Dom, Doom

As noted on the open thread....

Is that Godzilla I see stomping down Whitehall towards the Houses of Parliament to mark the new year and Brexit? No, it's just the BBC's home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani. He's in fancy dress as Private Frazer from Dad's Army and breathing fire ever so impartially (as ever). Just look at his language here:

Less than 350 HOURS now from full-flavour Brexit. Here are the facts about how the UK will crash out of a host of security, criminal justice and crime-fighting tools keeping you safe. [Translation: You're doomed! DOOMED!] Police will lose lose many of these even if there is a deal. The UK will be ejected from the European Arrest Warrant (although it does have its critics); it will have a totally unclear relationship with Europol and its joined-up cross-border organised crime investigations.

SIS 2 - jargon name for a massively important database providing millions of insta-alerts to frontline policing and border security: Criminal on the run in Europe? Possibly in the UK? SIS 2 sends the alert. Home Office has no choice but to unplug the UK's connection.

European Investigation Orders. Police in the UK can send a request to another country's police for help on a job. The receiving officers *must assist within a deadline* unless there's an exceptional reason not to. The position from Jan? A diplomatic begging letter, no guarantees.

This morning, Steve Rodhouse, one of the top bods at the National Crime Agency underlined the loss of capability that comes from the SIS 2 switch-off. The UK, overnight, will have to delete 40,000 EU records currently sitting in the UK's Police National Computer.

He says investigations will take longer and serious criminals will not be held to account "as quickly". The UK is pinning its hopes on Interpol's system filling the SIS gap.

But this is what Steve Rodhouse said this morning: “It is right for me to raise the prospect that there will be some EU member states in some circumstances who don’t use Interpol alerts... If the UK doesn’t have access to SIS 2 that provides a gap." Last week, someone well-positioned on these matters inside British policing gave me their analysis and predictions about losing these security and criminal justice tools. Their first response began "We are [insert expletive]."

But 'for balance' 🤣:

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told the BBC last Sunday that UK security would improve after Brexit - but he also said the UK still wanted access to some of these EU tools as part of “common sense co-operation”.

“The big win for us is control over our own borders,” said Mr Raab. “If you look at denial of entry, if you look at deportation powers, if you look at control of our borders, in that respect, we will have far more control, and that will have a security dividend.”

I think Twitter's Mike Love captures this well:

I read this, and then wondered how this could possibly have been written by a BBC employee and not the Remain campaign.

Dom's been getting away with this kind of thing for two decades now. We've quite a substantial archive on him.