What will be the issue that turns voters against this Government and eventually brings it down?
We can’t be sure, of course. There might be a self-inflicted economic crash in two years’ time. Or a terrible war for which this country is woefully unprepared.
But there’s one grievance that is already bubbling away and I believe is certain to boil over because Labour has no idea how to deal with it. I mean the cross-Channel boats.
The overall number of illegal immigrants coming across the Channel since Sir Keir Starmer stepped into No 10 is expected to reach 5,000 this week
If one examines the problem rationally, it could be argued that it’s odd that politicians and the media concentrate so much on illegal migrants when they were outnumbered by legal migrants by a factor of more than ten to one during the last Parliament.
Yet it is clear that illegal immigration is a particular concern. People are dismayed that the authorities have lost control of our borders. They rightly object to the huge sums being spent putting up illegal immigrants in hotels – about £7million a day. Think what better use could be made of that money.
Dozens more crossed the English Channel yesterday, following the arrival of 703 last Sunday, a record on a single day since Labour took power. The overall number of illegal immigrants coming across since Sir Keir Starmer stepped into No 10 is expected to reach 5,000 this week.
Can Labour be blamed? Probably not. If by some miracle the Tories had won the election, the numbers coming across would in all likelihood have been very similar over the past six weeks.
Except that the Tories did have a plan – to pack off some illegal immigrants to Rwanda – that was intended to act as a deterrent.
Thanks to the European Court of Human Rights, delays caused by our own courts and the blocking activities of the House of Lords, aircraft filled with migrants never took off. A mere five people took commercial flights to Rwanda.
703 migrants made the journey last Sunday, a record on a single day since Labour took power
Who can say what effect there would have been on Rishi Sunak’s electoral fortunes if he had managed to get a couple of aeroplanes off the ground, as he undertook to do as recently as April? But for reasons that remain unfathomable, he chose to call an election without giving himself a chance to find out. It’s very strange.
We can’t know whether the Rwanda plan would have acted as a deterrent. My guess is that it would have if there had been enough flights. Migrants sitting in Calais, or at any rate some of them, might have had second thoughts about approaching the White Cliffs of Dover in small boats if they had thought there was a good chance of their being packed off to the east-central African country.
But the question is now academic because Sir Keir Starmer has shredded the Tories’ Rwanda plan, partly because he doesn’t believe that the country is a very nice place – and therefore migrants shouldn’t be sent there – and partly on grounds of cost.
What remains is very vague, and in the opinion of many expert observers unlikely to be effective. A ‘Border Security Command’ force is being set up, tasked with tackling the criminal gangs that organise the small boats crossing the Channel.
This body will, in the words of the Home Office, ‘provide strategic direction to work across agencies, drawing together the work of the National Crime Agency, intelligence agencies, police, Immigration Enforcement and Border Force, to better protect our borders and go after the smuggling gangs facilitating small boat crossings’.
Sir Keir has shredded the Tories’ Rwanda plan. Hope Hostel in Kigali was set to welcome migrants under Rishi Sunak’s scheme
So that’s it, then! A brand new body will miraculously do the trick by coordinating existing agencies under the watchful eye of Sir Keir Starmer, who has repeatedly reminded us that when he was Director of Public Prosecutions he led successful prosecutions against drug dealers, terrorists and violent criminals.
With such a record, the Prime Minister, who certainly doesn’t lack self-confidence, believes that he will make short shrift of the smuggling gangs. Others are much less sure.
Ben Brindle of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University has told The Guardian: ‘The gangs are decentralised – there’s not some big boss you can smash. The Conservative government was also very hot on enforcement, so it’s not a new direction. Labour say they’ll do it more effectively but it’s not clear how that would happen and what it would look like.’
Just how much Sir Keir’s ideas are still on the drawing board – some would say in the clouds – was illustrated by a meeting he had earlier this week with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni. They agreed to encourage Europol, the EU police force, to address illegal immigration. Even if this happened, is it likely to stem the number of migrants crossing the Channel?
It would be wonderful if the Government’s new measures were successful, and I suppose one shouldn’t rule out a tiny possibility that they will be. But Sir Keir isn’t offering much more than an organisational shake-up. Closer cooperation with the French authorities is unlikely to be more productive than it has been in the past.
There is more. Not only has Sir Keir junked the one policy – Rwanda – that had any prospect of deterring illegal migrants. He has succeeded in giving them an incentive to cross the Channel.
For the Government has said it will expedite the claims of some 90,000 migrants who were held in limbo by the last government, awaiting possible deportation to Rwanda. The Refugee Council estimates that around two thirds of these people will be granted asylum, given the profile of the countries from which they have come.
If I were a migrant intending to enter Britain illegally, the prospect of my claim being considered relatively quickly, and the knowledge that I had at least a two-thirds chance of it being successful, would redouble my determination to come here.
It is perhaps unfair to judge the Government on the basis of what has happened over the past six weeks. But it will be judged, and rightly so, on what happens from now on.
If I were a migrant, the knowledge that I had at least a two-thirds chance of my asylum claim being successful would redouble my determination to come to Britain, writes Stephen Glover
Here’s a prediction. Overall numbers crossing the English Channel this year will come close to the record of 46,000 in 2022, and could surpass it. Unless the Channel is covered in fog for many months next year, or there are constant unseasonal storms, there’s no reason to believe that 2025 will be any better.
The truth is that Labour has got rid of one plan that might have worked and has replaced it with poorly considered measures that are most unlikely to make a significant difference to a problem greatly vexing the British people.
Legal immigration is apparently beginning to come down as a result of new restrictions belatedly introduced by the Tories. But there’s no reason to suppose that illegal immigration – the focus of so much disquiet – is going to reduce by a significant amount, if at all.
If I’m right, Labour is drifting towards a huge crisis. It has promised what it won’t deliver. And this betrayal, when it becomes clear to the British people, will not be easily forgiven.
