If you judge this policy by what voters care about - outcomes - it has so far been a shambles.
Article for LBC - 27th October 2025
Starmer’s signature line - “Smash the Gangs” - was supposed to be the grown-up answer to an intractable problem.
He invoked his time as DPP, cited prosecutions of international drug networks and contrasted his seriousness with what he called the Conservatives’ “gimmicks”. It sounded forensic, measured, adult.
Then came the supposed centrepiece: Yvette Cooper’s “ground-breaking” treaty with France. Presented as practical diplomacy, cloaked in technocratic language, it promised a simple swap: anyone arriving in the UK on a small boat would be detained and sent back to France; in return, France would allow an equal number of safe, legal arrivals through a new route - except, of course, for those who had already risked the journey. One-in, one-out: tidy, humane, a reset of cross-Channel co-operation and, importantly, a public demonstration that Britain was back in control.
Only it has not worked. If you judge this policy by what voters care about - outcomes - it has so far been a shambles. The headline numbers are telling: 42 people removed to France; 23 brought to the UK under the new route. Meanwhile, nearly 60,000 people have entered the country illegally since July 2024 and arrivals this year have already exceeded last year’s total of 30,000. The arithmetic is damning. A policy that removes a handful while tens of thousands flood in might be celebrated in press releases, but it is a drop in an ocean of failure.
Worse still, the optics are grotesque. One of the 42 deported migrants has reportedly returned back to the UK - on a small boat. The jokes write themselves: a treaty touted as decisive, undone by a single repeat crossing. It exposes the fundamental fragility of a policy that relies on legal wrangling and bilateral niceties while the business model of the traffickers remains intact.
This was predictable. The problem is structural, not rhetorical. You cannot out-diplomacy or out-sloganeer a network that profits from creating the illusion of hope. What smuggling gangs need to be deterred is certainty: certainty of removal, certainty of no settlement, certainty that the attempt is futile. The Cooper/Mahmood plan failed to deliver that. Legal challenges to removals were predictable; they happened. The smugglers adapted; they always do. And the result is not just policy failure but a moral failure to be honest with the country about what effective control actually entails.
That brings us to the inconvenient truth few ministers relish stating: the domestic legal architecture, i.e., our human rights framework and the constraints imposed by the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act, materially limits the state’s ability to deter illegal crossings.
You can design treaties and carve out exceptions, but unless the law allows the state to impose swift, enforceable removals and to distinguish decisively between legitimate claimants and traffickers’ clients, the incentives will not change.
The Rwanda scheme was hated by many on the left and foundered in practice and politics. But the core lesson it attempted to teach was blunt: deterrence requires legal certainty and the credible threat of removal.
Absent reforms to the legal framework, small adjustments- bilateral agreements, enhanced co-operation, smarter border checks - will at best manage symptoms and at worst perform the illusion of action while the underlying problem grows.
We should be plain about the choices. One route is continual improvisation: new treaties, fresh press statements, rival Ministers trotting out tougher language without altering the legal levers. It is comforting to think a clever bit of diplomacy will fix a problem that thrives on desperation and cash.
The other route is harder and more politically hazardous: a frank realignment of our legal obligations where necessary; empowering Border Force and the courts to act swiftly; re-establishing real third-country removal options that create credible deterrence.
The nation deserves honesty. Voters are not asking for bravado. They just want competence. If we are to dismantle the gangs’ trade, it must remove the business incentives that make the Channel a route worth risking. That demands clear, enforceable policy changes, not press office victories.
So the question now is simple: will this Prime Minister be the one to match rhetoric with reform? Or will we suffer another cycle of promising to “smash the gangs” while legal loopholes and smugglers’ ingenuity keep the boats running? The public can see through posturing. If government is sincere about control, it must be willing to act where the law currently ties its hands. Anything less is theatre; everything more is necessary if we are to regain control of our border.
Suella
