Why small boats are a big election issue

Rishi Sunak started the year with a speech announcing his five priorities. That was quickly followed by Keir Starmer, who sought to outbid him with five missions of his own. The Labour aim was to show more ambition: whereas the Prime Minister just wanted to get the ‘economy growing’, Starmer promised the fastest growth in the G7. This tactic has not had much resonance outside Westminster: a poll for The Spectator found that voters struggled to identify whose pledge was whose. There was, however, one exception: Sunak’s promise to ‘stop small boats’.

It’s one of the few issues on which voters see a real distinction between the two parties and what they would do. Conservative strategists believe that most voters are on their side. Internal polling shows that halting illegal Channel crossings is one of the most important issues for those who are undecided at the next election, meaning Sunak cannot rebuild enough of the 2019 voter coalition without showing progress on the problem.

In a bid to do just this, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, unveiled new legislation this week that will block anyone who enters the country illegally from claiming asylum, and dared Labour to criticise the morality of the scheme. Sensing a trap, Labour instead criticised the scheme’s practicality.

The problem for Sunak is that Starmer has a point. While most of the Prime Minister’s pledges are easily achievable, it will be much harder to ‘stop the boats’. The Home Secretary has written to MPs saying her legislation has ‘more than a 50 per cent chance’ of being incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). So it may yet be struck down by Strasbourg.

Ministers insist publicly that the bill does not contradict our international obligations but it does at least push at those obligations’ limits.