ALTHOUGH Channel crossings are 15 per cent down on last year, even Rishi Sunak’s most fervent supporters would admit that the boats have not yet been stopped.
The PM has good progress to point to: a returns agreement with Albania, information-sharing with Turkey and the passing – in the teeth of ferocious opposition from Labour and the BBC – of the Illegal Immigration Bill.
But, for all the other measures, the Government’s key policy remains sending asylum claimants to Rwanda.
Left-wing lawyers and campaigners have repeatedly used European human rights laws to argue that is not safe as Rwanda could then send them on to countries where they face persecution.
The Lord Chief Justice disagrees: he said that Rwanda has no current return agreements of this kind in place, making that all but impossible.