Minister, gimmicky language rules won't stop those boats

Shabana Mahmood has made a good start at the Home Office, saying the right things about regaining control of Britain’s borders and starting to deliver some policy changes.

- JOHN RENTOUL

The number of people who arrived by dinghy and have subsequently been returned to France remains small, but it is growing. Mahmood rewrote the guidelines on modern slavery within hours of a migrant using the Modern Slavery Act to avoid deportation. And she has spoken blunt truths to her squeamish party about the need to control immigration as the condition of a compassionate policy.

She did not say, though, that “Britain has lost control of its borders” - that was a newspaper headline on a preview of her speech yesterday, in which she will say “the failure to bring order to our borders is eroding trust not just in us as political leaders... but in the credibility of the state itself”.

She sticks to the line, which is that the previous government lost control and Labour is now working ceaselessly to restore it, while always making the argument to her reluctant party as to why it matters.