UK Border Security Commander Martin Hewitt today stepped down, only 18 months into his tenure. His role was to reduce small-boat Channel crossings by “smashing the gangs”.  Immigrant-smuggling networks would be treated like drug cartels or terrorist organizations, with Hewitt coordinating operations. By any metric, he failed: in 2025 over 41,000 migrants crossed the Channel, the highest number since 2020. It’s unknown whether the former police chief quit of his own accord or was pushed. However, the role appears to be a poisoned chalice, beset by legal, operational and — crucially — political problems.

The Border Security Command (BSC) was a Labour manifesto commitment, replacing the Conservatives’ controversial Rwanda policy. Upon Hewitt’s appointment in September 2024, then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper insisted: “We’re not going to do this through headlines. We’re going to do it through hard work. We’re not going to just do it through gimmicks.” Yet the Command’s results were dire, despite increased operations against smuggling gangs. Meanwhile, initiatives such as disrupting criminal access to small-boat engines and dinghies smacked of the very gimmickry Cooper disavowed. Against a seemingly endless flood of migrants desperate to reach British soil, operating across non-UK jurisdictions, the BSC’s operations appeared unduly optimistic.

Hewitt was also hobbled structurally. The BSC consisted of representatives from four different bodies: Immigration Enforcement, Border Force, MI5 and the National Crime Agency. All have their own agendas, politics, priorities and culture. Given the scale of the challenge, even an experienced operator such as Hewitt would struggle to fully harness their potential.

This is even before one considers the troubled issue of liaison with the notoriously recalcitrant French authorities. Hewitt himself told MPs he was “frustrated” by French reluctance to introduce robust tactics to combat small boat departures from Calais and Dunkirk. Perhaps prophetically, he said: “I think there has previously been the view that there is one thing, or one or two things, that will provide the answer. I very firmly believe that that’s not the case.”

Then there’s the political elephant in the room, one which new personnel won’t change: the Government’s inability to grasp the nettle of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Prime Minister — unsurprisingly given his background as Director of Public Prosecutions — took a typically proceduralist view of criminal commodities, demand and supply. This is flow-chart management, not leadership: apply the right tactics, so the thinking goes, and success follows. This tin-eared approach, unsurprisingly, crumbled on protracted contact with reality. Crime turns on commodities — be they drugs, weapons or other contraband. In this case, though, the commodity is people — who, of course, know they are unlikely to be deported once they set foot on British soil.

From the perspective of law enforcement, this completely changes the dynamic: without the political will to reduce draw factors, Hewitt was expected to bail out a sinking supertanker with a teacup. Even the much-vaunted “one-in, one-out” policy has become a running joke. Starmer’s mulish adherence to the ECHR renders effective border control virtually impossible: every viable policing tactic is trumped by human rights legislation, aided by NGOs and activist lawyers.

Hewitt’s replacement is a former army officer, General Duncan Capps. He, like his previous boss, now faces the Sisyphean job of rolling Labour’s border control policy up a near-vertical slope. And as the party’s “soft Left” closes in, with Angela Rayner firing warning shots against toughening immigration measures, it seems likely the gradient will become even steeper. The gangs will never be “smashed”, only bled dry by a lack of customers. And, until the Government addresses pull factors and demand, the benighted Border Security Commander — however competent — is doomed to fail.