Let’s assume Sir Keir Starmer wishes to win the next election. Let’s likewise assume he has no desire to be replaced as Prime Minister in the next year approximately by Wes Streeting or Angela Rayner or anyone else.

He’s a politician, after all, and politicians relish power - Starmer more than the majority of, I would think. I likewise suggest that he’s at least averagely intelligent, and should have the ability to weigh up the opportunities of any policy prospering.
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After the battles, compromises and embarrassments involved in achieving high workplace, Starmer has no intent of tossing all of it away. Why, then, does he reveal every indication of doing so?

On the single problem that may matter most to a bulk of citizens, he is speeding towards particular disaster, while denying himself any prospect of an escape route. I suggest the boats stumbling upon the Channel.

Varieties of migrants doing the 21-mile journey are up by 42 per cent on the same period in 2015. An analysis by The Times, utilizing comparable modelling as Border Force, predicts that 50,000 individuals will cross the Channel in small boats in 2025. That would be a yearly record - and a stonking debacle for Sir Keir.

Peering into his mind, I reckon there are 2 main possible descriptions for his behaviour. One is that he is deluding himself. He truly believes numbers will boil down once the steps he has taken start to work.

If Starmer still believes that his policies - tossing numerous millions at the French authorities, improving intelligence and using boosted law enforcement powers - will reduce the numbers, that truly is the accomplishment of hope over experience. The other possibility is that he is already beginning poorly to understand that his stratagems won’t bear much, if any, fruit. So he and the Government have decided to pull the wool over our eyes. A fatal approach.

There have been two such examples in recent days. Having said in an online post on Monday that he felt ‘upset’ about the numbers crossing the Channel (how does he believe the rest of us feel !?) the PM made a slippery claim.

Sir Keir Starmer now has nothing powerful in his locker, Stephen Glover writes

Only 2,240 small-boat migrants were sent home in the 12 months to March, 3 percent less than in the previous year

He boasted that ‘practically 30,000 people’ had actually been eliminated from the UK by this Government. Sounds excellent. But in truth this figure refers to all kinds of migrants who have no right to be in our country. Only 2,240 small-boat migrants were sent home in the 12 months to March, 3 per cent fewer than in the previous year.

A lie? Good God no! We should not implicate Labour prime ministers, far less Sir Keir Starmer KCB, PC, KC, MP, of telling purposeful fibs. Shall we opt for an analytical deception?

The other instance of the Government not being totally directly was the Home Office’s claim previously today that there have been more migrants this year because of pleasant weather. These are called ‘red days’, when the sea is calm.

But an analysis by my coworker David Barrett in the other day’s Mail reveals that in temperate May last year there were 21 ‘red days’ but just 2,765 arrivals, about 1,000 fewer than last month. In mild June 2024 there were 20 ‘red days’, though just 3,007 migrants were recorded crossing the Channel.

The most probable description is that last May and June the Government’s strategy to send prohibited migrants to Rwanda had lastly cleared consistent judicial blockage. Some, at least, were deterred from crossing the Channel for worry of being loaded off to the central African country.

The Rwanda scheme was far from perfect - it was pricey, and liable to legal difficulty since the nation has an authoritarian federal government - but at least it had some possibility of discouraging migrants. The inbound Labour Government discarded its only possible ways of suppressing the boats.

Good for Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who in a speech tomorrow will undertake to resurrect a strategy noticeably similar to the Rwandan one.

Starmer now has nothing formidable in his locker. Literally absolutely nothing. He can provide further millions to the French government but it won’t make much, if any, distinction. French police will still loll around on beaches, thinking of the sand castles they made as children, as they see migrant boats setting off for Dover.

The reality is that the French will never strain themselves due to the fact that every migrant who leaves their shores is one less migrant for them to fret about. It is ignorant to envision that they are ever going to be zealous on our behalf.

STEPHEN GLOVER: Keir Starmer is a soft guy who can not understand the true evil Britain is facing

Nor will Sir Keir’s concept of improving intelligence and law enforcement be decisive. When it comes to Labour’s reported objective to play with Article 8 of the Human Rights Act so as to prevent bogus asylum claims, that is welcome, but even if it ends up being law it is unlikely to have much impact on overall numbers.

Are the PM and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper beginning to stress as they understand they do not have a single policy most likely to satisfy their guarantee of ‘smashing the gangs’? If they aren’t desperate, they jolly well need to be.

Three weeks earlier, Sir Keir was embarrassed after he had praised talks over Rwanda-style ‘return centers’ only minutes before his Albanian counterpart, standing a few feet away, dismissed any cooperation.

Maybe the Government will encourage the Kosovans or the to set up some sort of plan. But if it does, it will take months, if not years, and individuals will question why Sir Keir cancelled a plan that he is at least partially attempting to revive.

I’ve no particular wish to throw Starmer a lifeline but, as I’ve recommended before, there’s one possible course out of the hole he has dug for himself - though it would take huge determination and nerve for him to take it.

There are many unoccupied British islands off our coast and additional afield. Pick one of them. Create a camp comparable to those on the Isle of Man that housed alien internees throughout the War. Build numerous huts - rather than putting up less tough camping tents, as ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe has actually proposed.

Recruit medical professionals and authorities to assess claims more rapidly than occurs at present - and then return most migrants to where they originated from. The cost of setting up such a camp would be a portion of the ₤ 4.3 billion invested in 2015 on housing migrants and asylum hunters.

Can anyone inform me why not? Few migrants would elegant kicking their heels for months in a camp, however humane, so it would be a marvellous deterrent. Cross the Channel, and you will be our visitor - on a possibly windy island instead of in a four-star hotel.

Granted, in order to stave off vexatious legal obstacles we ’d most likely have to derogate from the European Court of Human Rights, which would be a step too far for our careful Prime Minister.

But he doesn’t have a much better idea. In fact, he hasn’t got any ideas at all that are accountable to stem the growing numbers of people streaming throughout the English Channel.

Things can just get worse - and as they do Labour will sink ever lower in public esteem. Does Sir Keir Starmer truly wish to be the signatory of his own political death warrant?

RwandaAngela RaynerLabourWes Streeting