DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Braverman’s chance to confuse cynics

In the real world – that workplace beyond the Westminster bubble – which of the following is most important?

This Interior Minister, Suella Braverman, sent official documents from her government email to her personal account in violation of ministerial guidelines.

Or that hundreds of migrants enter Britain illegally every day, bringing the asylum system to its knees, leading to dangerous overcrowding in processing centers and overwhelming available accommodation and hotel rooms.

We don’t need an opinion poll to tell us the answer. As the political class obsess over the mind-numbing minutiae of Ms Braverman’s online conduct, a massive crisis is unfolding.

Tackling the scale of the influx of migrants would be a challenge for any interior minister. Ms Braverman has the added burden of being undermined by her own officials, hounded by the liberal left and informed against by malevolent conservative colleagues.

Then there is his judgmental Labor shadow, Yvette Cooper. In a haughty tone, she scolds Mrs. Braverman for not getting the Channel crisis under control.

Yet she was a key member of the Blair/Brown government who deliberately encouraged mass immigration in order to “rub the nose of the right in diversity”. Today’s problems are a direct legacy of that time.

And what is his solution now? Better liaison with the French (good luck with that!), tougher crackdown on traffickers (because nobody thought of that before) and speeding up the asylum process (than human rights legislation Mr. Blair’s man made diabolically difficult).

If anyone epitomizes Labour’s hypocrisy and short-sightedness, it’s Miss Cooper – good at criticizing from the touchline but, when it comes to solutions, nothing to add.

Ms Braverman gave a lively performance in the Commons yesterday, saying she would not back down from drastic action, including changing the law to counter this ‘invasion’.

“Illegal migration is out of control and too many people are more interested in playing political board games, hiding the truth, than solving the problem,” she said.

Of course migrants should be treated with respect and the overcrowding in the center of Manston is deeply troubling. But they arrive in such large numbers that housing is a serious problem.

Even when hotel rooms are identified or new centers offered, a growing number of councils – including those in the Labor Party – are blocking them on the grounds that their communities would be disrupted.

Miss Cooper once volunteered to take refugees into her home – but then found she couldn’t. Perhaps she could make up for that now by offering a large facility for asylum seekers in her fringe West Yorkshire constituency.

The debate has centered in recent days on what to do with Channel migrants once they are here. Ms Braverman rightly points out that the greatest imperative is to reduce the number of arrivals.

While some may have originally fled persecution, they come here from France – a hardly oppressive state. One in three comes from Albania, attracted by the employment and well-being opportunities here. These economic migrants and the gangs who traffic them will only be deterred if there is a realistic possibility that they will be intercepted and returned.

Yes, better cooperation with France and stricter enforcement will help, but applications need to be processed faster and rejected asylum seekers are regularly deported.

It will take unwavering political will to tackle the migration lobby. Whether Ms Braverman will succeed where others have failed remains to be seen.

But the potential rewards of resolving, or at least mitigating, this crisis are enormous. It could be the difference between winning and losing the next election.