Labour was monumentally stupid for petulantly ditching Rwanda plan – here’s why

So when Keir Starmer said before the election “read my lips – I will cut immigration”, he didn’t make clear to the British people that he planned to give every migrant who comes here illegally asylum or amnesty.

How’s that reducing immigration? Surely that’s the equivalent of putting an ad on the World Wide Web screaming: “Come to Blighty. If you get here, Starmer says you can stay.”

This week, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced that 70-120,000 illegal migrants who were earmarked to go to Rwanda for processing are now likely to be given asylum.

These are the tens of thousands of people the last government said shouldn’t be allowed to stay here because they came illegally and so weren’t entitled to asylum.

But Labour and its new broom is quickly looking like the kind of administration where anyone who makes it to our shores will be allowed to stay.

Since Labour came to power three weeks ago, a shocking 2,200 migrants have arrived on our shores.

And this is just the beginning. Because what Labour is doing is effectively dismantling the Tories’ Illegal Migration Act, which prevented anyone coming here illegally from claiming asylum.

Starmer and Cooper are basically chucking it out and saying even if you do come here illegally, you’ll be granted asylum or be part of an amnesty.

This is despite the fact Cooper has insisted she doesn’t believe in amnesties. She says it should be seen as “processing”.

Well, she can see it how she damn well likes, but the fact remains that it is opening our doors to all comers with no controls.

And neither she nor Starmer should think for a single second that the British people don’t see that.

And if you think the millions the Tories spent setting up the Rwanda scheme was bad, just watch how the bill soars when people from all over the world rush here safe in the knowledge that once they set foot on British soil, they’re here forever.

Cooper has desperately tried to justify what she’s doing (or not doing) by saying the previous government left a mess and was planning to spend a massive £10billion on the Rwanda policy.

Well, if it were going to stop half of Sub-Saharan Africa coming here illegally, it would have been cheap at half the price.

But hang on – £10billion? Isn’t that the amount Rachel Reeves will have to impose on us all in tax rises to afford the obscene pay hikes she’s about to bestow on the public sector?

What’s becoming painfully clear already is that this Government’s way of fixing things isn’t really to fix them at all. It’s to make it look like they’re doing something when in reality they’re just kicking the problem into the long grass to deal with another day.

They’ve already started by releasing thousands of prisoners onto our streets because jails are overcrowded – without saying how they’re going to permanently fix the problem.

Rachel Reeves looks like she’s about to cave into the unions by giving them inflation-busting pay rises because she says “strikes cost”.

And Cooper’s weasly solution to illegal immigration is to give everyone who comes here asylum or an amnesty.

Cooper and Starmer have spent months telling us of their determination to smash the gangs. Yet giving everyone who arrives here asylum isn’t going to smash the gangs. It’s going to up their business and make them richer than ever, because the numbers wanting to come here will be off the scale. The traffickers must be rubbing their greedy little hands with glee.

Labour was monumentally stupid in so petulantly ditching the Rwanda plan because, whatever they say, it DID work as a deterrent. And now the rest of Europe is employing Rwanda-style plans because they see it will deter the numbers arriving illegally.

But the idiot Starmer is rowing in the opposite direction and now finds himself on the wrong end of a global trend – a trend Britain instigated.

Yes, Ms Cooper announced her silly little plan about targeting and deporting illegal migrants who are working here – people in nail bars and car washes.

What, so she’s going to send squads of heavies into nail bars to lift seven-stone Vietnamese manicurists and bundle them into the backs of vans to be deported at a later date? Ditto with those in car washes, many of whom are women.

My God, if Labour thought Rwanda was “cruel and inhumane” – illegal migrants being processed in four-star hotels in one of Africa’s most prosperous countries – how the hell do they think the optics of this will play out?

Labour isn’t fooling anyone. Neither Starmer nor Cooper have any intention of deporting anyone.

Let’s not forget, Starmer is the man who in 2020 campaigned for 50 dangerous criminals – including violent thugs, drug dealers and stalkers – to be allowed to stay here.

They were and predictably went on to commit further offences, as anyone with half a brain knew they would.

And there’s going to come a time in the not-too-distant future when Starmer and Cooper are going to have to stop “talking” about smashing the gangs and actually do it.

What’s the betting that in the next year they won’t have smashed a single one?