Starmer’s immigration rhetoric follows familiar pattern of bold claims but few results, expert says

Keir Starmer’s pledge to “smash the gangs” profiting from small boat crossings has followed a pattern set by Conservative-led governments of employing “bullish rhetoric” with little evidence that it can be delivered, an expert has claimed.Madeleine Sumption, the director of the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, says the prime minister has repeated the mistakes of Rishi Sunak and David Cameron by making “bold claims with great certainty about things governments only partially control” .The UK and French governments are wrangling over a new deal to stop people-smuggling gangs from operating in the Channel. Starmer announced his promise to “smash the gangs” in the run-up to the 2024 general election, but is facing increasing criticism from opposition parties for failing to curb the number of people reaching the UK.As of 25 February, 2,209 people had arrived in the UK in small boats in 2026 – up by about 7% compared with the same period in 2025.Starmer brushed off criticism of the slogan at prime minister’s question time last week after Nigel Farage accused it of being “a total, abject failure”.Sumption, whose book What Is Immigration Policy For? is published on Tuesday and who is also a member of the government’s independent Migration Advisory Committee, said: “Governments of all stripes like to make bold claims, from ‘stop the boats’ and ‘smash the gangs’ to ‘net migration falling below 100,000’.“In practice the results have disappointed, because factors outside their control have played a huge role. That included EU membership; in the case of net migration, France’s willingness to cooperate on asylum policy; or the sprawling, decentralised activities of smuggling gangs that are very difficult for government to contain.”Successive ministers have felt unable to be honest with the public about the possibility that their policies may not work, Sumption said.After losing the 2024 general election to Starmer, Rishi Sunak admitted that his government’s ‘stop the boats’ slogan was ‘too stark, too binary’. Photograph: James Manning/AFP/Getty Images“People say they want their politicians to be honest, but when it comes to immigration policies the most honest political pitch often doesn’t work. Saying ‘we don’t know if this will work, but we’ll try it out, and if it fails, we’ll try something new’ won’t land very well on the campaign trail.“So, instead, immigration debates feature bold claims with great certainty about things governments only partially control. This is not a party-political point: we see this problem across administrations, across the world,” she said.In 2023 when Sunak was prime minister he announced a promise to “stop the boats” – a slogan which was then mounted on lecterns and included in social media clips. After losing the 2024 general election to Starmer, Sunak admitted that it was “too stark, too binary”.Cameron, who was prime minister between 2010 and 2016, promised to reduce annual net migration from “hundreds of thousands” to “tens of thousands”. The figure reached more than 300,000 by 2015.Downing Street has been approached for a comment.