The one way Labour can end the era of mass migration

Fresh from heralding the arrest of a Turkish suspected rubber dinghy salesman last month, Keir Starmer’s government is today touting a new advance in its quest to ‘smash the gangs’. At the apparent behest of the Prime Minister, the German government has committed to changing its law to make facilitating people-smuggling a clear criminal offence. This should allow German police to raid warehouses full of dinghies and other equipment later used to help migrants set off to cross the English Channel. According to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper the agreement is ‘ground-breaking’.

From the hoo-ha around this modest measure we may discern that Labour is for now sticking to its single-track approach to reducing the flow of small boats bringing illegal immigrants to our shores: only measures against those making money from moving people are being advanced while nothing meaningful is being done to deter the migrants themselves.

Yet just today, border security minister Angela Eagle has come close to admitting the approach won’t work, characterising the initiatives against the people smugglers as ‘whack-a-mole’, ie whenever they are suppressed in one place, they will just pop up in another.