Starmer’s macho talk on asylum seekers will only lead to

The way to ‘stop the boats’ is to create safe routes of travel. Instead, the Labour leader is obsessed with trying to appear tough

Keir Starmer isn’t interested in “gimmicks”, “talking tough” or, God forbid, protesting. He wants to roll up his sleeves and get things done – on this much he has been clear. Except, that is, for the times when it suits him to indulge in some “gesture politics”. This is especially true for asylum: Labour is headed into the snap July election promising to be tough on the “small boats crisis” and, if Starmer’s speech in Dover earlier this month is anything to go by, its plans are not good.

Gimmicks – the policies behind which could do untold damage – seem to be all Labour has. Starmer swapped Rishi Sunak’s “stop the boats” slogan for “border security”. He invoked the widely peddled myth that the UK, which has an incredibly strict asylum system, is a “soft touch” – suggesting deporting people more quickly would serve as a deterrent. And he promised a new border security command, which seems strangely similar to the small boats operational command. Granted, Labour does not look set to be quite as harsh as the Tories in every respect; Starmer committed to scrapping the Rwanda scheme. But that is the very least it could do, given how unpopular the policy is with the broader public. Look beyond the headline announcements and you find more of what we’ve had for decades – more borders, more brutality, more suffering.

Maya Goodfellow is an academic at City, University of London, and the author of Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats.