Lucy Powell said the quiet bit out loud this morning as she all but admitted that Labour has given up – if, indeed, it was ever really trying – on stopping the boats.
The Education Secretary was grilled over two incidents this week in which migrant dinghies managed to reach the Kent coast without being intercepted by Border Force. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has now ordered an ‘urgent review’ into the farcical breaches. But asked about the fiasco on Radio 4’s Today programme, Powell nonchalantly told Nick Robinson: ‘You can’t stop everything all of the time.’ How reassuring.
She then carried on: ‘Of course, it’s a concern. That’s why the Home Secretary has demanded and ordered this urgent review because this is not what we want to see. This is not acceptable.’
The intervention comes during another miserable week for the government in the Channel. Some 1,200 migrants are reported to have crossed since Monday, while the two uncontrolled landings were the first officially recorded since September last year. Yet don’t expect Labour conference this weekend to dwell too long on the small matter of who is getting into Britain – or how. If it were up to membership Mr S suspects there would be a non-stop taxpayer funded ferry shipping fighting age males straight over from Calais.
Responding to Powell, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp blasted: ‘Labour have admitted they will never stop the boats. Keir Starmer’s pledge to smash the gangs was always a farce, and open-borders Burnham has learnt absolutely nothing from his predecessor. The only way to stop the crossings is to deport all illegal immigrants on arrival, and only the Conservatives have a plan to do that.’
Nigel Farage said: ‘Over 1,200 illegal migrants crossed the Channel since Monday. Multiple boats even arrived undetected. It’s insane! Labour have totally lost control of our borders. Reform will put the Royal Navy in the Channel and return every illegal to France.’
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