Is Reform serious about stopping the boats?

On no issue are Britain’s established political parties so compromised as on efforts to stop illegal immigrants gatecrashing our borders via the English Channel.

For half a decade the Tories told us they would stop the crossings and yet the volumes of arrivals kept increasing. Rishi Sunak has just declared that the biggest regret of his premiership is not that he failed to ‘stop the boats’ but that he promised to do so in the first place, showing that his reverse electoral Midas touch is very much intact.

Since July, Labour has been peddling a different three-word promise, ‘smash the gangs’. Yet so far the gangs have remained resolutely unsmashed – illegal arrivals via the Channel are at record levels.

Given the intensity of public anger about the chronic failings of the old duopoly, it is entirely unsurprising that Reform is focusing on the need to stop illegal immigration.