After Rwanda: what will Labour do now?

Keir Starmer is advertising for someone to head his newly created Border Security Command. The salary is higher than his own: the person in charge of stopping the boats would earn between £140,000 and £200,000.

According to the ad, the job of patrolling the English Channel can be done remotely from any one of 12 cities, including Edinburgh and Belfast. It will require coordination with the Home Office, parts of the navy and even MI5. Never mind that this goes on already, with no discernible effect. The key requirement for the job, it would seem, is to be the fall guy, someone ready to take the blame for a policy that is certain to fail.

Rishi Sunak’s pledge to ‘stop the boats’ never stood a chance. This was resented by voters. One of the reasons he called an early election was because he had rashly promised that Rwanda deportations would start within months. The European Court of Human Rights looked likely to stop him and expose the whole policy as a legal absurdity. Starmer has dropped the Rwanda scheme, despite public support for it, but so far there is nothing of substance to replace it in deterring illegal migrants.

Given that appointing a leader for the Border Security Command won’t happen overnight, we can expect people-smugglers to take advantage of the situation. Small boat arrivals – there have been 15,000 so far this year – could double over the course of the summer. It’s estimated that a third of those whose asylum appeals fail come from countries with which Britain has no returns or extraditions agreement, so they would remain here anyway.