Labour accused us of losing control of our borders, then in Government decided to show everyone how you really do that

‘A joke, a gimmick, a failed experiment, incompetent, weak and just not good enough.’

How I remember an eye rolling, head bobbing, Yvette Cooper, standing in the House of Commons to reel off any combination of these words to throw at the last Government, on the thorny and complex issue of immigration, especially cross channel migrants.

Well today, fifteen months into a Labour Government, with Cooper already moved from the Home Office, the numbers crossing the channel are the highest ever. A ‘one in one out’ pilot deal with France has descend into the farce of thousands in, a handful out and two of them coming back anyway. And when one of the residents of the Bell hotel in Epping – accommodation provision that sparked protests after he sexually assaulted a teenager – is released from prison by mistake, as bewildered by that as everyone else. We learn he’s not the only one, and whilst the Justice Secretary is shocked, appalled, angry he is also seemingly clueless and the High Court says in effect the Government was correct that the rights of asylum seekers to stay in the Bell hotel outweigh the rights of local British citizens, and the local Conservative Council that they should not. Labour said they’d close hotels, they’ve opened more. They’re now offering £100 pounds per migrant, money theu clearly don’t have to voluntarily leave hotels, but not the UK. At least when we offered money it was to help them leave the country.

It’s time the Government was honest, and contrite. It hasn’t gripped this issue, it’s slipped right out of their hands, and they show no signs of having a solution.

However If you want some Conservative honesty, fine, let’s deal with that.

On our ledger, no we didn’t stop the boats and, as even he has admitted since, Rishi Sunak shouldn’t have promised he could. We did (not that anyone cares to notice) hamper, harass, and yes stop, thousands from attempting to cross, but far too many got through and tried again successfully. Successive Home Secretaries built up a plan, with Robert Jenrick as immigration minister and implemented by James Cleverly in November 2023 that has halved the numbers of legal migrants but from a record high. Labour tried to claim credit.

The Safety of Rwanda Act (won in the teeth of the heaviest opposition I’ve seen rallied) would have been, if allowed to operate as planned in June 2024, the only real deterrent every attempted. Not a silver bullet, not perfect but a vital part of the jigsaw. And, by the way, far far far cheaper than trying to house and feed thousands more in the UK.

Sunak called an early election, Starmer stopped the plan not the boats, and I’m sorry but Boris needs to take it on the chin, that a huge explosion in legal migrant numbers happened on his watch and without much effort to stop it, handing his successors a hospital pass.

Hands up, we did not stop the boats. I get it.

Where are we now though. It’s time Labour faced up to the results of their non-plan plan.

A quick reminder – more for the gang of what Labour might call their online attack dogs but are more Starmer’s lap dogs, Tris, Tapp, and Charters, that sound like a dodgy firm of solicitors and who will never read this, than for you dear readers.

Smash the Gangs was a slogan not a policy, and matched in almost every way what the previous Government was doing. It used the same teams, the same combination of agencies, and just had a new name badly stickered on the door of existing operations. Small Boats Operational Command has become Border Command. That’s it.

Conservatives and Reform all acknowledge you need a deterrent. The misconception was that Rwanda would handle numbers. It actually would have, but the point is it would have deterred thousands more before they crossed, that was the point. All the evidence we had proved it would, and the Albanian returns deal cut that cut illegal migration from that country by 90 per cent was the blueprint. Labour have secured no new returns agreements that weren’t already in the pipeline. And I know they won’t.

Last night in a long anticipated Commons clash between Robert Jenrick and the performatively effervescent yet seemingly ill-informed Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, we learn is an Albanian drug dealer who having been jailed has been ‘missing for a year’

Jenrick was rightly and brutally to the point calling it ‘a complete and utter farce’. He added when Lammy didn’t have details

“He’s either in his cell or he’s not. So as we all suspected, the crisis on his government’s watch is even bigger than he dared admit. Prisoners are being accidentally released nearly every other day and putting our constituents at risk”

Of the 353 prisoners freed by mistake since Apr 1 2024, 91 were released between Apr 1 and Oct 31 this year.

Outside the chamber the shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp got stuck into the fact a second illegal migrant deported to France under this Government’s “hokey cokey” deal with the French, returned to the UK just weeks later.

“The Government is mired migrant chaos and has clearly lost control of our borders. They can’t even keep out illegal immigrants France have agreed to take back…Since the French deal was announced only a handful of illegal immigrants have been returned to France while around 20,000 have arrived here.”

Now, if you have already crossed the distance from Conservative to Reform, you’ll be itching to point out that neither party has successfully tackled the problem. I obviously argue we did a far better job than Labour but I can’t argue against that accusation.

Reform have promised they are the solution and that in very short order of a Reform government being elected, they will bring the flows to a halt.

I’m not going to say they can’t. Either to the forming a government or to tackling illegal migration. What I am going to ask, and I think the public have a right to know, is what I have asked repeatedly of Reform. How?

So far that has not been laid out, beyond this intriguing and admittedly popular slogan

“if necessary, we’ll send in the Navy”

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that this idea has been explored before, and I’d mildly point out that if you imagine you can just order the Navy to do this then firstly you need to lay out exactly what it is they’d be doing, and two accept that the Navy won’t obey an order to act unlawfully.

I’ve been wrangling with this phrase for a while. Nobody likes to say what they’d hope to get the Navy to do but there are people – I’m not accusing Reformers here – but people in UK society who genuinely think a real deterrent of the ‘cruel necessity’ variety would be to machine gun a few dinghies and let that be a lesson.

That is never going to happen, and the Navy won’t do it.

Others, and I do include Reformers, and indeed some Conservatives, would like to see the Navy go ‘kinetic’ using bow waves, and the body of their ship to block dinghies. This is in fact against the international Safety at Life at Sea laws, and has added complications if attempted in French territorial waters, as is what Farage has said which is towing (no easy task with a frigate and a dinghy) without the agreement of the French.

However I understand the desire for urgent action. I’d just like clarity on how exactly the Navy would be used that isn’t hampered by constraints.

One quick conversation yesterday with a former Navy lawyer was enough to convince me, as I’d suspected, that, to mix metaphors, this is a legal minefield Reform would need to navigate, because they can’t order the Navy to break the law. The Navy would rightly refuse.

Maybe Farage has got a solution, the Tories – still not really being heard – have outlined their solution, but maybe the past will mean the new policy won’t convince. I don’t know. It’s a shame if true because having spent six months wrestling with this issue, I believe it would could.

What everyone should now be able to see is that a bad slogan, no plan, and winging it in Government has not worked for Labour and the problem we are all trying to tackle has got measurably much worse.