John Watson: In a new world order ‘needs must when the Devil drives’

John Watson was a partner in a City legal practice and formerly edited the Shaw Sheet online magazine.

A returns deal with France?

An arrangement with Rwanda or indeed the Taliban?

Five flights a day? Withdrawal from the European Convention of Human Rights? Nissan huts on old airfields? Send them to British Overseas Territories? Cut back the benefits and let them starve?

The air is thick with ideas for curbing immigration, some sensible: some not, but in the end they only deal with a symptom of the real problem we face. Let’s look for a moment at what drives large numbers of economic migrants to try to enter and establish themselves in the US or Europe.

The politics here depend on the second law of thermodynamics, memorably expressed by Flanders and Swann in the words:

“the hotter body’s heat will pass to the cooler”

It is this basic principle which has led to empires (the passing of “civilisation” to colonies and the passing of resources in return), to missionaries (the passing of knowledge of the Word) and, in these days of mass information and mass travel, to a surge in economic migration.

Look at the reality.

War, global warming, vindictive government, or any other horseman of the apocalypse you care to think of, makes a part of the world unpleasant or impracticable to live in. The mass media ensures that the locals see the comfortable living standards of the West and the more enterprising, as did the French Huguenots following the revocation of the edict of Nantes, decide to move. It is hardly surprising.

Countries of wealth and comfort on one side with countries of poverty and oppression on the other are analogous to the hot and cold bodies envisaged by physics.

So what have we to do to prevent ourselves being swamped or taken over?

Certainly we need to erect dams to obstruct the flow and the attempts by the UK to “stop the boats” and the manning of borders by the USA and continental Europe are attempts to do this. But taken on their own these measures only deal with symptoms. Dams burst and break if the pressure gets too high and, in any case, forcing overpopulation in areas destroyed by global warming fits ill with our humanitarian instincts.

No, the construction of barriers must be augmented by a program for the elimination of famine, war and poverty in the countries from which the migrants come.

That isn’t going to be achieved by fiddling with the forms of national government. Democracies are capable of decisions just as foolish and dangerous as dictatorships. Look at the electoral support for Hitler in 1933 and his subsequent installation as Chancellor, perfectly constitutional moves which unleashed appalling horror and suffering. If we cannot rely on national governments to provide an answer, what else is there?

The only effective approach is to remove certain matters from the jurisdiction of the nation state.

The principle of subsidiarity, explained by clause 5(3) of the EU Treaty, works on the basis that decisions should be delegated to the lowest level at which they can be made effectively. The time has surely come to apply this concept upwards with a new international order depriving the nation state of primary jurisdiction in relation to certain global issues such as territorial disputes, famine relief and measures to protect the environment. That is the only way in which migratory pressures can be relieved.

The idea of a supernatural authority is not of course new, it has been tried in various forms. The Roman Empire is an ancient example but more recently we have the League of Nations and the United Nations. The latter of course is still with us but has grown few teeth in its 80 years. That is perhaps because of its make up which reflects the immediate post war world order and the fact that it has been rendered ineffective by the tensions between opposing “camps.”

To be really effective a supranational body has to be based on power which probably means domination by the US and China in close collaboration and with authority to enforce their joint view. Would that mean a new Sino American imperialism?

In a sense it would, but, shorn of its exploitative element, imperialism can have advantages in terms of good government. Contemporary prejudice often blinds us to the order introduced by Britain’s rule in India. For an example of successful rule by an imperial strongman look at the way in which Tito suppressed the tensions between ethnic groups in Yugoslavia, something made only too clear when his powerful hand was removed.

Of course even a restricted form of global imperialism is not particularly attractive given the tendency of bureaucracy to corrupt and to find its way around any restraints which are put in place.

With our tradition as a liberal society, we, the British, would probably hate it more than most.

Still what rival solution is on offer?

Surely we have to encourage Mr Trump and Mr Xi to sit down and devise a revitalised UN which, give or take a few safeguards here and there, is based on power, tasked with a very specific role and given the wherewithal to enforce its diktats.

It isn’t pleasant but, as Mrs Thatcher would have said: ”There Is No Alternative.”