Why Starmer can’t stop the boats

It is safe to say that Keir Starmer’s ‘smash the gangs’ strategy for tackling the small-boats crisis is not going according to plan.

Since Labour came to office, the number of migrants who have crossed the English Channel on small boats has surpassed 50,000. No British government has overseen as many illegal Channel crossings in such a short period of time. Home Office data show that 50,271 small-boat migrants arrived between 5 July 2024 – the day after Labour’s election victory – and this Tuesday. To put this into perspective, between 5 July 2023 and 11 August 2024, when the Conservatives were in power, there were 36,346 illegal Channel crossings.

There are many reasons why Labour has failed so catastrophically to stop the boats. One of the first things Starmer did as prime minister was declare the Rwanda deportation scheme – established under the last Conservative government – as ‘dead and buried’. Of course, no illegal migrants had yet been deported to Rwanda, meaning it’s impossible to know how effective a deterrent it could have been. But Starmer’s decision to kill the scheme so quickly gave the impression he was a pushover on illegal immigration. Subsequent events have only reinforced this impression.

Then we have Starmer’s current strategy. Even with international co-operation between security agencies, ‘smashing the gangs’ is a tall order. These criminal enterprises are profit hungry, sophisticated and well organised. They are not run by mugs. Their connections – like drug traffickers and money launderers – span countries and continents.

None of what Starmer has proposed is credible. Labour has increased funding for the National Crime Agency, but this hasn’t been enough. The risible ‘one-in, one-out’ deal with France shows no signs of succeeding either. It only envisages sending back a tiny number of illegal migrants to France and is heavily weighted towards French interests.

The fact is that international agreements are rarely worth the paper they are written on when it comes to illegal immigration. Only countries that enforce their own borders, regardless of the decrees of unelected courts or the objections of foreign governments, can succeed.

Yet instead of securing the border, successive British governments have rolled out a red carpet from Dover to Calais. Illegal immigrants get free accommodation (sometimes at four-star hotels), free healthcare and a relatively assured passage to permanent residency in a prosperous, democratic country. We have created El Dorado for illegal migrants. This is a profound moral failing, as it favours young men who can afford to jump the queue, and are prepared to make a perilous, risky journey across the Channel, over women and children in imminent danger and distress.

Nor has Starmer done anything to remove the various legal impediments that, for years, have stripped the UK of sovereignty over its borders. As it stands, the European Convention on Human Rights holds too much sway. And if we are ever to have an effective deportation regime, we must abandon the 1951 Refugee Convention. These international courts and treaties have lost all contact with their original purpose of protecting those fleeing war or persecution. In practice, even convicted criminals are routinely granted the right to remain in Britain indefinitely.

As well as liberating ourselves from international laws, we need to start enforcing our own laws. There needs to be far more prosecutions brought against those involved in the illegal-immigration complex. This includes participants in the people-smuggling industry, employers in the grey economy who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and unscrupulous landlords who house them in overcrowded properties. And these prosecutions, if successful at trial, should be followed by lengthy prison terms.

Sadly, we are in danger of wasting our breath here. After all, Starmer is arguably the biggest problem of all. He is as enamoured of international courts as he is contemptuous of the nation state. As a technocrat, all of his instincts align with the outlook and laws that have allowed this problem to spiral out of control. We could be in for a long four years.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.