February 3, 2025 - 7:00am

Home Office ministers have in recent days introduced a new Border Security, Asylum, and Immigration Bill, claiming it will address the small boats crisis.

The details of the legislation reveal that the Government is rolling back significant portions of the Illegal Migration Act, a Conservative law passed in 2023 which stipulated that nearly all individuals entering the country illegally would be ineligible for settled status and, ultimately, citizenship. Labour is now abolishing laws requiring illegal migrants to undergo scientific age verification checks — including the clause stating they are to be treated as adults if they refuse.

Cursed by a common language, British politics follow North American trends almost inexorably. As William Atkinson has noted for ConservativeHome, “politics is tracking its American equivalent at a delay of four years or so: for Trump in 2016 take Boris Johnson in 2019, for Biden in 2020 take Starmer in 2024.”

It’s unfortunate, as our politicians would gain far more by studying the events of similarly sized nations with similarly sized economies facing similar problems than a continental superpower with a vast wealth of natural resources. There is more of Britain in a page of Houellebecq than in a series of The West Wing.

Attitudes toward migration across Europe are increasingly firming. Two years ago, Aris Roussinos noted that Britain was emerging as a liberal exception, and Europe’s drift Rightwards on migration has only increased since then.

In reaction to a knife attack by a Syrian migrant in Solingen last summer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz unveiled plans to speed up deportations and reduce benefits for certain asylum seekers. Meanwhile, in France, former prime minister Michel Barnier urged a revision of EU deportation policies to fast-track expulsions. After Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni initiated the creation of new detention centers in Albania, 15 other EU countries have asked the European Commission to explore similar approaches.

But the Washington-on-Thames tendency will always win out. Hence, Keir Starmer’s immigration policy seems to owe more to Joe Biden’s disastrous liberalisation efforts than the attempts of moderate centrist Europeans such as Donald Tusk to re-establish control. While Starmer promised to reduce migration by “smashing the gangs”, the reality of his plan is far more mundane — and far more managerialist.

Labour’s criticism of Tory immigration failures was always on more solid ground when it talked about process, rather than principle. Starmer’s “Ming vase” strategy meant that talk about reducing the asylum backlog and cost of migrant hotels was preferred to discussions about absolute numbers, and this has continued in government.

One of Labour’s first acts in office was to fast-track 90,000 migrants planned for deportation to Rwanda to claim asylum in the UK. The Refugee Council estimated that 70% — around 60,000 — would be granted asylum. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner also scrapped plans by her predecessor Michael Gove to introduce a “UK connection test” to limit social housing to those resident for at least 10 years, largely to reduce the cost of migrant hotels. Likewise, Labour’s new plans are aimed at speeding up processing — focusing on the target of reducing the backlog, rather than finding genuine claims. Prioritising short-term cost-cutting over long-term strategy is a huge mistake.

Somewhere between a quarter and a third of all illegal migrants in Europe already reside in Britain. When European attitudes are hardening, Labour’s softening of powers means the UK will become not only the most desirable option, given its generous treatment of illegal arrivals, but the easiest as well. When combined with a path to citizenship, increased migration flows are inevitable. Far from merely copying Biden’s methods, Starmer seems set on copying his fate, too: a running crisis at the border fuelling an increasingly incensed electorate. A British Trump may not be far behind.