Of course, there’s nothing wrong with trying to shut down specific smuggling operations. But unless we also tackle the “pull factors” — namely, the things that make Britain so attractive as a destination — then, in one form or another, the push will continue.

Making Britain less desirable would mean getting asylum seekers out of hotels and into purpose-built detention centres. Asylum criteria could be tightened to get acceptance rates down to continental levels. In the longer term, Starmer could even try where Tony Blair failed and introduce ID cards, though this has its own downsides. Combined with a crackdown on rogue businesses and landlords, this would make it much harder for migrants to disappear into black-market employment and slum accommodation. Above all, deportation needs to become the norm for everyone who shouldn’t be in this country.

The trouble for Starmer is that these measures would be unpopular with his Labour colleagues. He’s already walking a tightrope between party unrest on one side and losing Labour voters to Reform UK on the other.

A further test comes later this week, when he goes to a meeting of the European Political Community. The British are especially keen to talk to the Italians because of their success in cutting illegal immigration levels by 60%. However, the location for these talks (Viktor Orbán’s Hungary), the key participant (Italy’s populist PM, Giorgia Meloni), and the main topic of conversation (emulating her policies) won’t go down well with the Labour Left. The same goes for Starmer’s core constituency of immigration-friendly centrist dads.

Indeed, as the EU moves further and further to the Right on this issue, dangerously high levels of cognitive dissonance are building among British Remainers. Starmer doesn’t want to be the one who ignites that particular powder keg, which is why he has framed his approach as a crackdown on the people smugglers and not the actual people.

And yet the uncomfortable truth is that Meloni has achieved progress by making her country less welcoming. There has been an effort to speed up deportations, a scheme for processing asylum claims offshore in Albania and, most controversially, a crackdown on charities picking-up migrants in the Mediterranean.

For his part, Starmer will present himself as a man of action on this issue. But unless he faces up to the hardest decisions, the pretence won’t last.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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