Rishi Sunak and James Cleverly gambled on migration – and lost

Editorial: The prime minister and home secretary find themselves in the worst of all worlds: not only has their policy failed and the promise to ‘abolish’ the backlog broken, but they have been caught in an amateurish attempt to cook the books

3 January 2024 (Dave Brown)

In an interesting case of attempted nominative determinism, the home secretary, James Cleverly, chose to publish selected asylum figures before the official, complete and detailed release of the figures for 2023.

It must indeed have seemed a clever tactic. On his media round of the studios, Mr Cleverly was able to quote some partial, cherry-picked numbers to prove, supposedly, that the “legacy” backlog of asylum claims had been “abolished”, just as the prime minister had promised in December 2022.

“Every single” legacy application – no less – made before asylum laws were changed in 2022 had been processed, he stated. Of course, not long after the home secretary had completed his set of appearances and returned to the relative safety of his office, the full statistical picture emerged, and it is not fully consonant with his Cleverly-presented version. Indeed, it is rather disturbing.