Small boats could be the issue that swings the next election. Photographs of new arrivals being shuttled from beaches to free hotels is a potent symbol of a government in chaos. A country and its borders are the same thing. If the borders cease to exist, so does the country. Voters grasp this instinctively but the collective mind of parliament has failed to realise it for years. Rishi’s crackdown represents a great opportunity for him and a moral crisis for Labour. Sir Keir Starmer couldn’t find a consistent line at PMQs but he succeeded in exposing the scale of the problem.
Last year, he said, 18,000 newcomers were deemed ineligible for asylum. ‘How many have actually been returned?’ The Labour benches reverberated with finger-wagging murmurs. ‘Ah, mm, yes, good point.’ Rishi answered a different question and said that the numbers deported had doubled since last year. He added that the cops in Dover had congratulated him for passing new laws that led to 397 extra arrests. (A strange figure. Where did that come from?)
Sir Keir returned to his point. Of last year’s 18,000 failed claimants, he said, only 21 were deported. More crowing and tutting from Labour. Sir Keir was doing well. He moaned that most of the ineligible claimants were still ‘sitting in hotels.’ Then he put Rishi on the spot. The PM aims to reduce the number of boats to zero. So when will that goal be reached? Rishi ducked the question and invited Sir Keir to support his new laws. And he accused the Labour leader of condemning all immigration rules as ‘racist.’ At this point, Sir Keir sensed trouble and he began to exaggerate and to tell outright falsehoods. First he claimed that he opposes anti-immigration rules because ‘they don’t work’. And, as often happens when Sir Keir makes a speech, his eyes misted over and he recalled the golden age when he ran the Crown Prosecution Service and criminals quaked before the authority of the law. ‘When I was in charge of prosecutions I extradited countless rapists,’ he declared. And he boasted that his conviction rate for people-traffickers was twice the current level. Then he claimed, rather weirdly, that Labour has a magical plan to ‘smash the gangs’, and he dared Rishi to put it into action, (although he didn’t reveal how his wonder-cure might work.) Then came Sir Keir’s big fib. ‘Nobody on this side of the house wants open borders,’ he said. And most of his MPs share that ambition. Making up stuff is likely to backfire on him massively. Rishi took full advantage and heckled Sir Keir with saloon-bar rhetoric. ‘He’s just another leftie lawyer standing in our way.’ Banter like that will work wonders for Rishi if he can keep it up.
The SNP’s Stephen Flynn said the government was ‘a complete and utter disgrace’ for claiming that 100 million asylum-seekers might arrive here. The figure came from the UN, said Rishi, not from us. Flynn ignored this and accused Rishi of emulating the policies of Enoch Powell. Someone should tell Flynn that the PM’s family are Asian.
Labour backbencher, Imran Hussain, joined in the howls of execration and called Rishi’s new policy a ‘far-right, anti-refugee’ bill. Instead of making arguments, the opposition are just throwing insults. That’s all they’ve got. And the more abusive they become, the better things will get for Rishi. This is going to get ugly.
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