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Keir Starmer has pledged to ‘stop the chaos’ – but can he ‘stop the boats’?

Editorial: Keir Starmer has drawn on his experience as Britain’s ‘chief prosecutor’ and proposes a coordinated, sustained campaign to ‘smash’ the people smugglers. But there is, yet, no ‘plan’ for lawful, regular migration

Friday 10 May 2024 22:41 BST
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Keir Starmer is too cautious and too politically savvy to adopt Rishi Sunak’s foolishly overambitious slogan
Keir Starmer is too cautious and too politically savvy to adopt Rishi Sunak’s foolishly overambitious slogan (Reuters)

Can Labour “stop the boats”? Sir Keir Starmer is too cautious and too politically savvy to adopt Rishi Sunak’s foolishly overambitious slogan, and condemn himself to certain failure before he even moves into No 10.

Instead, the Labour leader pledges to “stop the chaos” in the British asylum system, by “stopping the criminal gangs”. Those pledges will also no doubt prove something of a stretch for him and for his colleagues if he does indeed become prime minister later his year. But his latest, thoughtful speech, delivered symbolically in Dover, suggests that some serious work and even imagination has gone into dealing with the problem.

It is, after all, one of the great benefits of the democratic system of government that when one party has run out of talent, energy and ideas, another one can at least try something new and reinvigorate the system. So it is now with the divided and exhausted Tory government, and its impatient Labour opposition.

Sir Keir, not for the first time, draws on his experience as Britain’s “chief prosecutor” and proposes a coordinated, sustained campaign to “smash” the people smugglers. It requires new structures, fresh leadership and more resources.

As with terrorism and illegal drugs, if all the resources of the state and international partners can be marshalled then success will follow, albeit never complete. Treating people trafficking for what it is – cross-border criminal activity that is costing lives – rather than endlessly discussing the application of the European Convention on Human Rights, is the best way to get the figures down, even if never quite pushed to zero.

Under intense political pressure to show progress, the government has done some of what Sir Keir suggests: there has been more funding, the establishment of Border Force and a small boats command, as well as coordinated action by UK and French police. Yet its approach suffered from two obvious strategic weaknesses.

First, and most obviously, is an inexplicable over-reliance on the Rwanda plan, which is obscenely expensive and at best only a modest deterrent to those already risking their lives by crossing the English Channel.

The Rwanda plan was only ever an experiment, a gimmick dreamt up by Boris Johnson and Priti Patel when they were in charge of policy, and desperate to show that they were “doing something”. For reasons that will probably have to await his memoirs, Mr Sunak has tied his premiership to this bizarre scheme; but in any case, as Sir Keir points out, the time has come to retire it.

The second weakness in current procedures, correctly identified by Labour, is the large number of people – in the tens of thousands – who are in legal limbo.

Having arrived “illegally”, on the government’s latest definition, they cannot make a claim and therefore cannot be processed, but also cannot be sent back. So they remain in hotels, awaiting an unknown fate; except that if they do discover they are liable for deportation, some at least are disappearing into the underground economy, or absconding to Ireland.

The Rwanda deterrent effect is becoming not a deterrent to making the trek to the UK, but to being caught and monitored by the authorities.

It is, in fact, a powerful incentive to completely clandestine migration of all kinds. This is hardly satisfactory for anyone concerned, including the communities in which the refugees are housed. It has gone on long enough, and a change of government offers the possibility that these backlogs – there is more than one waiting list – will at last be cleared.

A new, practical focus, then, is required, and the Labour leader has sketched out how it should work. A new, powerful Border Security Command will be established, with its head reporting directly to the home secretary and thus the cabinet.

In effect, it is a new dedicated ministry for immigration (ironically a Reform UK policy) and will be responsible for relevant activities undertaken by the police, the National Crime Agency, MI5, GCHQ, Border Force, the Crown Prosecution Service, Immigration Enforcement, the armed forces if needs be, as well as liaising with international bodies.

It bears constant repetition that irregular migration is not a solely British challenge, and it cannot be mitigated without international agreements. Only via new treaty arrangements with France, Belgium, Ireland, the EU as a legal entity, and nations are far away as Turkey and Iraq, can the movement of people be managed and controlled. Border Security Command will need to negotiate and guide those too.

While creating new job titles, rearranging government departments and passing new laws has rarely proved a panacea, in any area of policy, it is right that the new Border Security Command be granted the powers it needs to find and detain the people traffickers.

That means following the money, monitoring internet activity, tracking their contacts, recruiting informers and grinding on with all the hard work that law enforcement invariably demands. If the BBC can track down “the Scorpion”, Barzan Majeed, a man at the head of a major gang and who has trafficked thousands of people, then it should be possible for the security services to find some more, even bigger criminal bosses.

For all the convincing detail the Labour leader offered, many questions remain unanswered. For example, and of immediate concern, Sir Keir said nothing about the plight of the former Afghan special forces who are trying to get to the UK, and at risk of torture and execution in their homeland.

Labour figures such as Yvette Cooper and Sir Keir himself often talk about the need for “safe and secure routes”, ie beyond the existing, limited schemes for Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan, but there has been less revealed about how claims will be made “in country”.

Nor do we know what the policy would be if the number of perfectly valid claims for asylum in a given year far exceeds what is politically acceptable. It is an uncomfortable question, to which no British government has ever given a clear, honest and honourable answer.

Sir Keir and his colleagues will also need to find a new way of dealing with high levels of lawful migration, where people come legitimately with valid visas to contribute to society and with no wish to abuse the system. The current level of such migration, distorted by post-Brexit and pandemic effects, will soon come down from nearly 700,000 a year to around 300,000, but pushing it lower raises more difficult questions.

How will the universities stay financially viable if they lose their lucrative foreign students? What are the implications for the NHS staff plan, in a service historically reliant on skilled and unskilled migrant labour? For the hospitality, agriculture and transport sectors? And thus for the UK’s prospects for economic growth? What sort of labour does Britain need?

Sir Keir, Ms Cooper, Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting, and Bridget Phillipson have no doubt studied these challenges and privately faced up to the policy dilemmas, but thus far there’s little public word on how they will resolve them in government.

The Labour manifesto, they say, will provide the answers. But there is as yet no “plan” for lawful, regular migration, with all it implies for the labour market, public services and housing. It is not too early for Sir Keir to share his thoughts with the voters on more aspects of immigration.

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