Not even the royal navy can save the government’s asylum policy

Editorial: The royal navy has its work cut out with an impossible, ill-defined task

For now, the weather will mean far fewer boats making the perilous journey (Getty)

It is about two hundred years since the end of the brutal press gangs that used to patrol the ports, and the crown allowed its right to seize men of seafaring experience for the royal navy to lapse.

Yet it is now the royal navy itself, and its men and women of fine seafaring experience, that is being press-ganged by Boris Johnson into rescuing his floundering career. It is, in effect, being pressed into service in a mission to distribute much-needed red meat to disgruntled Conservative backbenchers.

Dutiful and patriotic as the admirals undoubtedly are, their new mission in the English Channel must be an unwelcome late Christmas present. Acting in support of the civil authorities, as during the Covid crisis and vaccine rollout, is a call that the armed forces invariably answer with alacrity and a happy heart. Trying to solve the small boats refugee crisis is a rather different kind of challenge.