The past week was when Shabana Mahmood said she would start returning migrants to France. Early in the week, anti-immigration voices were loud in derision when last-minute legal challenges meant that journalists went on a day out to Paris to report on empty seats in planes that had been booked by the Home Office for deportees.
Then, on Thursday, the first migrant who had arrived by small boat was sent to France under the “one in, one out” pilot scheme. Did those anti-immigration voices cease their criticism and congratulate the home secretary on doing what she said she would do? They did not.
It is only one, they said. By the weekend, only three. And 1,072 migrants arrived by small boat on Friday, they pointed out.
Which is true, but overlooks the only thing that really matters. A politician did what she said she would do. Not just any politician but a home secretary, the one in charge of the Home Office, a department so dysfunctional that one of her predecessors, John Reid, gave up on it and split it in two.
And what she said she would do was to do with immigration. The one subject above all on which politicians have failed to keep their promises since the EU referendum, thereby pushing our democracy to the point where it is poised to elect a prime minister who is not of one of the two parties that have monopolised power for 100 years.
So, yes, it is just a pilot scheme, but it could be a turning point. Mahmood, her predecessor, Yvette Cooper, and Keir Starmer have not explained the scheme well, despite what I am about to say about Mahmood’s communication skills.
The agreement with France established the principle that we can return migrants there. The purpose of the pilot scheme is to identify and test the logistical and legal obstacles to doing so. That is precisely what it did this past week. On Tuesday, a migrant from Eritrea succeeded in blocking his deportation on the grounds that his claim to have been the victim of modern slavery had not been investigated.
Mahmood ordered that the guidelines for claims under the Modern Slavery Act be rewritten immediately. The Times reports that someone in the room said that officials were left “a bit shocked”. One Home Office official said: “The speed of decision-making is something to get used to.”
On Thursday, a different Eritrean migrant tried the modern slavery argument in front of the same judge, Mr Justice Sheldon. He lost his case, Sheldon ruling that “his account of trafficking could not reasonably be believed”.
There will be other attempts in the courts to block deportations, but one by one, they will be overcome. Mahmood has said that she will change the law if necessary, and she has proved that she will act quickly. As these obstacles are removed, the scheme can be scaled up. If she can send three back, she can send 3,000.
At that point, if nearly all arrivals are returned to France, the boats will stop, as there will be no point in attempting the crossing. And at that point, the critics’ complaint that Britain has to accept a legal migrant from France for every uninvited one sent back will cease, because the traffic will have ceased. At that point, Reform, the Conservatives, GB News and the right-wing press will no doubt congratulate Mahmood on the success of the policy. No doubt at all.
However, Mahmood never explains that the pilot scheme could be expanded so that it stops the boats. Maybe it is too complicated in the age of three-second TikToks, and too easily overwhelmed by “1,072 in, three out” mockery. Although I worry that the real reason is to avoid alarming the French with the prospect of thousands of returns – even if it would only be for a short period to establish the deterrent effect.
If the French fail to renew the scheme, which initially runs only until June, the British government will be back to square one, which is why Mahmood is right to pursue other options at the same time.
What Mahmood is good at explaining, though, is the underlying rationale for a “tough” policy on the small boats in the first place. “Some people have written this off as simply a political imperative,” she told an all-staff meeting of the Home Office on Wednesday. “But that is to misunderstand who I am and what I believe. Sovereign countries have secure borders. That statement is an article of faith for me.
“We can only be a tolerant, open, generous country when we are able to determine who can enter and who must leave. And I know that a country that can control its own borders is a far safer country for someone who looks like me.”
At last. A politician of the compassionate liberal centre who can explain why a humane immigration policy depends on control, and why there is nothing humane about a status quo that has allowed 70 people to die in the Channel this year.
Starmer and Cooper have been weak on this essential task of communication, and, although Starmer secured the French deal by skilful negotiation with Emmanuel Macron and Cooper set the scheme up quickly, it is Mahmood who has delivered the first results while she “shocked” her officials with the speed of her decision-making.
There is a long way to go yet, and even if Mahmood does succeed in greatly reducing the number of small boats, it may be that Labour will be overwhelmed by Nigel Farage and his online supporters insisting that it shouldn’t have taken so long because stopping the boats is “all very simple”.
It really is not simple, though, and Mahmood is the first British politician who has a chance of getting to grips with it.
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