The biggest problem with home secretary Yvette Cooper’s plan to stop the boats is that it sounds unconvincing. One in, one out... how does that help? Especially when it is more like 17 in, one out. What kind of deterrent is that?
But it is the start of a plan to tackle Britain’s migration crisis – Home Office figures indicate that last Wednesday, almost 900 people arrived in boats in one day, bringing the total for 2025 to more than 25,000 – and it’s one that could possibly work. It is, genuinely, the only policy that any government, Labour or Conservative, has devised so far that has a chance of doing so.
