Two million immigrants can be deported in just three days, claims Telegraph writer

“We can’t carry on like this,” runs a headline across an online comment piece on the Daily Telegraph today. “It’s time for mass deportations.”

So begins an inflammatory piece as part of the site’s week-long “series of essays on immigration, one of the great issues of our times”, this one by someone called Guy Dampier, billed as a “senior researcher on nationhood at the Prosperity Institute”. If that body sounds unfamiliar, it’s because it’s the new name for the Legatum Institute, the right wing think-tank whose Brexit greatest hits included advocating for airships to patrol the Irish border.

Conceding that “the concept of mass deportations still seems controversial” – which it is, to the point that even Reform leader Nigel Farage is queasy about the idea – Dampier advocates the UK should follow Donald Trump’s lead in the US “by leaving any international law agreements and repealing any laws which prevent the speedy deportation of those with no right to be here”.

The writer then goes on to claim that two million people could be forcibly removed in just three days – a timescale he has calculated by using the incredibly complex and detailed formula of…er, looking at the runway capacity of the UK’s busiest airport.

“Heathrow has 1,400 flights every day, so in principle, two million illegals could be deported in just three days,” says Dampier.

In terms of heavy lifting, it is fair to say that the words “in principle” are doing work here which would put the late, great Geoff Capes to shame. In order to perform the operation Dampier is advocating, not only would there need to be enough secure accommodation capacity within a relatively short distance of Heathrow for two million people over the space of several days at the very least – which there isn’t – as well as the capacity for transport and the likely closure, for safety reasons, of major Greater London arterial roads for a number of days prior to and during this masterplan, there are one or two other things Dampier may not have considered.

These include the likely legal ramifications of a government commandeering an entire airport’s operations for several days as well as taking control of every flight coming in and out – and, as only around 230 of those 1,400 flights every day are British, that would involve successfully negotiating with several dozen nations to use their flagcarriers to carry out what would be an internationally highly controversial operation. Oh, and then there’s the economic impact of in effect cutting much of the world off from London for the best part of a week at least.

And even all that – most of which would be subject to legal appeals which would take years, if not potentially much, much longer – would be contingent on any government successfully locating, rounding-up and incarcerating two million so-called “illegals”, something which may just be hampered by the UK prison population currently standing at 87,556, just under the operational capacity of 88,818.

And finally, while there is no evidence whatsoever that there are two million immigrants living illegally in the UK – and the Telegraph recently had to correct a nonsensical headline that “up to one in 13 Londoners could be illegal migrants” – the source of Dampier’s parting shot that “when polled, 84 per cent of the British public supported so-called mass deportations” is just as bad.

The source was a GB News story citing a poll by little-known pollsters Find Out Now “commissioned by Adam Wren, a young campaigner with a large following on X” – and even then, the 84% supported only “the deportation of migrants who commit violent crimes”, not “mass deportations” more widely, as Dampier claims.

In other news, the Daily Telegraph still hasn’t found a new buyer.