Will Rishi Sunak ever deliver on his ‘stop the boats’ pledge?

When Rishi Sunak replaced Liz Truss in Downing Street last autumn, fundamentalism gave way to incrementalism. So far, the results have been suitably unspectacular: a nudging down of the inflation number more slowly than anyone envisaged; the bare avoidance of outright recession; debt at best stuck as a share of GDP; NHS waiting times that are only very slightly less appalling than they were.

According to new polling from Ipsos UK, the electorate is so far unimpressed with these baby steps and generally believes Labour could do a better job. 

Today Sunak travelled to Dover to give us an update on the last of his five key pledges – to ‘stop the boats’. In short, he hasn’t. Some 7,610 people arrived in the UK illegally via small boat in the first five months of the year – and these are not even the peak months for the people trafficking trade.

But for a prime minister once again dressed like Succession‘s Kendall Roy at a corporate away day – dark trousers, open-necked white shirt, no jacket – this amounted to something to work with given that last year’s January to end-of-May figure was 9,575.