Keir Starmer has been prime minister for almost 10 months, but has chosen now—just two days before highly anticipated local elections in which his Labour party is expected to take a beating from Nigel Farage’s Reform—to announce fresh ‘crackdowns’ on illegal migration.
Not that many voters are likely to take heed, given the news that the number of small boat crossings has passed 10,000 in 2025—that is, under the Labour government’s watch—at the earliest point of the year since records began. And that’s a tough job, given the fumblings of previous Tory administrations.
New measures to distract from this news include a plan to bar foreign nationals convicted of sex offenses from claiming asylum. Critical readers might ask why this was not already the case. Of course, if lax border controls continue, these criminal migrants will likely be able to live and work under the radar anyway.
To make matters worse, Home Office officials have admitted to The Times that the law change would not stop sex offender migrants from using the European Convention on Human Rights—favoured by standard criminals and terrorists alike—to block their removal from the UK. Starmer has insisted that Britain will “never” withdraw from the convention under his watch.
In light of this, Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp dismissed the proposal as “a piece of desperate pre-election performance.”
It is, however, aimed not at the Tories but at Reform—or, as one legacy media agency this week termed it, Britain’s “hard-right upstarts.”
Reform earlier this month released its own, far more comprehensive migrant plan, which would include appointing a new ‘Deportations Minister.’ Farage’s party is polling well and is predicted to score big gains in this week’s local elections.
Journalist Harriet Sergeant jibed that voters need only to wait until after the May 1st elections for Labour’s “new enthusiasm for deporting asylum seekers” to “fade away.”
