Labour came into office claiming they would smash the gangs – this claim now lies in tatters, writes Chris Philp

It’s not a trick question or a riddle. Yet Pat McFadden, the Prime Minister’s right hand man, the fixer, the man Starmer trusts to steady the ship, failed to answer this live on LBC, dodging the question three times.

We now have a government that won’t even say if the boats will stop, because it knows they won’t.

Starmer’s Britain is becoming the soft underbelly of Europe where the boats land, the traffickers profit, and the taxpayer picks up the tab.

We’ve already passed 20,000 illegal Channel crossings in 2025 – this is the worst year on record so far for small boat crossings. And if we don’t stop this spiral now, it won’t just be a record year for crossings.

It’ll be the year Britain stopped deciding who comes and who stays.

McFadden’s silence was revealing. It’s the sound of a government that’s out of ideas.

Labour came into office arrogantly claiming that they would smash the gangs – this claim now lies in tatters. Labour know the numbers won’t go down, they’ve already accepted failure, and that failure now sits at the heart of government.

Upon entering Downing Street, Starmer detonated the entire legal framework keeping the border system afloat.

The Illegal Migration Act 2023, which made removal mandatory for those entering the UK illegally, was scrapped before it could even be enforced. Labour repealed the legal duty to remove illegal arrivals, reopened the path to British citizenship for those who arrived unlawfully, and even weakened age assessment powers, meaning adults pretending to be children can now simply refuse tests and still be treated as minors. The Safety of Rwanda Act 2024 has also been torn up. Labour are not just scrapping the Rwanda plan, they’ve shredded the legal framework that made removals possible.

All of this is in black and white in Labour’s own Border Surrender Bill, which dismantles border security, makes asylum chaos worse, and gives illegal migrants the legal rights of those who followed the rules. Now, Britain’s asylum system is one giant invitation letter to anyone willing to climb into a dinghy, which is precisely why the boats keep coming.

Just 5% of those who have arrived since the election have been removed.

Labour is allowing 95% of illegal immigrants crossing the channel to stay, many in taxpayer-funded hotels.

If almost everyone who arrives is housed, fed, and allowed to stay, why wouldn’t the boats keep coming? The incentives are right there in plain sight.

Worse still, Labour has taken a cleaver to the very system meant to stop this.

At the Spending Review, Labour quietly took a wrecking ball to the Home Office budget. Over the next five years, real-terms growth has been slashed by 2.2%. On top of this real terms cut, their entire budget is built on an assumption that the hotels magically empty themselves.

Yet there are more migrants in asylum hotels today than a year ago when Labour took office, and they still have no plan for where these people will go. The Government’s own figures show they still plan to spend £2.5 billion a year in 2028/29 on asylum seekers.

We are a country that cannot even decide who comes in or who gets to stay. That decision rests with traffickers in Calais, activists in the courts, and Strasbourg judges. Labour has handed over the keys, rolled out the red carpet, and surrendered our borders. It’s being bankrolled by the British taxpayer.

And we all know exactly why. Keir Starmer doesn’t believe in deterrence or even in borders — he believes they’re racist. That’s his view.

As a radical lawyer, he openly declared that a “racist undercurrent permeates all immigration law.” That was his starting point, and it still shapes the Labour Party today. So, it’s no wonder he’s spent his first year in power ripping out every policy he could find.

Even his own experts are warning him. The independent Migration Advisory Committee has said that Labour’s plan to reduce migration by training domestic workers won’t work on its own. If Starmer wants serious reductions, he needs serious controls. But he won’t do it, because deep down, he doesn’t have the will to reduce immigration.

To them, deterrence is cruelty and borders are bigotry. So, they scrap the laws, gut the budgets, and let the boats keep coming. But ask the British public, those facing record immigration while their wages stagnate, rents soar, and local services buckle, whether we can carry on like this. The answer is obvious.

The Conservatives have built a blueprint grounded in enforcement. Our Deportation Bill has set out a clear line. Illegal entry leads to swift removal. We’ll rewrite the rules where they’ve failed, suspend human rights laws that block removals, and stop people gaming the system.

We’ll legislate to bring migration under control, with binding caps. We’ll raise the bar for partner visas, penalise countries that refuse to cooperate, and clear out foreign criminals who should never have been here in the first place. And if delivering that requires us to leave the ECHR, we won’t hesitate. That groundwork is already under way through our Lawfare Commission.

This is about being willing to do what needs to be done, no matter how difficult, no matter the noise.

Only the Conservatives have the clarity, the backbone, and the plan to end the chaos and restore control.

Chris Philp is Shadow Home Secretary and Conservative MP for Croydon South.

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