blind. Why believe tomorrow’s “tough laws” when yesterday’s existing ones were ignored for a quick payday?

10. GRAND DESIGNS IN BROKEN BRICKS

Stripped of spin, the Home Office is now lecturing smugglers about ethics while internally supplying proof that crime really does pay – four-and-a-half-years minus remission and you’re out in time for Eurovision 2029. The Bangladeshi bribe-payer got 18 months – less than the wait time for a passport during Covid.

If this is “deterrence,” sign me up for the loyalty scheme.

11. THE MORAL (SUCH AS IT IS)

Smash the gangs was always a bumper-sticker masquerading as policy. But it looks positively Dadaist when the smashers are hawking Golden Tickets from behind the service desk.

Trust – that fragile Victorian heirloom politicians wheel out at election time – is now so dented it should be displayed at the V&A under “Found Objects.” And until officials can go a fortnight without monetising their login credentials, the only sane response is industrial-strength scepticism.

So next time a minister beams that the new Border Command will “leave people-smugglers with nowhere to hide,” remember Imran Mulla, sat at a Home Office keyboard, flogging British futures like 2-for-1 vouchers. That gang wasn’t in Calais or Albania – it was on the payroll.

And if a friendly caseworker phones offering a “fast-track solution,” hang up faster than J