No other issue divides the political class from the electorate quite like immigration. For ordinary voters, the mass migration of recent decades – both legal and illegal – is the most direct expression of their powerlessness over politics. Politicians routinely promise to slash migration numbers – and then routinely do the opposite. In a major speech earlier today, UK prime minister Keir Starmer promised a ‘clean break’ from these past failures, and to ‘finally take back control of our borders and close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics, our economy and our country’. He warned that Britain is in danger of becoming an ‘island of strangers’ unless more radical action is taken to bring down arrivals and boost integration. But does anyone, anywhere, actually believe him?

There is an undeniable shamelessness to Starmer’s intervention. As he unveiled the Labour government’s new immigration white paper, he tried to assure us this had nothing to do with his party’s bruising losses in the recent local elections. ‘People… will try to make this all about politics, about this or that strategy, targeting these voters, responding to that party’, he said, refusing to actually name the Reform UK elephant in the room. The real reason for the crackdown, he claimed, is that reducing migration ‘is what I believe in’. Migration control, he insisted, is one of Labour’s ‘core values’. Which will have come as a surprise to most of his front bench, let alone the Labour Party membership. He might as well have said: ‘We have always been at war with Eastasia.’

Starmer’s unconvincing insistence that he has ‘always’ believed in migration control is directly contradicted not only by his past statements (he ran for the Labour leadership in 2020 promising to ‘make the case for freedom of movement’), but also by his government’s current actions. Small-boats crossings have reached record highs this year, with 10,000 people having already arrived by April. The rate of illegal arrivals has jumped by 40 per cent compared with this time last year, when the Tories were still in office. Starmer is also in the process of negotiating a ‘youth mobility scheme’ with Brussels, which critics have slammed as another potential boost to migration. What’s more, the former human-rights lawyer remains committed to the UK’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights, which makes it nigh-on impossible to deport not only migrants who arrive illegally but also those who have committed serious crimes here. These are not the actions of a leader who wants to take back control of the UK’s borders.