Keir Starmer has pledged to ‘stop the chaos’ – but can he ‘stop the boats’?
Editorial: Keir Starmer has drawn on his experience as Britain’s ‘chief prosecutor’ and proposes a coordinated, sustained campaign to ‘smash’ the people smugglers. But there is, yet, no ‘plan’ for lawful, regular migration
Can Labour “stop the boats”? Sir Keir Starmer is too cautious and too politically savvy to adopt Rishi Sunak’s foolishly overambitious slogan, and condemn himself to certain failure before he even moves into No 10.
Instead, the Labour leader pledges to “stop the chaos” in the British asylum system, by “stopping the criminal gangs”. Those pledges will also no doubt prove something of a stretch for him and for his colleagues if he does indeed become prime minister later his year. But his latest, thoughtful speech, delivered symbolically in Dover, suggests that some serious work and even imagination has gone into dealing with the problem.
It is, after all, one of the great benefits of the democratic system of government that when one party has run out of talent, energy and ideas, another one can at least try something new and reinvigorate the system. So it is now with the divided and exhausted Tory government, and its impatient Labour opposition.
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