Rishi Sunak has led voters to believe that his new Illegal Migration Act will mean no illegal migrants will be allowed to stay.
According to the Prime Minister, this in turn will break the business model of people traffickers, by rendering it pointless for any migrant to pay big sums for a place in one of their dinghies. And thus will he be able to ‘stop the boats’.
Mr Sunak seemed to take a partial step back from this bold talk earlier this week when he confessed that he might not be able to stop all the boats by the next general election given the ‘complexity’ of the issue. Now we can see why.
The latest statistics from the Home Office on immigration and asylum make clear that far from getting a grip on wholesale abuse of the asylum system by would-be economic migrants, the government is sinking ever-deeper into the mire.
The figures tell a dismal story of ongoing failure.
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