Sir Keir Starmer is running out of time to tackle the migrant crisis. A year into office and the Government is tinkering at the margins trying to “smash the gangs” when it should be focused on how best to deter migrants from arriving in the first place.
The UK is playing whack-a-mole against the small boat crossings, an undeniably lucrative business model. Migrants swap their life savings for a chance on an overcrowded, unseaworthy dinghy. Then they’re held in legal limbo for years once they arrive with an increasingly hostile public angry that they’re here at all. Yet still they come.
After the Conservatives lost the election last year, I asked a very senior member of Rishi Sunak’s former cabinet why they had not waited until a migrant deportation flight had taken off to Rwanda for offshore processing before calling an election. In early 2024, it seemed even just one flight, heavily promoted overseas, would have acted as a deterrent and given a small electoral boost to the beleaguered party.
“It was never going to work,” the former minister confided to me. “It was too bogged down in legal challenges.” That certainly wasn’t the case ministers were making in the run-up to the election.
And even though Starmer dismissed the Rwanda scheme as a gimmick, abandoning it on day one of his new administration, he has since praised Italy’s offshore processing agreement with Albania, and clearly signalled his intention to follow suit.
In the meantime, his replacement policy is to smash the gangs at source. This policy is legalistic and requires the good will of the French, which means progress is glacially slow. Currently, it seems nigh on impossible to defeat the gangs. One leader is arrested, and a new one springs up. One inflatable boat is punctured and another one brought to a French beach.
The Government is set to reveal several policies to combat illegal immigration, beginning with a £100m spending plan on Monday to fund 300 more National Crime Agency officers and new tech to gather intelligence on trafficking gangs.
More significantly, the UK-France “one-in, one-out” returns agreement is expected to be signed by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper this week. The deal will see the UK send people arriving via the Channel back to France in return for the same number of France-based asylum seekers with family ties to Britain.
But Starmer has focused on only one side of the problem. The only way to stop migrants trying to get to the UK is to deter them. When Cooper makes the announcement, keep a beady eye on the weekly number cap on the plan. With possibly only around 50 participants a week this is by no means a big enough number to act as a deterrent.
Government officials say it’s a trial and will be expanded if it works. But arguably the scheme won’t provide a deterrent unless the numbers are higher in the first place. On Monday morning, Home Office Minister Angela Eagle refused to say what the initial cap on numbers would be, telling the BBC it was a “learning exercise, particularly at the beginning”.
At this rate, the returns policy is not going to even touch the sides. More than 25,000 migrants have come across the Channel so far this year, a 50 per cent increase on 2024.
Another new Government policy will ban social media ads about small boat trips. Those found guilty of promoting the crossings – and it seems unlikely any prosecutions will be ever made overseas – could theoretically face five years in prison and a large fine.
Instead, the Government needs to go on the social media offensive. In the absence of an actual deterrent, the UK should use the content it has on a grand scale. While the Home Office has already produced some videos showing migrants being deported, it should be heavily promoting that message in the countries where the migrants start their journeys.
Similarly, another video showing French police deliberately puncturing a boat in July as it was leaving the beach, because it was dangerously overcrowded, should be elevated too.
On Monday in Millbank Tower in down the road from Parliament, Reform UK was making its own pitch to highlight the issue. Nigel Farage said migrants arriving in small boats will be detained in military bases before being deported.
In the year to March 2025, 99 per cent of migrants from Sudan were granted asylum, according to Government figures. The figure for Syria was 98 per cent, and 86 per cent from Eritrea. Only 30 per cent of migrants from Iraq were allowed to remain and 19 per cent from Vietnam.
The Reform leader claimed people were still arriving because they knew they had a “99 per cent chance of staying”. He said that the only effective solution would be to turn people away when they arrived “like Australia did”.
In 2013 Australia reintroduced so-called turnbacks at sea; boats were prevented from reaching the shore, prompting a dramatic reduction in arrivals. In 2022, the Conservatives dropped plans to return boats to France, after the Royal Navy refused to implement them.
“Once people know it is not a free trip into the UK, they will stop coming and they will stop coming within a fortnight,” Farage argued, adding he no longer has any patience for asylum seekers being returned to unsafe countries.
“If you come from Afghanistan, you go back to Afghanistan. End of this idea we can’t send people to certain countries,” he added.
Many voters may gulp at the idea Britain is closed to genuine asylum seekers. Britain has a proud tradition helping those in genuine need.
But on the wider point, Starmer is being outflanked by Farage. The numbers are simply too high and not falling fast enough.
It’s a truism that is often repeated by MPs that “You can’t out-Reform Reform” on immigration, but Starmer can afford to be as tough as he likes on so-called illegal migration.
Labour strategists should be worried about the protests outside the four-star Britannia International hotel in Canary Wharf in London on Sunday after asylum seekers were housed there. But not because the demonstration eventually turned to violence after being hijacked by masked thugs.
Instead, they should dwell on why women wearing pink are now taking up the cause – mothers who say they are concerned about threats they believe asylum seekers could pose.
If, as looks currently likely, the next election becomes a presidential-style battle between Starmer and Farage, then on migration the Reform leader will have a simpler story to tell.
Smashing the gangs is a laudable aim, but it’s only half the issue. Deterring migrants is the only solution – and Starmer had better get on with it while he still has time.