He's not stopping the boats, he's stopping the votes.

How Rishi Sunak is failing on his key pledge to end illegal immigration

Photo by Benjamin Elliott on Unsplash

CONQUEST’S third law of politics says that the best way of understanding the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume it is being run by a cabal of its enemies.

I think an amendment is due in respect of the Home Office, which is to assume it is being run by a cabal of enemies of the Home Secretary. Given the griping against the policies of Suella Braverman and her predecessor Priti Patel which reportedly crop up on the Home Office’s internal staff message boards this seems like a pretty safe bet.

It is in that spirit that one must interpret the setting off for Portland Harbour from Falmouth today of the re-fitted Bibby Stockholm barge. This facility, now designed to accommodate 500 young male illegal immigrants, is expected to dock in Portland by mid-week and to open just in time for peak school summer holiday season.

Its residents will be free to come and go as they please. Given that the Isle of Portland itself has no obvious town centre and is known for its rugged beauty rather than any particular “strip” of bars and restaurants, the odds are that many of the migrants will head a couple of miles up the coast to the seaside resort of Weymouth.

Most of these young men will be from countries with an imperfect record as far as female emancipation goes – and that’s putting it mildly. How they will interact with the sun-bathers of Weymouth remains to be seen. But there could be trouble ahead.

And trouble is already engulfing Rishi Sunak’s “stop the boats” policy on multiple fronts anyway. His Rwanda policy is sitting on bricks in dry dock, having been ruled unlawful by the Court of Appeal on grounds of it allegedly breaking the European Convention on Human Rights. A counter-appeal by the Government to the Supreme Court is unlikely to be concluded until December at the earliest. Even if it goes the Government’s way one can expect further appeals by pro-migrant lawyers to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, ensuring months more of delays.

The Illegal Migration Bill, which seeks to enshrine the principle that nobody who arrives in the UK illegally can claim asylum or stay here, is meanwhile subject to an interminable game of “ping pong” between the Commons and the Lords. The unelected chamber has incorporated various wrecking amendments into it and it falls to Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick to overturn them and get the legislation onto the Statute Book by the time Parliament rises for its summer recess.

Meanwhile Sunak’s claim of early June that his policies were working because crossings were 20 per cent down on 2022 has unravelled amid better weather in the Channel. The last time I looked they were only down five per cent and were closing fast on last year’s numbers.

Mrs Braverman’s core team knows that the battle to uphold the PM’s pledge is in big trouble. The term being muttered in the corridors of power is “Plan B”. This could involve setting up a processing centre on a British overseas territory such as Ascension Island and taking migrants directly to it rather than landing them in Dover. But Sunak reportedly is not ready to do anything so bold and is still pinning his faith on being able to crack the problem through normal establishment political and legal processes.

The Prime Minister doesn’t seem to realise that he is being timed-out by his pro-open borders ideological opponents. He seems doomed to go into the next general election with no demonstrable record of achievement on this totemic issue. He may hope that blaming “leftie lawyers” will cut the mustard with disenchanted Tory-leaning voters, but I highly doubt that.

Worse still, if Labour wins a majority then its own Home Office team will be under very little pressure to solve the issue either as they will be able to dismiss any Tory opposition attack as hot air, given the present Government’s miserable record of tough talk mixed with almost zero achievement.