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Let's presume Sir Keir Starmer desires to win the next election. Let's also presume he has no desire to be replaced as Prime Minister in the next year or so by Wes Streeting or Angela Rayner or anyone else.

He's a politician, after all, and politicians delight in power - Starmer more than the majority of, I would believe. I also suggest that he's at least averagely smart, and must have the ability to weigh up the chances of any policy being successful.

After the struggles, compromises and embarrassments involved in attaining high workplace, Starmer has no intent of tossing it all away. Why, then, does he reveal every indication of doing so?

On the single concern that might matter most to a majority of voters, he is speeding towards certain disaster, while denying himself any possibility of an escape route. I mean the boats discovering the Channel.

Varieties of migrants doing the 21-mile journey are up by 42 percent on the very same duration last year. An analysis by The Times, utilizing similar modelling as Border Force, predicts that 50,000 people will cross the Channel in small boats in 2025. That would be a yearly record - and a stonking fiasco for Sir Keir.

Peering into his mind, I reckon there are two main possible explanations for his behaviour. One is that he is deluding himself. He actually believes numbers will boil down when the procedures he has actually taken start to work.

If Starmer still thinks that his policies - tossing hundreds of millions at the French authorities, improving intelligence and using enhanced law enforcement powers - will minimize the numbers, that really is the triumph of hope over experience. The other possibility is that he is currently beginning dimly to realise that his stratagems will not bear much, if any, fruit. So he and the Government have actually decided to pull the wool over our eyes. A fatal technique.

There have actually been 2 such examples in current days. Having said in an online post on Monday that he felt 'angry' about the numbers crossing the Channel (how does he believe the rest of us feel !?) the PM made a slippery claim.

Sir Keir Starmer now has absolutely nothing powerful in his locker, Stephen Glover writes

Only 2,240 small-boat migrants were sent out home in the 12 months to March, 3 per cent less than in the previous year

He boasted that 'nearly 30,000 individuals' had been gotten rid of from the UK by this Government. Sounds excellent. But in reality this figure describes all kinds of migrants who have no right to be in our nation. Only 2,240 small-boat migrants were sent out home in the 12 months to March, 3 percent fewer than in the previous year.

A lie? Good God no! We should not implicate Labour prime ministers, far less Sir Keir Starmer KCB, PC, KC, MP, of informing purposeful fibs. Shall we choose an analytical deception?

The other circumstances of the Government not being totally directly was the Home Office's claim previously today that there have been more migrants this year since of balmy weather. These are called 'red days', when the sea is calm.

But an analysis by my colleague David Barrett in yesterday's Mail shows that in temperate May last year there were 21 'red days' but just 2,765 arrivals, about 1,000 fewer than last month. In mild June 2024 there were 20 'red days', though only 3,007 migrants were taped crossing the Channel.

The most likely explanation is that last May and June the Government's strategy to send illegal migrants to Rwanda had actually lastly cleared relentless judicial obstruction. Some, a minimum of, were deterred from crossing the Channel for worry of being packed off to the central African country.

The Rwanda scheme was far from ideal - it was expensive, and responsible to legal difficulty because the nation has an authoritarian federal government - but a minimum of it had some prospect of discouraging migrants. The inbound Labour Government threw away its only plausible means of suppressing the boats.

Good for Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who in a speech tomorrow will carry out to reanimate a strategy noticeably comparable to the Rwandan one.

Starmer now has absolutely nothing powerful in his locker. Literally absolutely nothing. He can provide further millions to the French government but it will not make much, if any, distinction. French authorities will still loll around on beaches, thinking of the sand castles they made as kids, as they see migrant boats setting off for Dover.

The reality is that the French will never strain themselves due to the fact that every migrant who leaves their coasts is one less migrant for them to worry about. It is ignorant to picture that they are ever going to be zealous on our behalf.

STEPHEN GLOVER: Keir Starmer is a soft man who can not understand the real evil Britain is dealing with

Nor will Sir Keir's concept of enhancing intelligence and law enforcement be decisive. When it comes to Labour's reported intent to play with Article 8 of the Human Rights Act so regarding preclude fake asylum claims, that is welcome, however even if it becomes law it is unlikely to have much impact on overall numbers.

Are the PM and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper starting to panic as they understand they do not have a single policy most likely to satisfy their promise of 'smashing the gangs'? If they aren't desperate, they jolly well ought to be.

Three weeks ago, Sir Keir was humiliated after he had actually praised talks over Rwanda-style 'return centers' only minutes before his Albanian equivalent, standing a couple of feet away, eliminated any cooperation.

Maybe the Government will encourage the Kosovans or the North Macedonians to set up some sort of scheme. But if it does, it will take months, if not years, and individuals will wonder why Sir Keir cancelled a plan that he is at least partly attempting to restore.

I've no particular wish to toss Starmer a lifeline however, as I've recommended before, there's one possible path out of the hole he has dug for himself - though it would take massive decision and nerve for him to take it.

There are lots of unoccupied British islands off our coast and additional afield. Pick among them. Create a camp similar to those on the Isle of Man that housed alien internees throughout the War. Build hundreds of huts - rather than setting up less strong tents, as ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe has proposed.

Recruit physicians and officials to evaluate claims more rapidly than takes place at present - and after that return most migrants to where they came from. The cost of setting up such a camp would be a portion of the ₤ 4.3 billion invested in 2015 on housing migrants and asylum .

Can anybody inform me why not? Few migrants would elegant kicking their heels for months in a camp, nevertheless gentle, so it would be a marvellous deterrent. Cross the Channel, and you will be our guest - on a possibly windy island rather than in a four-star hotel.

Granted, in order to fend off vexatious legal difficulties we 'd probably have to derogate from the European Court of Human Rights, which would be a step too far for our careful Prime Minister.

But he does not have a much better concept. In fact, he hasn't got any concepts at all that are liable to stem the growing numbers of individuals streaming across the English Channel.
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Things can only become worse - and as they do Labour will sink ever lower in public esteem. Does Sir Keir Starmer truly wish to be the signatory of his own political death warrant?

RwandaAngela RaynerLabourWes Streeting