Public doubt Channel boats will be stopped

FEWER than one in five voters expect Sir Keir Starmer will succeed in stopping the flow of small boats carrying migrants across the Channel.

- David Williamson

The Labour PM made "smashing" the people smuggling gangs a centrepiece of the campaign but the country has little faith he will succeed.

Pollsters We Think found that when people who were neither confident nor not confident are eliminated, just 19 per cent of British adults are confident he will stop the boats, with 64 per cent not confident.

Labour has pledged to create a new "border security command" but has also committed to scrapping plans to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing. Conservatives say the first flights would have left this month if they had won the election.

The research, conducted shortly before polling day, found little expectation that population growth will slow on Sir Keir's watch.