Scratch the surface and Labour’s apparent get-tough approach to a deepening crisis is full of holes.
The Labour leader opposed the Rwanda deportation scheme calling it a ‘gimmick’ (Image: Getty)
In many ways you have to admire the brass neck of Labour. After a cataclysmic 15 months in which this country has turned – and at some points even burned – in response to inertia up pops Shabana Mahmood to utter words so blindingly obvious it defies belief.
With a straight face the recently installed Home Secretary – the 12th in the past 20 years no less – said the public has a “very simple expectation…(they) rightly expect their government will be able to determine who enters their country, and who must leave. Today, that is not the case. And the failure to bring order to our borders is eroding trust not just in us as political leaders… but in the credibility of the state itself.”
Good grief.
Few would disagree with her words, but they would hold significantly more weight if Labour meant it or had any intention of backing them up with action.
It is true the small boats crisis is not an emergency of this government’s making but it has done nothing to address it.
In fact, its flip-flopping has only worsened what now amounts to a national security nightmare.
Shameless Labour campaigned on a manifesto pledge to scrap the Conservative’s Rwanda deportation scheme and, in its very first act after winning the general election, Sir Keir Starmer declared the “gimmick” “dead and buried”.
Instead, he promised a more effective approach to tackling illegal immigration.
While we wait for that, public anger has reached boiling point as those arriving here with no legitimate reason receive a warm welcome while MPs have the audacity to pontificate about the urgent need to secure our borders.
Is it any wonder Labour is haemorrhaging support and an increasingly isolated and desperate prime minister is reduced to labelling Nigel Farage’s plans to scrap indefinite leave to remain as “racist” and “immoral”?
Reform UK policy could effectively see hundreds of thousands of people here legally being thrown out the front door.
Shabana Mahmood talks tough but Labour is short on action (Image: Getty)
So far this year more than 35,000 have arrived on small boats from France. And don’t forget these are the ones the authorities know about.
On Ms Mahmood’s first day in the job more than 1,000 migrants crossed the Channel, giving you some idea of how much attention has been paid – by migrants casting off, the crime gangs facilitating their passage across the water, and the laissez-faire French who shrug their shoulders while watching them set sail, to the PM’s lame attempt to stop the boats.
Starmer’s latest masterstroke? A “one in one out policy”.
For each person returned to France, the UK will accept someone with a case for protection as a refugee who has not attempted to cross the Channel.
The Rwanda scheme became a key general election battleground but was derailed by Labour and the army of human rights activists and lawyers the party is so betrothed to.
Not one single flight took off, which makes Labour’s apparent get-tough position objectionable, dishonest, and pathetic.
Earlier this year Defence Secretary John Healey let slip what we have all known for years, admitting Britain had “lost control” of her borders. At least he had the gumption to admit as much.
It is abundantly clear a topic once considered taboo now tops the list of public concerns.
Ms Mahmood’s claim the UK is playing a leading international role in tackling organised immigration crime is likely to not only raise eyebrows, but laughter, because as she rightly says “taking down the vile people-smuggling gangs who put the value of human lives behind their own profits” requires firm action, not warm words.
Since 2018 more than 160,000 illegal immigrants (many of whom make a claim for asylum once they arrive) have attempted to enter the UK after crossing the Channel in small boats.
Voters have every right – and expectation – for Britain’s borders to be watertight.
But while they resemble a colander millions, like it or not, will continue to gravitate towards Nigel Farage and Reform’s scorched earth policy, which seeks to replace talk with endeavour and close the door firmly shut once and for all.
