Keir Starmer returns to the political fray with one item at the top of a crowded agenda: asylum and immigration levels, the biggest threat to his plans to stabilise the Government after a rocky summer.
Hardly anyone of good sense in his own court – let alone sceptics or opponents –believe that his initial “smash the gangs” pledge to see off the small boats influx in the Channel – i.e. a patchwork mix of deals with France, Germany and Poland to block the routes of inflatables (which he thinks will defeat the ingenuity of traffickers) and promises about more Interpol activity (which has yielded a big fat nothing) – is anything close to an answer.
Recent rowdy demonstrations focused on asylum hostels and events in Epping Forest, where the district council has succeeded in the first round of a legal battle to prevent a hotel being used to house claimants, both point to the size of the hole in Starmer’s approach. Over a year has passed since Labour’s speeches about how awful the Tories’ legacy has been and how things must be “properly managed”, but the public has moved on and wants clarity – not blame, fudges or holding patterns.
This is where focus should have started: in so many ways, the Government’s headaches come from the mis-sequencing of its priorities after taking office and belated attempts to catch up with public opinion.
As a result, Starmer is about to engage in one of the biggest reversals in traditional centre-left thinking on how to deal fairly with the UK’s asylum load, all while addressing confusion and anger about why the system’s solution is the warehousing of incomers until their cases can be heard, or simply losing track of them.
Beneath the surface of this is a “raw numbers problem”, as one senior minister involved puts it, namely that processing delays are now the single biggest cause of pressure in the system. At the same time, claims have risen to record levels.
Some of this is a result of long-standing systemic inefficiency and underinvestment, but it is also a hallmark of asylum process that relies on judge-led tribunals.
This has long been exactly the kind of system Starmer, who often acted as a lawyer to protect refugee rights, knows well. It has been the clearing house for difficult decisions about claims and who should be returned. It also created a “grey zone” in which any party in government could say they were dealing with the rise in claims as fast as possible, distracting from the fact that a substantial proportion of those in appeals did not result in returns, even for those without formal leave to remain in the UK.
Farming out these decisions to complex legal tribunal structures and allowing appeals on points of law have become both cumbersome – and often unfair. They can trap genuine refugees, whose cases should be heard fast so they can start new lives in safety, and it creates too many “grey zones” that can be exploited by applicants advised not to be clear on their country or origin to avoid deportation.
Yvette Cooper, the flinty Home Secretary, now appears to be tasked with the job of “Iron Lady” on the matter, striking a less ambiguous tone than Starmer on the need to speed all of this up and using a new raft of “independent adjudicators” to hit a 24-week deadline for those who are either reliant on asylum accommodation or have previous criminal convictions.
The difficulty for her boss is that Sir Keir is strongly associated with the Human Rights Act deployment and the rule of judges as the “decider” function in asylum cases that he now needs to overhaul and, in part, undo. We don’t really know much about what the “independent” trained adjudicator panels will look like and who will staff them, but clearly they are intended by the government not to turn out to be as fussy as lawyers – else clearing the backlog will not be expedited.
Past lives do seem to haunt the Prime Minister often, not least because in opposition he led the charge against the Tories’ Rwanda plan for off-shore processing centres for asylum seekers. It was a non-starter for many reasons, but the idea of processing closer to the countries most asylum-seekers come from remains a likely policy for big countries with limited public patience towards the existing system. Indeed, Germany has just said it will explicitly resist its own version of the Rwanda proposal.
square ASYLUM SEEKERS Big Read'Get a grip': How asylum crisis threatens to overwhelm Starmer's Government
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For now, Starmer and his enforcer at the Home Office have more immediate legal tangles – namely how hard they fight the new High Court judgement on the Bell Hotel in Epping. There are currently over 32,000 people in asylum hotels and many other councils will feel emboldened to try a similar route to close down flashpoints of protest. And yes, while much of it is driven by online up-stirrers including the insurgent interests of Reform UK and dangerous movements to its far-right, there is also a deeper bench of support in the electorate than can be dismissed as simply trouble-making or misguided.
A weekend of protests, counter-demonstrations and clashes across the country will have reminded the Prime Minister that this brew of genuine concern, resentment and a dollop of unpleasant racism will be corrosive to his aim of bringing a calmer and more stable mood to the UK.
So Starmer is confronted with the realisation that a system built on the legal frameworks and processes he advocated for and operated within for decades are being tested to destruction by the raw politics of immigration and a sense of urgency that legal processes cannot match.
Many in his own ranks anticipate the next election as a “Starmer v Farage” fight and worry he may already be on the losing side. The contest now under way however is really “Starmer v Starmer”, the human rights barrister versus the man who wants to show he can solve problems with blunt force and see off a Labour rout. There’s not much doubt about which side of of the Prime Minister is winning that fight: the Mark Darcy character from Bridget Jones.
Anne McElvoy is executive editor at Politico and host of the Politics at Sam and Anne’s podcast
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