Labour is inching towards the right small boats policy

Ignore the noise: The right compromises are being made and the wrong ones are being avoided.

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

The meaning of Labour's asylum policy is not in the words. It's in the gaps between them. It's in what Keir Starmer does not say, rather than what he does. And underneath all that there's a very old game being played, a balancing act between principle and necessity, that is far more nuanced than either its supporters or its detractors give it credit for.

This morning it's all hardline, tough, no-nonsense, manly rar rhetoric. Big men in high vis jackets storming across the seas to prevent new arrivals. Starmer's intervention on small boats policy is full of concepts grounded in policing, counter-terrorism and international intelligence gathering: A new border security commander post, buttressed by special investigators and intelligence agents, deploying extended stop-and-search powers, using crime prevention orders and extended seizure warrant powers. Even the words sound clipped and barked, as if they're being issued from a military control room.

Big tough ideas for a big tough world. The message is very clear: if you're worried about the small boat arrivals, you can put your trust in Labour.

This leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. The small boats question is fundamentally about compassion and human decency: the treatment of the most vulnerable people on earth. A security solution seems like the complete abdication of a moral view - an embrace of the populist right narrative. The fact it is being sold alongside a hard-right former Conservative makes it even worse. Natalie Elphicke defected from the Conservatives this week, prompting much soul-searching in Labour. Her presence seems to put a stamp of ethical condemnation on what is being presented. 

But the key to Labour's policy is not in the words Starmer used. It's in the ones he didn't. And that is not some kind of hopeful interpretation. It is the clear consequence of the plan itself.

After weeks of rumours that Labour would keep the Rwanda policy in place, Starmer is utterly emphatic that he will scrap it. “Let me spell it out again," he will say, "a scheme that will only remove one per cent of small boat crossings a year can not, and never will be, an effective deterrent." Some £75 million of the money earmarked for the scheme will be used to fund new specialist officers to tackle people-smuggling.

But actually Starmer’s policy goes further than that. Labour will tear up Tory asylum policy more broadly. Target number one is the Illegal Migration Act - one of Suella Braverman's little monstrosities. This legislation effectively closed down the British asylum processing system. Anyone who arrived illegally after 7 March, 2023 was prohibited from being granted asylum or legal status. As of 14 April, 2024, there are 73,239 people on this part of the asylum backlog. As the numbers have ballooned, the government has been forced to put people in hotels, at great cost to the taxpayer. "The government has achieved the complete opposite of what they claim," Starmer will say, "a Travelodge amnesty, handed out by the Tory party". Labour will let this cohort into the asylum system.

Notice that same semantic trick. ‘Travelodge amnesty’ is a good line. It communicates the idea that the Tories are weak on asylum, while Labour will be hard. It blunts the Tory attack on Labour planning an 'amnesty'. And yet the practical repercussions are that Labour will stop the insane policy spectacle of simply refusing to process the claims - of closing the blinds and pretending the train is moving.

Read between the lines. Labour is adopting the right policy. It is adopting the only sane policy available: to process the claims. "We have to clear the backlog," Starmer will say. "That is the path — the only path — to real deterrence. We have to restore integrity and rules to our asylum system."

Notice too the one central fact in all this: Labour's plan does not involve brutalising people. It targets the people-smugglers, but not the asylum seekers themselves. There is no mention of punishment, no appeal to the wild dog segment of the brain, the wish for performative sadism. We are in completely different emotional terrain. That alone is deeply and profoundly reassuring.

Labour doesn't much like to talk about decency or morality on this issue. Evidently they feel that makes them electorally vulnerable. They are triangulating against the perception that they are too soft. But there is decency there. This policy has been developed by a moral mind, which aims to avoid cruelty while assuaging the doubts of voters who are suspicious of asylum.

This is what politics entails: a compromise between idealism and pragmatism. Without the first, you can never win an election. Without the latter, you are lost in the moral wind, susceptible to whatever happens to be popular at the time. There are people on either side of that binary. Hell, there are people in Labour on either side of that binary. The former are so idealistic they have never accomplished anything, prioritising the purity of their soul over actually helping other people. The latter are so lost in the great political game that they have come unmoored from their own integrity. Whatever they once were is gone now.

Most people are somewhere in the middle, trying to figure out when to be principled and when to give way.

The balancing act is not numerical. It's not about trying to find the perfect median sweet spot where the scales hit equilibrium. It can be calculated on a case by case basis. 

The Elphicke defection dominated the news this week. Much soul-searching from Labour MPs about how they could share a party with a right-wing Tory who had said dreadful things in the past, as if political parties are High Anglican churches rather than organic political entities. But what actually is the practical downside to her being in the party? She's not being handed a front bench position. She's not even standing for re-election, or being made a peer. She's being given an unpaid position advising on housing - a totally different policy area where she is much more aligned with the mood of the party. All the complaints were about souls and consciences and the party's heart - all these odd abstract notions without concrete meaning. 

What is the advantage of her defection? Well, all sorts of specific practical electoral things. It humiliates the prime minister. It cuts down his majority. It contributes to a narrative of inevitability around Labour. It sends a message to voters who dislike small boat crossings that even Tory MPs with a record on it have tired of Sunak's promises and believe Starmer's. No opposition leader is going to give up that opportunity.

So yeah, it's a compromise, but one in which the practical implications are zero in one direction and really quite considerable, if admittedly a little base, in the other. It is a compromise without any negative effect, and therefore a limited moral dimension. Supporting Rwanda, on the other hand, would have had ruinous and extensive implications, trapping Labour in a policy which traumatises asylum seekers and simply will not work. It would have therefore had a very strong moral dimension.

What is the repercussion of a policing approach, buttressed by an effective processing capability? Well, it's rather welcome. We don't actually want those boats making the crossing. It's dangerous. Stopping the work of the criminal gangs is a perfectly worthy endeavour in itself. Combine it with a functioning processing system and you have something which more closely resembles rationality.

What's missing from Labour is a pledge for safe passage. You cannot kill asylum through ending supply. It’s not possible, because there will always be demand. In this sense, its equivalent to the argument over drug law reform - what you cannot stop, you must regulate.

Instead, we have to replace black market supply with safe legal supply. That is the next step Labour must take, but it is one which it will only make in office. Those who believe in it should be thinking of how to formulate that proposal in language which appeals to the party and its political emphasis on security.

Labour is in the business of compromise. Many people will just waive their hands of it as a tainted and grubby business. Fine. Whatever. But most people will recognise that compromises are necessary to win elections and to govern properly. Whether it's Rwanda, small boats or Elphicke, we have to try and think clearly and rationally about each act of compromise and work out if it is sensible: What does it achieve, what are its consequences and what principles does it affect? Anything else just leaves us baffled and annoyed - without purchase.

Mercifully, the evidence this morning suggests Labour doing precisely that. It’s all clearly thought through. It’s all very precise. And very welcome.