Migration keeps derailing British leaders

Boris Johnson

Under Johnson, small boat crossings of the English Channel became a high-salience issue — as month after month under his premiership brought record numbers of people making the perilous journey. 

To tackle the issue — and “stop these boats” as Johnson called it — he and his Home Secretary Priti Patel devised a plan. They would send asylum seekers who cross the Channel to Rwanda — permanently.

But two months after it was announced, the plan — pushed as a deterrent by Johnson — was plunged into crisis after the first flight was canceled minutes before take-off, following a last-minute injunction from the European Court of Human Rights. 

Johnson resigned a month later as separate scandals caught up with him — leaving his Rwanda plan in the hands of his successors.

Johnson has admitted post-premiership that legal migration increased to too-high a level under his leadership — despite promising in his 2019 election manifesto that “overall numbers will come down.” 

Liz Truss

She might have been outlasted in office by a lettuce — but there was still time for an immigration row during Liz Truss’ ill-fated premiership. 

After being forced to resign as Truss’ home secretary, Tory right-winger Suella Braverman sent a stinging letter to the prime minister expressing her “serious concerns” about her commitment to the 2019 manifesto promise on lowering immigration, as well as stopping irregular cross-channel migration.

Though we never got to see the results, Truss had reportedly planned to liberalize Britain’s immigration rules as part of an all-out push to turn around Britain’s flatlining economy.

Rishi Sunak

Rishi Sunak recognized the electoral potency of migration — but had a mixed record on addressing it.

Blaming Johnson’s government (in which he’d been the top finance minister) for high levels of net migration, Sunak soon promised to bring those figures back down to “sustainable levels.”

He unveiled draconian new visa rules in December last year, which included making it dramatically harder for people to bring non-British spouses to the U.K.

New figures for migrant visa applications, released Friday, appear to show that those plans worked on their own terms, although they were watered down before implementation amid concern about a hit to the British economy.

But Sunak arguably gave himself a larger headache on irregular migration — by vowing to completely “stop the boats” and putting the pledge front and center of his pitch to the country.

Sunak pinned his hopes largely on Johnson’s Rwanda plan. He expended much energy and political capital introducing revised versions of the legislation to try and get it past the courts and finally get flights off the ground. 

Those flights were set to finally take off in July this year. But then Sunak called the election, lost it in a landslide, and the expensive and unpopular plan was scrapped by Starmer.

Keir Starmer

As Britain hopes for a period of calm after the riots, Starmer is faced with the question of how to address the underlying issues that prompted so much disorder — without being seen as caving to the far-right.

While few in the U.K. have sympathy for the rioters, the issue of immigration in general has — according to polling — shot up the agenda for Brits since Starmer took office. And his allies are aware of the electoral threat posed by the stridently anti-immigration Reform U.K. Party.

Small boat crossings have continued since Starmer took office, and he has scrapped the Rwanda plan. In its place, Starmer wants a new “Border Security Command” unit to reduce Channel crossings by cracking down on people smugglers. His Conservative critics brand it a mere rebadge of ideas they’ve already tried.

As the dust settles on the riots, Labour MPs and strategists are keen to focus on root causes beyond just migration. One ally of Starmer’s chief strategist Morgan McSweeney, speaking anonymously to be frank about strategy, told POLITICO London Playbook that it’s about “doing the basics right” — like improving economic growth and public services for deprived areas, while also being “really, really proactive in communicating that.”

Starmer’s ex-policy chief Claire Ainsley, now at the Progressive Policy Institute, added that “the discontent the extremists are stirring up doesn’t dissipate easily.” She added: “Beyond law and order, the political center left has to have a better answer to the challenges people face than the political right. Our culture of inclusion and tolerance has to be reasserted.”

Stefan Boscia contributed reporting.